Half

By Amber Larks

This collection of work is titled "Half" and centers on the theme of being half Asian in America. It is an exploration of personal identity, family heritage, and activism. "Half" includes an oil painting, poem, personal essay, and self-portrait series with my grandmother's traditional Cheongsam jacket. I started the painting in 2019 and finally finished in March 2021, three days after the tragic Atlanta shooting. The personal essay highlights the struggle of dealing with grief alongside imposter syndrome, finding peace with identity, and most importantly, promoting empathy.

This series also lead to a fundraiser to support the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, which my grandfather, Howard Quon, helped found in 1985. The fundraiser raised $1,645 in honor of the recent victims of Asian American hate crimes. This body of work has brought me peace and confidence in my identity and created a full circle to my family heritage. It was also an incredible platform and group effort to forward progress for social justice and empathy. “Half” has really resonated with my circles and has been further shared by many. I’ve had strangers reach out to me with how much they connected with the piece and how it’s helped them with their own identity. It’s been a wonderful and meaningful journey.

Grief and Imposter Syndrome: Coping with Asian Hate as a Half Asian

I finally found my words. Day one after the shooting in Atlanta, I had no words, only grief. By day two I was overwhelmed by fury and rage. Grieving together and supporting each other even just virtually has been so healing. And it inspired me to finish a painting I had preliminary sketches for back in 2019. 

Half Original Sketch - Nov. 2019

In the past two years, I have developed more of an understanding about race and ethnicity. I found no better time than now to finish the painting to depict my inner thoughts and feelings of cultural identity.

This painting was art therapy for me and I know a lot of people will connect with its themes of reclaiming heritage, imposter syndrome, coping with grief, and embracing empathy. I had been struggling internally for so long, conflicting thoughts on current events circling my mind constantly, as I am half Chinese and half white. But in the end, I somehow always conclude my thoughts and feelings are invalid because “I don’t know what it’s really like to be Asian.” I have always struggled with imposter syndrome because I’m half. I constantly straddle two worlds. But being Chinese is who I am, it’s half of me. My outlook on my own identity grew blurred, as I constantly gaslit myself, wondering if my grief was valid. Thoughts like, “You’re not really Asian, so stop playing the victim here,” or “People will think you’re just a white girl trying to look woke,” and “You should be sad, yes, but grieving like you knew them? That doesn’t make sense” clouded my mind. How fucked up is that? 

But this is what being half is like. You feel like an imposter even though it is 100% part of your identity. Honestly, I think this is where a lot of my social anxiety comes from because I feel like I don’t fit in anywhere. Being half, you experience direct racism, but more often by people making stereotypical remarks not knowing that you identify as half Asian. My first encounter was in second grade, when two white boys in my class began pulling their eyelids up and down taunting “Chinese! Japanese! Chinese! Japanese!” I will always remember that moment, and the range of emotions I felt.

Seattle is my city; it is a beautiful, progressive haven. Yet we blindly participate in passive-aggressive racism. I can’t tell you how many times people have complained to me about “Asian tourists,” as if they are not human, but instead an inconvenience to our predominantly white city. They complain about Asians as if they are not people who have worked hard and saved for years to take their family to a foreign city with a foreign tongue, only to be scoffed at and not welcomed. Where is our empathy there? Where is our humanity? So much of racism is not seeing others as human which makes it easy to be so cruel. The dehumanization of minorities is pure cruelness.  

Maybe we don’t do things like you, look like you, or talk like you, but that doesn’t make us any lesser. We have feelings. We feel pain. We have depth. We are smart. We can read between the lines. We know when we are not welcome and it hurts. We know when we are being ridiculed and it hurts. We know Hollywood only sees us as objects and it hurts. We see our brothers and sisters getting murdered and it hurts.

Growing up half taught me to hide my Asian side. From age five, I deemed it unsafe to show my Asian culture in fear of being bullied. As I grew up, I continued to hide in fear of being disrespected, stereotyped, harassed, and sexualized. The sexualization and fetishization of Asian women disturbs me to my core. I hope I never hear the phrase “Asian persuasion” again, or “exotic”, like we are some seductive fetishized foreign object rather than humans.

Being mixed today is common in this day and age, but growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, I had people asking me if I was adopted, if my mom was my nanny, or “What are you?” and “Where are you from?” I felt out of place and alienated. 

And yes, I am privileged in many ways to be white passing because I have the option to blend in easier. I have realized this year more than ever just how privileged I am, and oblivious I used to be. But I also feel the weight of the pain my Asian counterparts endure. And grief is grief. Struggles are struggles. Pain is pain. We need solidarity to move forward. 

I’ve been especially touched this past month regarding how much support and outcry there has been about the Stop Asian Hate movement. My boyfriend (who is also half Asian) and I were discussing how it’s actually different seeing all this action around Asian activism. In the Asian community, we’ve always just dealt with normalized racism and somehow society made us feel that’s just how it was. We were used to it. We learned to expect it. You learned to deal with it. And you don’t complain. “People have it harder” “We’re lucky to be where we are”. Silent strength. And silent suffering. 

I think of my grandma on my mother’s side and her strength, how she never complained. And it breaks my heart to think of the things she must have endured throughout her life. She was my hero. So strong and so herself. And I think of how all of that is in my mom, my sister, and I. Being Chinese to me is to be resilient. My people have been through so much, yet we’re taught to keep our heads down, work hard, and not to speak up, even in the most dire times. 

So again, it really warms my heart seeing so many people speaking out about this and supporting us right now. It’s really moving to see how much positive support can help heal a hurting community. Just seeing people speak up is healing in itself- that people are listening and our problems are actually real, That we’re not overreacting. Victims normally don’t see themselves as victims if they’ve been manipulated to think their pain is normal. 

That’s how it’s been for Asian people. And this is the problem with the Model Minority Myth: It is crafted out of white supremacy to preach, “Congratulations, you should be proud you climbed your way out of poverty. Not like those other folks. Look at the bright side. Forget the rest. Forget the torment we put you through. Forget the past. Aren’t you so glad to be you, a model citizen, a respectable citizen?” When in reality, the myth gives a false sense of security and false praise in a society that is still so very hostile towards us. It delegitimizes our pain and manipulatively puts us against other minorities. It deems us closer to white even though that’s not true at all. It’s not a scale of white to black and everything in between.

This has been a moment of clarity for me for my identity. I grieved and I’m still grieving for those lost and their families. Because they could have been my own loved ones.

Empathy can create so much change and healing. So please, when a community calls out for help, please return the call. Picture yourself in their shoes. For them to endure so much pain to finally reach the breaking point of calling out for help- it means it’s serious. 

This past year has shown how much our society is built on white supremacy. White supremacy really does permeate every major artery, crack and corner of this country. The year’s also shown how easily it’s tolerated. Excuse after excuse is made to uphold white supremacy and it’s time for that to stop. Thank you to everyone being vocal about this, everyone who is evaluating how their thoughts, words, jokes, or actions could be part of the problem (it’s not your fault, it’s the society we grew up in), and to everyone who reached out to their Asian friends to check in with them. Thank you.

I feel like a weight has been lifted finishing this painting, and at the same time, I am finding peace with my identity. Being half is a beautiful blessing where I’ve cultivated a deep understanding and practice of empathy. Being Asian is having an unspoken bond with other Asians because we’ve all been through similar struggles. We are brothers and sisters in solidarity. And that’s what I love about the Asian community. We have an unshakable strength in each other. But recently our community has been violently rocked and traumatized seeing our brothers and sisters murdered and abused. It takes a toll on a community. It’s a collective grieving we are going through. So thank you to everyone returning our call for help. Thank you for listening. And thank you for your love. We will heal but we will need everyone’s help to get rid of white supremacy, racism, and domestic terrorism. And until then we will continue to stand in solidarity with all communities fighting for the same cause.

I ask of everyone reading this:

Please try and use a lens of empathy to understand why marginalized communities are marginalized as well as their history and struggles.

Please take the time to reflect in the moment if your everyday actions, words, and thoughts perpetuate stereotypes and racism. I’ve caught myself many times. It’s in all of us because we live in a toxic society built on white supremacy. But that’s where the progress comes- when you address it and try and fix it. 

Please vote and support leaders who are antiracist. Who work to uplift all communities. Voting and activism works. Rhetoric matters. And politics is not just an old man’s game anymore.

Show solidarity. It means you care. 

Have empathy. Do your part to make the world a better place- not just for yourself and the people you care about, but for every human being. The light in me honors the light in you.