Heritage Tattoo

I'm a Chinese adoptee. My surname, 柳 (liǔ, willow tree), is not just a name, but a reference to a place - it comes from the city I was adopted from, Liuzhou (柳州). I also share this "family" name with an unknown number of other babies who came to the Liuzhou Social Welfare Institute around the same time that I did. I've run the gamut of conflicting feelings concerning my name for years: bitterness that it was not thoughtfully bestowed by a well-wishing family, but formulaically assigned by faceless orphanage employees; a sort of tenderness for it as the only true information on my records; embarrassment that my given name sounds too old-fashioned or unfeminine or similar to the word for mosquito; and in the last year or two, the acceptance of not just my name as an inalienable piece of my identity, but the feelings that come with it and the realization that I can feel grateful and grieved and proud - all at once.

Toshie means long life and is the Japanese name of great grandmother and my middle name- and she did in fact live a long life until 94! I am 5th generation Japanese and my family immigrated to Hawaii and has mostly lived there since. I hope to dedicate this to her, and the strong women in my family who inspire me deeply.

I am half Japanese and half white. I am white passing, and I’ve been struggling with my racial identity. My Japanese American identity is important to me, and I feel it slipping away as we lose family members and the Japanese language entirely. I am 4th generation. My grandmother and grandfather were both interned as children during WWII. My grandma’s family was actually deported after internment. When my grandma came back to the US, she did what she felt was best for her family’s safety: assimilate. She didn’t teach Japanese to my dad, and he then couldn’t pass along the language to my sister and me. I live in majority white spaces, and I feel out of place. But I also feel like I need to “prove” my Asian-ness in other situation. I want a heritage tattoo because I want to remind myself that this is half of who I am. I don’t have to hide it and I don’t have to prove it.

I’m half Japanese, a quarter Vietnamese, and a quarter Korean. I didn’t realize until I was in middle school that ‘Kim’ is a Korean name, and it took me until high school when my friend explained how the ‘Uye’ in her last name is pronounced oo-eh, not yoo-uh to realize that I had been technically pronouncing ‘Uyehara’ wrong my entire life. I don’t even know what my grandmother’s Vietnamese maiden name was, given that the last time I asked my dad about Vietnam, the conversation ended with my question.

It would be very easy to blame my parents: why didn’t my dad teach me the little Vietnamese that he knows? Why did we never celebrate Asian holidays? Why didn’t my mom give me a Japanese middle name? But at the end of the day, I’m coming to terms with the fact that feeling lost in my own skin and name and head is not just me; it’s a culmination of people who came before me who felt out of place and did what they had to in order to protect themselves and build their lives.

(cont.) I’ve struggled a lot with never feeling Asian enough. I was called a Twinkie and a banana—you know, yellow on the outside and white on the inside—and made fun of for not speaking Japanese, Vietnamese, or Korean. The term ‘Asian-American’ has always felt like a swollen hill on my tongue. And yet, as I enter my mid twenties and grow as an educator of people from a culture far different from my own, I’ve begun to realize how important it is to rebuild those lost connections.

It may not be what my family brought with them from afar, but I have the right to claim my Asian-ness, without performance and without guilt. I don’t have to worry about not being Asian enough; I /am/ Asian, and, therefore, I am being authentic to myself and the generations before me simply by existing and carrying this identity proudly on my back.

My name… comes from my Chinese name 王曦清. 曦 xi means 'early morning sunlight' and 清 (qing) means 'clear' - like clear water. My name was carefully thought out by my mom and grandmother, and I've been told that it's a beautiful, poetic name. But while I know this is true, as someone who grew up in the US, I've always had and still have a hard time coming to terms with my own name. I grew up in Kansas, and instead of pronouncing my name 'shi-ching', I went by a nickname - 'ching ching'. I'll let you extrapolate… The summer before I'd move away for first year of college, I was at a crossroads of whether I should 1) continue going by 'ching ching', 2) start pronouncing my name the way my parents intended 'shi-ching', or 3) adopt an English name. (cont. next slide)

(cont.) That summer, I made a small but momentous choice of #2. Since then, I’ve made an effort to confidently and clearly pronounce my name, but occasions like first meetings and ordering at coffee shops still bring up familiar feelings of insecurity. But I’m working on it! And I hope that getting a permanent piece of art on my body will symbolize a step forward in my acceptance of my own name. Names are short and used nowhere near as much as other words in our vocabulary, and yet they hold so much significance. I love your art and style, and I can think of no one else that I’d want to tattoo this very significant piece of my identity.

In many ways, I feel disconnected from my heritage. I moved out of my parents' house when I was 15 years old, and I rarely talk to them now. They never taught me Cantonese, so I can't speak to many of the older members of my extended family. They were escaping Hong Kong in the wake of the handover (from Britain to China), so I think they tried to distance themselves from the traditions they had -- which I understand for them, but it's left me feeling like I have nothing to hold onto…

With this tattoo, I want to honor everything that being my parents' child means, and all the history that carries. I still want to make my ancestors proud, even if I'll never talk to my parents again. (cont. next slide)

When I was three months old, I was adopted from China into a Chinese-American family. My parents were told that I was found in a basket with a piece of paper bearing my name, 小華. After my adoption, my grandma chose a different Chinese name for me, which I use as my middle name. I got a tattoo of this name a few years ago, but have since realized that I'd also like to honor my birth name since it is a part of my identity as well. While I no longer go by 小華, I'd like a way to recognize and celebrate this part of me, as it was my name for the first three months of my life, and was the name gifted to me by my birth parents.