2022 BAAFN Content Award
Eun-Jae M.Norris -
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The Plight of the Pica Serica
by Eun-Jae M. Norris
In Korea, when the persimmon harvest is finished, it is custom to leave a few at the top of each tree for the magpies. This is known as ggachi-bap, or the ‘magpie meal’. Korean magpies symbolize sturdy spirit and prosperity, white-striped givers of good fortune. In America, however, they are seen as the opposite: conniving, greedy inconveniences who thieve what glitters and leave the rest.
To be Asian-American is to feel like a magpie in the latter sense, a thief hungry to experience your culture through a hoard of its shiniest, sweetest elements and nothing more; it is the shock of guilt when persimmon nectar hits your tongue, as if you are doing something inherently wrong by reaching for a taste of your heritage. Picking at sickly-sweet leftovers, stuck a treetop away from the people on the ground, you are left with nothing but the gnawing fear that you are no better than a tourist.
The ache of being an outsider is not exclusive to the Asian aspect of being Asian-American. America often rejects us as well, forcing us into the cliche of the perpetual foreigner, as if we have any less of a right to the country we fought to make our home. To be Asian-American is to know you will be seen as exotic, ‘other’, no matter what you do. It is to know any piece of your culture you display can be turned against you. If it is not accepted, it will be spit in your face but perhaps worse, if it is deemed palatable, it will be swallowed and appropriated, reduced to nothing but another prop in the glimmering parody trying to replace your reflection. The only option that will not get you hurt is to reject your culture entirely, to try to eradicate your ‘otherness’ and become quietly ‘American’. Many of our families were forced to choose that option; many of us are forced to do the same today. In the ripples of that choice, a gap forms between Asian-Americans and Asian culture, widening with the ocean that separates our continents.
When we as Asian-Americans second-guess our right to our own identities, agonize over whether or not what we present of ourselves is consumable, we are entering a conflict skewed against us from the start. If we present sweetness, we fear being devoured; if we present astringency, we fear being thrown out and left to rot. Made to constantly criticize our own appearance, to be Asian-American becomes bitterness, impostor syndrome, guilt- a hesitance between our heritage and our outstretched hands, scared our fingerprints will stand out orange and saccharine with the phantom residue of our greed. The grand American truth of it is that we will always feel as though we are stealing from our own culture, if the only definition of the magpie we recognize is the American thief.
The grand Asian-American truth of it is that we cannot steal what has been ours from the beginning. All of what it means to be us - the sweet, the bitter, and everything in between - was never anyone else’s to claim. We have always had the right to celebrate our own culture without caveat, to rejoice and create and, yes, even make mistakes without the spectre of self-doubt looming over our shoulder. Loving who we are and where we come from, taking pride in just one facet of our heritage on our own terms, is an act of rebellion against the systems and people that would see us quietly disappear. To be Asian-American often means to live in distance: distanced from your ancestry, from your culture, from yourself. But even as that feeling lingers, being Asian-American means so much more than that. Being Asian-American means a range of experiences as vast as either continent. It can mean loss and struggle, but it can also mean joy, community, and connection. It can mean creating a kinder definition than the misinterpretation banded around our ankles. It can mean feasting on persimmons that were always meant for us, the space between the treetops and the ground noted and set aside. One day, we will know we were never thieves for doing so.
To be Asian-American is to feel like a magpie in the latter sense, a thief hungry to experience your culture through a hoard of its shiniest, sweetest elements and nothing more; it is the shock of guilt when persimmon nectar hits your tongue, as if you are doing something inherently wrong by reaching for a taste of your heritage. Picking at sickly-sweet leftovers, stuck a treetop away from the people on the ground, you are left with nothing but the gnawing fear that you are no better than a tourist.
The ache of being an outsider is not exclusive to the Asian aspect of being Asian-American. America often rejects us as well, forcing us into the cliche of the perpetual foreigner, as if we have any less of a right to the country we fought to make our home. To be Asian-American is to know you will be seen as exotic, ‘other’, no matter what you do. It is to know any piece of your culture you display can be turned against you. If it is not accepted, it will be spit in your face but perhaps worse, if it is deemed palatable, it will be swallowed and appropriated, reduced to nothing but another prop in the glimmering parody trying to replace your reflection. The only option that will not get you hurt is to reject your culture entirely, to try to eradicate your ‘otherness’ and become quietly ‘American’. Many of our families were forced to choose that option; many of us are forced to do the same today. In the ripples of that choice, a gap forms between Asian-Americans and Asian culture, widening with the ocean that separates our continents.
When we as Asian-Americans second-guess our right to our own identities, agonize over whether or not what we present of ourselves is consumable, we are entering a conflict skewed against us from the start. If we present sweetness, we fear being devoured; if we present astringency, we fear being thrown out and left to rot. Made to constantly criticize our own appearance, to be Asian-American becomes bitterness, impostor syndrome, guilt- a hesitance between our heritage and our outstretched hands, scared our fingerprints will stand out orange and saccharine with the phantom residue of our greed. The grand American truth of it is that we will always feel as though we are stealing from our own culture, if the only definition of the magpie we recognize is the American thief.
The grand Asian-American truth of it is that we cannot steal what has been ours from the beginning. All of what it means to be us - the sweet, the bitter, and everything in between - was never anyone else’s to claim. We have always had the right to celebrate our own culture without caveat, to rejoice and create and, yes, even make mistakes without the spectre of self-doubt looming over our shoulder. Loving who we are and where we come from, taking pride in just one facet of our heritage on our own terms, is an act of rebellion against the systems and people that would see us quietly disappear. To be Asian-American often means to live in distance: distanced from your ancestry, from your culture, from yourself. But even as that feeling lingers, being Asian-American means so much more than that. Being Asian-American means a range of experiences as vast as either continent. It can mean loss and struggle, but it can also mean joy, community, and connection. It can mean creating a kinder definition than the misinterpretation banded around our ankles. It can mean feasting on persimmons that were always meant for us, the space between the treetops and the ground noted and set aside. One day, we will know we were never thieves for doing so.
