To any of the people who have been asking my opinion on Crazy Rich Asians or To All The Boys I've Loved Before
- they were good movies.
I like romantic comedies.
It's kind of weird that you've only asked me my opinion on these two movies all year.
I watch a lot of movies and regularly tweet about them.
Intro Music ♪
It is 2016.
The beginning of summer.
My brother is about to graduate from high school, which means my dad is in town, which
means while my brothers are at school I am taking my dad out to lunch.
My mom made me do it.
I don't really want to go to lunch with my dad because the night before he went
on a rant about how gay marriage is an abomination and I can't stop thinking about how he would
stop loving me if I came out, but he is only in town for a weekend and I can pretend to
be straight for a weekend.
I order french fries.
My dad talks through most of lunch.
I don't remember most of what he said.
I try not to remember the things he tells me.
He says that he thinks some people just aren't being American enough.
It is the summer of 2016 and the presidential election is in full swing.
I ask what he means - I regret saying anything.
He tells his Thai daughter that some Americans just aren't really American - that you can't
be Mexican and be an american, that you can't be Cuban and be an American, he gives a few
other examples but it doesn't escape anybody's notice that when he is calling someone unamerican
he means a brown person who speaks spanish.
Or has an ethnicity from a country that spoke spanish.
You know, from Spain, the first colonizers.
I text my Puerto Rican boyfriend and tell him
we are not using his last name at my brother's graduation party tomorrow.
My dad eats some of my french fries. He didn't ask if he could have any of my french fries.
I wonder if my dad regrets having children with my asian mother.
I wonder if he loves my white siblings more than he loves us.
I decide not to come out to him.
He will not love me the same.
He has never loved me the same.
It is 2018.
The middle of summer.
My nephew is 12 years old and staying with us for part of the summer.
I have spent almost every day for the last week with him and my youngest brother.
They are 12 and 9.
We are walking home from the store when my nephew tells me he is "25%Thai and 75% American"
I am glad he understands how to convert fractions to percentages.
I am less excited about his statement on how he is trying to convey his ethnicity.
He is 12 years old. He doesn't really know what he is saying.
He doesn't understand the racial politics of what he is saying.
His mother is biracial - my sister - and his father is white.
According to Wikipedia his last name is Scottish.
I tried to explain that he could be Thai and American.
I tried to explain the hundreds of years of colonialism and racism that built our ideas
of what it means to be an American, and how both sides of his families have roots somewhere else in the world.
And how my side of the family isn't any less American than his dad's.
I don't think he understood everything, but I know he got some of it.
I wonder who taught him that American means white.
I don't have anyone I can ask because I don't think anyone explicitly told him
that American means white.
But he thinks he is less American than his white peers, he thinks he is more American
than I am, than his mother is, than his grandmother is.
I wonder what he thinks of his uncle who is Thai and Black and just a few years younger
than him - and I almost ask, but decide not to subject the 9 year old kid who is just excited
about fractions to another conversation about how some people see him as less than.
It is 2018. The end of summer.
and I have been counting down the days until I can see Lara Jean Song
Covey's story on Netflix.
I had read To All The Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han earlier in the year.
I also read the sequels P.S. I Still Love You and Always and Forever, Lara Jean.
Jenny Han told stories of a biracial asian-american girl that made me feel seen.
The story of Lara Jean Song Covey made me feel like I belong.
I had always felt different than my peers, but here was this girl who loved baking, and
fashion, and scrapbooking, and was maybe a bit of a packrat and on top that she was a
Korean girl living with her sisters and their white father and I felt echos of my own story in her.
I fell in love with these books and the characters because they felt like home.
The movie premieres on Netflix.
It is kind and delightful and people love it and I am so happy that they do because
I want to share these stories.
I want people to love these stories because these stories are closer to a story of me than I have ever seen before.
I read some reviews hoping that the reception is all positive and eager to hear what other
people thought of the movie that I loved so much.
A review says Lara Jean Covey is "half-korean and half-american" and I break a little bit inside.
Lara Jean is Korean and she is an American as was her mother before her.
And if you read the books so was her grandmother.
And this story of what is basically the girl next door and her cool sisters and boy troubles,
if that's not American enough then how the heck will I ever be?
American isn't an ethnicity, but white people keep treating it like it is and I somehow don't qualify.
That I don't belong in this country because I'm not American enough because my mom was born somewhere else.
I hope that more stories like To All The Boys I've Loved Before get made - I very specifically
hope that the sequels to To All The Boys I've Loved Before get adapted into movies.
But I don't know if that is enough to ever change anyone's mind on weather or not I
belong in the country I was born into.
I am Asian.
I am American.
I can be both.
I am both.
I don't know if other people will ever really believe that.
I don't know if people will ever believe me when I say that I belong here.
That's all I am willing to share today.
If you want to see more of my videos, please do that - you can subscribe, watch another
video of mine, and you can support me on Patreon if you want me to keep making things because this is an expensive hobby.
And, hey, I love you.
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