I lived with my grandparents and my mom in China and in 3rd grade, my mom came to USA to pursue her MBA so I continued to live with my grandparents. When I was 12 years old, in the middle of 6th grade, I was told that I need to prep for an interview for the U.S. Embassy to go live with my mom. They also share that my mom has gotten remarried and they didn’t share a lot of details of who the person is but I think they showed me a picture of him. So when I moved in with my mom, I got to meet my new stepdad and he’s a White person. My grandparents and I, we live downstairs and my parents upstairs. I felt like downstairs, nothing felt different. Upstairs, that’s a whole different language, a new person. My stepdad didn’t speak Chinese and I didn’t speak English so there was a lack of communication. He would call me “Zinn.” That was the best way he could pronounce it and my mom would call it that way as well.

In school, I think I felt a lot of feeling of loss because it was a very big transition. There were moments of walking into classroom that have already started, not speaking the language, and just absolutely embarrassment and everybody look at you, and just feeling like having no one to support you. I just have to figure it out or not go. Around middle of 7th or maybe 8th grade, there was a conversation about having easier name for people to pronounce during roll calls. Teachers would just try their best to spell it out or they would call “Charlotte” or something. I think when I first moved here, I didn’t have the language to correct them and it was more like, I just hope that they will know who I am and remember me. So when you go through two or three years of that kind of mindset, your name becomes less of a priority to you. So even after I was able to talk in English, it was still not a priority for me to correct anybody. And because people have such a hard time pronouncing it and remembering who I am, my name, it almost felt like I started to dislike this name. I think the complication that it brought to my life made me almost resent my name.

When I was 15, my grandparents had to go back to China for a year for visa reasons so I was left with my parents. I didn’t live well with them. There was a lot of friction because most of the time I spend with my grandparents so I didn’t really get a chance to get to know my parents on that level. At the time, the only emotions I can remember is anger. I think the anger came from not being able to have any control over my own life and always feeling like the person who got left behind. Eventually I just changed my name to make it easier for people. I would tell them my name is X squared so that they could remember me. I think it was almost like you become invisible for so long that just the only hope is for people to remember you.