Harry Potter, Asian-American Living, and Raising Our Children with Culture(s)

Multiculturalism as a lifestyle choice, not an abstraction or afterthought

by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, AAV Contributing Editor

In the second Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, there is a stark contrast between the home in which Harry grew up—the mainstream Muggle or non-magic home of orphaned Harry’s aunt and uncle, in which Harry is locked in his room and punished for having magical powers—and the home of his best friend, Ron Weasley.  In Ron's home, magic is an integral part of the family’s daily life. After Ron and his brothers rescue Harry from his aunt and uncle’s home, the look on Harry’s face is one of absolute wonder as he walks into the Weasley home for the first time and sees a pot washing itself magically in the sink, a sweater magically knitting itself, and a grandfather clock with magical moving pictures of all the Weasley children on its hands. The Weasleys do not take notice of these details, because magic is not a big deal for them. It is all around them. However, for Harry, it is the first time that he has ever seen a home in which the inherited attributes that make him different—the magical abilities that are his cultural and familial legacy—are incorporated into everyday life, displayed right out in the open without shame or embarrassment.

I experienced a similar moment when I was about the same age as Harry Potter and realized for the first time that my Chinese heritage and culture—which I downplayed in public—could be integrated with a holiday so intrinsically American as Thanksgiving. Before then, my mother had always tried to cook an American turkey dinner for us every Thanksgiving, but since she infrequently cooked American food, it was always miserable: frozen turkey meatloaf, mashed potatoes from a box, packet gravy, iceberg lettuce salad with Thousand Island dressing. Then one year we were invited to our neighbor’s home for Thanksgiving. Third-generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii, the Shigematsus loaded their table with both Japanese and American food, side by side. There was a turkey glazed with teriyaki sauce right next to a big platter of sushi; there were mashed potatoes with garlic, sweet potato tempura, green beans with shiitake mushrooms, and many cakes and pies.

It had never before occurred to my family that we could serve Asian food on Thanksgiving, or combine our Chinese heritage or culture with our American lives. Previously, we had our Chinese home life and our American public life, our Chinese selves and our American selves. We had believed these were necessarily distinct, perhaps incompatible, even oppositional until that Thanksgiving – one of the best we have ever had.

It took many more years for this germ of an idea to mature, and even longer for me to believe in it enough to try to live it myself. Despite the mainstream’s ignorance and bias and unrelenting brainwashing, I slowly came to realize that one could indeed be both Chinese and American without having to choose, that Chinese-American culture is actually an important part of American culture, and that people of Chinese ancestry – both here and abroad – have played an important part in the shaping of American and world history. We do not have to hide or apologize for our "Chinese-ness" or difference any more. Rather, we can incorporate "our magic" into our daily lives, and show our children what Asian-American Multicultural Living really is.

Where I’m Coming From

I was born and raised in California, which is now a no-majority state, but it was not always like that. My parents came to America in 1964—one year before immigration opened up to Asians—and I was born soon after. My dad was one of the first five Chinese students to attend Cal State Northridge—so special that they were all invited to the dean’s house for Christmas. Los Angeles did not even have a Mandarin Chinese school, if you can imagine.

Most of my parents’ friends also came on student visas and did not rush to have kids, so I knew few Chinese Americans my age (there was not really a sense of "Asian Americanness" yet). In school, I was always the only one. My friends were Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Thai, Brazilian, Italian, and Irish. Many were second-generation and bilingual like myself, but we rarely recognized these commonalities. Rather, we shared the "American culture" projected into our homes on television shows like "Happy Days" and "Welcome Back Kotter," and an understanding that that America was the real one and the America we lived every day was not. We played with blond Barbie and Ken dolls, and we knew that in order to be beautiful, one had to be blond, by definition, even though such beauty eluded and excluded all of us.

My family spoke Chinese at home, ate Chinese food, and our family friends were all Chinese, but I was not explicitly taught about Chinese culture and traditions. We never celebrated any Chinese holidays or festivals. At school, all I ever learned about China or Chinese Americans was that the Chinese built the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1800s, nothing to do with me. So although I knew that we weren’t "American," I did not fully know what it meant to be Chinese, either, let alone Chinese American. Older folks complained that I was too Americanized—I talked too much, argued too much, was too tall, and would never find a Nice Chinese Boy willing to marry me.

Not "Chinese enough" for Chinese, not "American enough" for Americans, I could never figure out what I was doing wrong.

Goals of Asian-American Multicultural Living

I always knew that when I was a parent, I would raise my children someplace where they would not be minorities. I did not want them to have the same struggles that I did as "the only one."  They should not have to wrestle with confusions about who they are, what they are, and where they fit in, but should be able to move forward to more important things.

I expect progress.

However, despite my well-crafted plans, I ended up living in the Midwest. I live in Michigan, where I often find myself not only the sole Chinese person in the room, but also the only person of color, the only bilingual person, and the only person who has a sense of her family’s immigration history. I live where people ask me questions "Where are you from?" and "Where did you learn to speak English so well?" I live a short distance from where Vincent Chin was killed.

Knowing from my own experience and from my work in Asian American media how difficult it can be growing up as a minority in America, I could not leave it to chance that my kids would make it through unscathed. Out of necessity, I began to work very hard to proactively create a multicultural community and environment around them. Because I have surrounded them with many types of people—Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, African American, Native American, hapa, etc.—my girls do not yet know that they are minorities. Images of people like them are reflected in their books, dolls, videos, and television-watching. They think it is normal to be bilingual because everyone they know speaks another language—Italian, Hebrew, Korean, Vietnamese—not just the Chinese people. They comfortably switch back and forth between cultures and languages, and know the "real world" is larger than our small Michigan town. With a strong sense of self and ethnic pride, they are surprised rather than crushed to encounter racist stereotypes and discrimination. They laugh, "How come those people do not know what Chinese people are really like?" Most important, we talk about issues of culture, race, ethnicity, and difference so that they know these are questions they can discuss with me.

My goals in child-rearing, in writing, and myself are pretty much the same:

1. Provide a firm grounding in Chinese culture so they know where they came from, and can better understand and gain strength from our family, our culture, our history.
2. Help them develop a strong sense of identity and self-esteem as Chinese Americans and Asian Americans by teaching them about Asian-American culture and history so they know that they belong here; and by surrounding them with positive Asian and multiracial images so that they know that they are normal.
3. Extend that understanding and compassion to others because America is a multicultural place, and the world is vast with many interesting peoples and many different cultures. They will have a richer understanding of life if they can see the similarities among different peoples and learn from all people.

I hope to help my children develop what Dr. Purnima Mehta, an Indian American psychoanalyst with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, calls a "Bicultural identity." She writes that second-generation Indian American children become "culture-wise" in the same way that poor urban children become "street-wise." They "learn to negotiate between the contrasting American and Indian worlds by calling upon different models of behavior in different settings," Dr. Mehta argues, and how to switch between these dual cultures in terms of language, mannerisms, cultural norms; and they become more flexible and able to adapt to both cultures. They are proud to be part of both cultures and do not feel constricted by them. For example, they understand that when an Indian person says dinner starts at 7, they really mean 8; but when an American says dinner starts at 7, they mean 7. The Indian person is not wrong or bad -- meaning just extends beyond words to include points of cultural understanding.

Asian-American Multicultural Living as a Lifestyle Choice

Asian-American Multicultural Living is a lifestyle choice of how we want to live our lives and raise our children. It is a way of thinking about our choices and our compromises with an eye to culture and ethnic identity.

As a lifestyle choice, this is similar to the way that recycling and being environmentally responsible becomes a lifestyle choice. It is a bother to wash out all the bottles and cans, and it takes time to sort the paper and the boxboard, but you do it because it is the right thing to do. Besides, after you get into the habit, it is not so bad. Then, once you start thinking about it, it begins to color more and more of your every day choices. You begin to reuse computer paper or grocery bags, buy the more expensive recycled paper, start a compost pile, buy organic produce, donate money to the Sierra Club, etc. Different people recycle to different degrees, depending on how important it is relative to other concerns.

Further, as more people begin to recycle, it begins to affect society as a whole. In the early days, when people had to drop off their recyclables at a special collection spot, only Boy Scouts and whole-grain college students would bother. Gradually, though, recycling became "normalized" to the point where society and government made it a priority, funded it, and now they come and pick up the recycling every week. Now even my parents recycle. The government incentivizes the lifestyle because they (or we) realize that it contributes to the broader social and community good. The same could be said of multiculturalism. The more children are full of self-esteem, and have respect for and knowledge about others, the better off society will be.

I do not believe that teaching children about their cultural heritage is something optional that we can do at the end of the day after we have finished teaching them all the "important things" like playing piano, math, science, buckling their seatbelts, and going to Girl Scouts. If you do that, either you will never get to it, or else it becomes compartmentalized into a once-a-year show-and-tell at Lunar New Year. Rather, it needs to be incorporated into daily life (like joining the Nikkei Girl Scout troop at the Buddhist Temple instead of the Girl Scout troop at school).

Don't Give in to Muggles

After the Weasleys rescue Harry Potter from his horrible Muggle relatives in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, they go to Diagon Alley to purchase school supplies. There, they run into classmate Hermione Granger and her parents, who we discover are both Muggles, or people without magical abilities. Nevertheless, her parents value and are proud of her magical abilities. Somehow, perhaps because of this sensitivity, they can even enter the magic realm themselves. They show Harry another way to participate in both worlds without having to deny a part of himself.

Similarly, there are many ways that we can incorporate the "magic" of our cultural heritage into our Asian American lives. We do not have to segregate our private and public lives anymore. We can instead meld them into true multicultural living, both for our children’s sake and for our own.

Other Readings of Interest

• Childhood Ghosts: Harry Potter Through Indian Eyes
  By Sandip Roy, PNS
  Recalling a childhood vision of an England that could never be mine
• Creating Our Own Thanksgiving
  By Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, AAV Contributing Editor
  Thanksgiving always felt foreign and stiff with terrible American food until Japanese American neighbors showed us how to create our own Asian American Thanksgiving with delicious Asian food worth eating. No more frozen turkey meat loaf for this family!
• APA LIVING @ AAV: Family and Lifestyles from Asian-American Village