"Calm down, it’s just a name.”
No. It’s never just a name. First it’s my name, next it was my speech, then it was my skin color, then my eyes. As an 8 year old, I struggled to understand why the color of my skin and shape of my eyes made me their target for ridicule. That confusion dissipated over time, only to have its place taken by contempt and scorn.
“Ching chong.”
Fools; I wasn’t even Chinese. I would hear that every single day of junior high, and every single day, those hateful feelings would plague me like The Black Death. Some days I’d ignore them, but other days I’d retaliate with remarks that start along the lines of ‘f’ and end in ‘u’. I wish I could go back in time and tell them that while they had nice, fair skin and golden blonde hair, at the end of the day, it was my steak that was seasoned, not theirs.
The realization that ignited the pride in being able to call myself Cambodian didn’t come overnight. During the first week of freshman year, we did ice breaker games. I can still remember the look of awe — the simultaneous dropping of jaws, the twinkling eyes caging utmost curiosity behind them — when I told everyone I was born in Cambodia.
“Whoa!”
“Really?”
“That’s so cool!”
Was this a trick? Am I being punked? What’s going on?
It happened again in sophomore year. Technically, a lot of things happened in sophomore year, but that’s its own separate novel. Every club I joined, AP class I took, and extracurricular activity I included myself in, everyone wanted to know about my background. Nothing could stop the seed of excitement that sprouted every time I got to ramble about the coconut trees my dad and uncles would climb, motorcycling through the streets of Phnom Penh, or tiptoeing through the stalks of the sugar cane fields. The more I talked about my culture, the more it dawned on me how amazing it is being Khmer. It gave me a sense of identity — something teenagers and young adults struggle with every day.
8