names

When I was little, I liked my name because it was so short. I could fill in my bubbles faster, I had less letters in my whole name than someone else's first name, so I could feel special for a precious few seconds before we all started our standardized tests. Unfortunately I met another Chinese kid in college who had six letters in his whole name (!) and I felt a little knocked off my high horse, which was a good thing. It's interesting the different relationships people can have with their names. It isn't unlike some objects and their names: almost the tiniest word 'sky' is a huge expanse, the playfulness of 'banana' and the unbearable way it rots. Opposites: how some words give you space and others limit you.

For those reasons, I liked my ambiguous last name. I didn't have to be one ethnicity or another....on paper, I didn't have to be the sweet, quiet one, the one who fit all the Asian stereotypes. I spent a lot of time in my mind trying to escape them, but wanting out, making the stereotypes a big deal, seemed to give them more power. How to balance this desire to be on an island alone and another to be with everyone, who you can't always love? The unapologetically ethnic names, the untranslated words in books don't care it isn't your language. They don't mind making you work for it. I admire that... There is something really graceful about this persistence of being.