2.4 they can't believe it even when they see it

so we have to become more visible

Sometimes my own blindness astonishes me. Does that happen to you? A moment when you suddenly realize just how stuck you have been in one perspective? A moment when you feel as if you’ve been living in some kind of alternate reality? Except that it is reality?

I started my Japlish newsletter as a way to initiate a conversation about topics that I was sure must be relevant to someone besides me. It seemed to be a good way to find these people across the country and maybe even around the globe. I’m interested in mixed-race stories, language-learning journeys (and why people choose the languages they learn), immigrant families, and all the traumas, major and minor, that tag along with these things. There are a bunch of associated topics that are along for the ride, such as status, class, Asian diaspora, and even academia, since a lot of what is formally published about Asia comes out of university activity.

I largely write about my own experiences. Lately, I’ve tried to incorporate some more personal reflections, as I’ve realized that those are the types of newsletters I enjoy reading. I like to know why people think what they think.

However, it has never occurred to me that people might actively disagree with someone’s lived experience. Note, I used the word experience. Someone might have an opinion about what you do about the experience, or even what it means, but it never occurred to me that you might describe an experience, something that is real to you, and that someone else, someone you’ve never met, might dismiss it, say it’s impossible to have that experience.

A few days ago, I randomly came across a social media post by a young woman who described a linguistic situation that sounds exactly like mine. She is the daughter of Korean immigrants, and explained that her parents don’t speak English, but that her own Korean isn’t very good. She included some video of a casual chat over lunch with her mother, in which she says she speaks “Konglish,” a hybrid Korean-English patois. Yes, I thought—that’s like the way I speak Japlish with my own mother, who doesn’t speak English.

I was moved. This, this was an example of exactly the pain that I feel during every. single. conversation. My mother will be rattling away at me in Japanese, and I’ll understand around 90% of it, but when I reply, it’s a jumble of phrases in Japanese and English. Sometimes I use the wrong Japanese word, my mother asks me what I mean, I stammer another word, she offers a word, it’s not the right word, and then I reach for my phone dictionary. Sometimes I can give her the right word and suddenly she gets what I’m trying to say. Sometimes I give her a word and she laughs and says that can’t be right. Sometimes there’s a pause and she changes the subject, because she has no idea what my point is.

I was in tears over this brief social media post from this person I didn’t even follow, someone I’d never heard of, about a language I don’t even speak. She’s not my age and doesn’t live in my area. But I GOT HER. Her pain came to me loud and clear over the internet. She even described that span of silence that happens when her mother can’t understand her and simply drops the conversation. Yes, yes, yes. That happens to me all the time.

What shocked me was in the comments under her video. The vast majority of them were warm, sympathetic, and appreciative. Many talked about their own experience with speaking their parents’ language or their frustration when trying to speak to parents in English but knowing that the understanding isn’t there. It was heartwarming to feel so understood, by all these people all over the world, all of us describing the same experience.

But the few that weren’t positive? To my startled mind, they were just weird. In general, they suggested that the experience being described (and also offered on video!) was either a) impossible, or b) the result of terrible flaws in parenting or family dynamics.

I have to assume that the few are representatives of many, so behind these comments are possibly thousands upon thousands of people who would agree with these statements:

“This is so shameful. You can’t even really talk to your parents? Stop your whole life and learn Korean. What the f. I thought Asians respected their parents.”

“only hear this from Asians,: parents speak zero English but didn't teach their kids their language. I don't get it. How the hell do you live in a house with people you can't communicate with?? And it's your kids??you literally just have to talk to the kid!!!”

“Have you seen those white folks speaking fluent Korean or Chinese on social media? I have. Plenty of them. And they weren't raised in any asian households. If they can do it from zero asian household influence, so can you. It's really not that big of a hurdle to learn to be fluent in a language nowadays.”

“How about you just study more korean??”

“Why is this content worthy? Just go study the language. This is cringe.”

“Your parents never communicated with you when you were a child? This is very weird and extreme”

“How is this possible ? Children naturally speak what is spoken around them and once they learn they do not forget the language as they grow into adults. Didn’t your parents raise you. What is the issue with speaking fluently? I do not understand and I would like clarification.”

“If you don’t speak or understand your parents language that’s on you, you should go to school and study the language (since probably you didn’t really try to learn as a child) I can’t never understand this. (People learn foreign languages when they have no connection with those languages in the 1 st place, I know a Mexican guy and speaks perfect Korean, my best friend speak perfect French, Dutch, German, Italian, English, Portuguese and is Mexican, so this is your fault and people who doesn’t know their parents language that their fault 🙄”

Before you tell me to ignore the haters, I want to say in my defense that I’m not reacting to the fact that anyone who posts content will get trolled. I’m reacting to the fact that I think a lot of these criticisms are not from trolls. They are from people who didn’t look at this video as an honest moment from someone’s life; in fact, they were denying what they were seeing, as if it was fake. For them, it was something so out of the norm, it needed massive correction. But the poster wasn’t asking for help; she was just telling us something about her life. These comments are from people who can’t accept that what they were seeing is REAL and that absolutely nothing needs to be wrong or messed up in your family for this exact situation to happen.

Hundreds upon hundreds of people reacted with similar stories and supportive words, but I was shocked and fascinated that so many people simply could not accept that this is her life and that so many people either wanted to assign blame, fix the problem, or simply did not believe that this could possibly be a true depiction of the way someone grew up and lives today.

It’s also my life, the way that I grew up, and the battle that I fight every time my phone rings and it’s my mother. And just looking at those comments, this is the lives of so many people, not just in the United States (where learning languages is simply not encouraged, and is actively prevented in many cases), but everywhere.

I felt dejected for around 24 hours after seeing those comments.

Then I felt a surge of energy. I have a newsletter, I am a writer, I have a voice. One thing that those comments told me is that those of us with these complex mixed backgrounds (not just linguistically mixed, but even perhaps class, education, geography, and who knows what other kind of non-monolithic identity) need to be seen. We are here, but we’re clearly not visible enough.

You know what? I really hate being seen. That’s the honest truth. But I feel compelled to get over myself. Our reality isn’t visible enough, if people can watch a video from someone’s life and brazenly announce that what they’ve seen is “impossible.” Maybe I should record a conversation the next time my mother calls! Ha. Just kidding.

But what I absolutely will do is to keep writing. This is something I can do. Instead of blending in, I need to stick out more. It’s a challenge, when you’ve grown up in a society where blending in (to the extent you can!) has its advantages. Am I ready to be told that my reality isn’t real? It won’t feel good, but maybe that’s how I’ll know I’m succeeding.