Jay Stoneking
“Passing” is a double-edged sword of privilege. It’s a special kind of isolation that is hard to navigate. I am mixed and grew up most with my immigrant Vietnamese family. It was easy to catch my mom and aunts and uncles gossiping when I’d hear my name stand out awkwardly in a sea of Vietnamese from the kitchen. Growing up, it didn’t matter whether I spoke the language or that I didn’t look like any of them. It was enough to exist with them to feel at home in Vietnamese spaces. But away from them, I am invisible. I have always had an American first name and an American last name, completely disconnected from my closest family. I look mixed to me, but hardly ever mixed looking enough to others to be seen as Vietnamese or even Asian at all. Often people would say, “I didn’t realize you were Asian” or they’ll fish for my ethnicity when I mention being mixed or Asian American. It always hurts, even when I laugh it off; usually the person is Asian too. When I changed my name as an adult, I wanted to fold my heritage into my new name in some way but couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt dishonest, as if I was appropriating from my own culture. Some days I wish I had, just to be more visible among my own community. Other days I feel grateful I don’t have to navigate racism the same way the rest of my family do.
More Community Stories
Shin Yu Pai*
"In my early 20s, I traveled to Taiwan on a root-searching tour and upon coming back to the States, decided to reclaim my Taiwanese name, which I have used full-time since being 23."
Evan 田辺 Captain*
"Much of my childhood and adolescence was shadowed by learning to hide that part of myself because that was easier than just existing in my own truth in a white community."
Jay Stoneking*
"Some days I wish I had, just to be more visible among my own community. Other days I feel grateful I don’t have to navigate racism the same way the rest of my family do."
Bonita Lee*
"It is fitting how this is the place of rebellion in China, as I was always rebelling against my own culture while trying to fit in when growing up in the United States."
Jane Wong
"She asked a random customer to name me my “American” name and loved how simple it sounded...I keep forgetting my Chinese name."
Cassie Whitebread*
"For me and my mother, this last name adds an extra sticky layer of tension to meeting people for the first time. 'Whitebread? But you’re not white.'"
Ren Han
"As my gender identity began to differ and change, I gravitated towards my online handle 'Ren.' It was more gender neutral, an ambiguous in-between to all the different iterations of my name."
Jenn Ngeth*
"I remember the first time I heard my mother say my last name out loud. It was the first day of Headstart and just as easily as it slipped out of my mother’s mouth, it was too slippery for my teacher to pronounce."
Dany Srey-Snow
"It’s an invitation for people to really know the authentic me, just like my family. I share how it’s a reclamation practice and it’s been welcomed with openness."
LiLi Marjorie Pigott
"I was born somewhere in China to a family that left me at a police station in Guangdong Province with no name or even a note with my birthday."
Jasmine Vu*
"It was not until high school that I became increasingly aware of my identity as an Asian American, which turned into resentment. Why did my parents have to sacrifice their names for survival?"
DeShawn Rivers*
"Growing up in Florida, I attended primarily black schools and classmates would often make jokes about my middle name by saying, 'That’s where the black is.'"
Sandy Ha
"I was given one name by my parents when we lived on a different continent. After living in this one for a few years, I chose a completely different name for myself. I was six. "
Ashna Mediratta
"They had moved to the U.S. and were searching for a name that would be easy to pronounce with English letters and sounds, and would not be butchered by an American accent."
Eric Chan 陳志宇 진지유*
"I must also remind myself that the folk arts I practice are traditionally performed and passed down anonymously, so we need not hold any of our names as sacred, precious, or permanent."
Taslim Jaiyeola Adejare Dosunmu*
"A part of me wishes my name expressed more of my mixed heritage, though my sentiments about that have changed a lot over time depending on the social context I was in."
Carole Hsi Lin Hsiao 蕭席琳*
"All of these names are written in distinct ways to convey political, poetic, and sentimental meanings and all of them are often misspelled or miswritten."
Renata Lumanau
"I was able to learn Mandarin from a young age, but since we lived outside Indonesia since I was 3 years old, I felt disconnected not only from my Indonesian culture, but even more so from my Chinese one."