SandScript 2022

Differences
Leah Lancaster
Being the outsider in any given situation is like drawing the worst luck: you watch yourself get dragged
apart from the people around you no matter how much you want to fit in with them, completely
helpless and alone. The feeling of isolation that comes with being different gnaws at you, so much so that you will
start to try anything to get rid of how you’re an outlier socially, culturally, or physically. As a young Asian girl
being surrounded by people who I could not relate to and who could not relate to me, I hated the feeling of being
completely different and how that would show itself through the actions of others. In an attempt to be easier for
people to get along with, I shut parts of myself away but I ultimately gave up on trying to hide who I was.
When I was younger, all my peers in school were either Hispanic or White, something very common here
in Tucson because of our geographical location. There was nothing wrong with this, but it could be disheartening at
times, not having many other kids like me at my age. In preschool and kindergarten, I had one friend who was also
Japanese and we have kept in touch even till now. In elementary school, there weren’t other Asian kids despite the
600 students attending. Middle school and high school have been much the same but more tolerable because of how
I have come to accept myself as different from those around me. Though much hasn’t changed in terms of those
around me, the important thing is that I have.
In elementary school, it was nearly a daily occurrence for the other kids to make fun of my looks, heritage, food,
or something else of the same sort. It was hard for me to understand why they would treat me this way, especially my
friends, and all I knew was that they were treating me differently. I would often be approached only for the other person
to pull their eyes back and chant “Chinese, Japanese, American,” laugh, and keep doing this several times until I would
start to laugh with them, too. When I would open my lunchbox, the other kids would mime gagging or openly comment
on how they thought my food looked “disgusting.” To me, this was plain odd because their lunches (Lunchables, PB&J’s,
random junk food) were just food that I would only ever bring if my mom hadn’t had enough energy or time to pack
anything for me. My lunches were almost always leftovers from the previous night’s dinner and items that were more than
normal to me, like oden, rice with umeboshi, tamago donburi, or, as all of my other peers have always called it, “sushi” (it
was onigiri). Whenever I would try and offer my food for my friends to try, they would visibly recoil and retch at it. This
was especially hurtful to me because I wanted to share my culture with them, only to be rudely turned down. Elementary
school was more making fun of my looks and food as a way to differentiate me from the other students in my grade rather
than direct comments on my ethnicity.
Middle school was more of the same with the addition of people making fun of my language, stereotyping me, and
objectifying me. One particular student in my math class will always be memorable to me for how determined he seemed to
have been to make me as uncomfortable as possible. In my grade, he was one of the class clowns that everyone knew or was on
good terms with, just another loud white kid who would always butt into other people’s business. He would constantly speak
to me in gibberish, ask if I rode dragons around (still not completely sure by what he meant with that one), if I ate my pets, and
questions about China even though he knew I wasn’t Chinese. I dreaded going to class because of him and would often ask to
skip school so that I wouldn’t have to put up with his incessant pestering. I had told my mom about what was happening but she
would give me the basic talk of “Just ignore him; it’ll get better!” and I knew that she had grown up in Japan, so she couldn’t
really understand how I was feeling. Nevertheless, I would try to take her advice but it didn’t help at all and we eventually
moved seats so I was able to get away from him. Outside of that one kid, some of the other people at school would call me an
anime character or sometimes relate me to hentai, a more… lewd sort of animation, for lack of a better word, because my body
type was starkly different than the stereotypical East Asian woman. These remarks left me feeling incredibly dehumanized and
as if I existed only to entertain the people around me but I was never able to voice my concerns in a way that had my friends
taking me seriously, so I would just let them slide. While the people around me made fun of me less, their remarks became more
targeted which made it just as, if not more, hurtful than when I was younger.
54
While not an often occurrence, some of the other kids would also tease me for the way I spoke. At home,
my mother would speak to my brother and me almost exclusively in Japanese so my monolingual English-speaking
father, who was almost always gone on some sort of business trip, didn’t impact how I learned to pronounce words
as much. At this point in my life, I understood that most people weren’t genuinely interested in learning about my
culture, so I wouldn’t speak at all in Japanese but people would still find a way to make fun of the way I would
pronounce certain words as a result of my upbringing and whenever I would correctly pronounce something that
happened to be Japanese. For the most part, it wasn’t like times when my accent would show itself were a common
occurrence, particularly because Japan was mostly associated with anime (something deemed “cringe” by the vast
majority of my school), so I wasn’t mocked for the way I spoke that often. Still, I remember being made fun of for
the way that I would say words like “monkey” or “vitamin” or just how I would slur my words in a particular way,
though I’m still not sure what exactly that “particular way” was. This kind of teasing wasn’t too bad and it never
went far, mostly just repeating the word, scrunching their face up a little in confusion, and simply laughing at me.
Trying to hide myself was something that I could never quite go all-in with. I had been told almost outright to
think that the parts of myself that made me different were shameful and disgusting, something that I would be better
keeping out of sight from everyone else. I had been so used to being ridiculed for a part of myself that I couldn’t change
that I would try and pretend that it wasn’t there. I would start to go along with people’s jokes, acting as if they weren’t
slicing deeper every day, I would purposely mispronounce words and in doing so, whitewash myself, and I would start to
pack more “acceptable” lunches even though eating heavier “American” food would often make me feel sick. This lasted
for a couple of years until COVID hit, and we were forced into quarantine. Being forced to sit by myself with only the
internet to connect myself with other people on social media with roughly the same experiences as me made me realize
how foolish it was of me to live in a way that was only to make myself easier to digest for the people around me. This
change wasn’t a sudden moment of clarity that I can write about but rather very gradual and mainly sparked from hearing
others’ stories that were like mine. Though I have made leaps and bounds in terms of accepting myself, it is still a work in
progress trying to unlearn years of conditioning.
55
Peacock Passion
Rosemarie Dominguez
Photograph