Wednesday, July 27, 2022 — 5 Michigan in Color The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Last month, I paid $10 to sit in a room full of 30-odd strangers and spend the next two-and-a-half hours laughing, crying and contemplating the meaning of life. In other words, I watched the movie “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (EEAAO), and let’s just say, I’ll never see hot dogs or everything bagels the same way again. The basic premise of EEAAO is that Evelyn, a very average, tired, Asian American woman, is suddenly tasked with saving the universe and must do so by traveling through multiple universes and embodying all of her multiverse selves. Watching EEAAO was a wonderfully absurd experience — it felt like being drunk on a rollercoaster while sitting next to your quirky aunt. But even if you haven’t watched EEAAO and experienced its amazing cast, original plot and witty dialogue, it’s still remarkable and relevant for one reason: the simple fact that an Asian American woman (even a very common one) can experience infinite I wanted to say “I’m sorry” to you, but I didn’t know how. For a while, the phrase slipped off my tongue so often that I forgot what it meant. It seemed like it could cure anything. If I made a mistake, “I’m sorry” could render it inexistent. It put a bandage over the wound even though, more often than not, the pain was still there. I just chose to ignore it. Oftentimes, I was tortured by the anxiousness of saying what I really felt — to say why I did this or why I didn’t do that, but it seemed pointless to me. As I grew older, every time I sat in submission and mumbled an apology, Self-Deprecation tightened its grip on me. When I didn’t say sorry, I remained silent — I realize now that was when I wronged you most. It seemed easier to handle confrontation this way because I didn’t have to feel as though I was being sensitive or problematic, like people presumed me to be. Ever since that day, every time I kept my mouth closed when I should’ve spoken up, I prayed for a chance to do what I should’ve done years ago. A cycle of insincerity became me. It happened during orchestra class in grade school. You were a really timid person from what I could remember. All of the students were talking about composers as a part of our class discussion when you made the abrupt decision to say, “I love Yiruma.” Your comment was met with silent judgment and confused stares. “Courtney, aren’t you Black?” one of the students COURTNEY CHISHOLM MiC Columnist commented. “Yes,” you responded hesitantly. He laughed. “No, you’re not. What kind of Black person listens to that? You don’t even act Black. You don’t talk like them either. I’m Blacker than you, and I’m white.” “He’s an Oreo!” another student yelled. You were humiliated. Even though those words were spilled from adolescent minds, they still hurt because it felt as though someone stole something that was rightfully yours. In that moment, I saw the rage inch up your throat, ready to burst into a fit of words I’ve never heard you say before, but instead, you covered your emotions with a chuckle and shrugged an apology. I know you didn’t mean it. I’m sorry I didn’t speak up for you. I convinced realities and storylines. Growing up, aside from my parents and immediate family, I never had any role models that looked like me. This didn’t strike me as strange or weird; I simply just accepted this as a fact of life. In the books and media I consumed, I readily projected myself into the lives of various characters — from Barbie to Ramona Quimby to the sassy white heroine in the latest young adult fiction novel — never noticing that we looked different. Their struggles were my struggles, their dreams were my dreams, their hopes my hopes. Until they weren’t. Somewhere around the age I became old enough for braces and realized that microaggressions were a thing (though I didn’t have the term to call them that, yet), I realized that the narratives between my life and the white characters I loved didn’t superimpose themselves onto each other so easily. I realized that, unlike them, my storylines weren’t infinite, that as an Asian American, the world demands you to play some type of role that you never even knew was expected of you. It is this exact experience of seeing infinite storylines around you but not being allowed to fully access them yourself that Jia Tolentino, a Filipino American author, writes about in her book, “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion.” In her essay, “Pure Heroines,” Tolentino reminisces on a childhood experience playing Power Rangers with her friend. While Tolentino wanted to be the Pink Power Ranger, her white friend insisted that she could only play the Yellow Power Ranger — the reasoning for which Tolentino simply couldn’t comprehend. Reflecting back on this experience as an adult, Tolentino writes that her “white friends would be able to fantasy-cast their own biopic from an endless cereal aisle of nearly identical celebrities, hundreds of manifestations of blonde or brunette or redhead selfhood … while (she) would have no one to choose from except about three actresses who’d probably all had minor roles in some movie five years back.” In a world where Asian Americans are either boxed into stereotypes or pedestaled for being the model minority, representation in the media is too often a luxury — not to mention representation in a way that is human. We either get caricatured (the geek, the shy kid, the fetishized Asian American woman) or glorified (the kid that scores a 1600 on the SAT, the brilliant activist we learn about once every year during Design by Jennie Vang It’s OK to be average: thoughts after watching ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Sincerely, Courtney Chisholm/ MiC Read more at michigandaily.com ALLISON WEI Mic Columnist AA&PI Heritage Month) — there is no in-between. I want to recognize that East Asian Americans do occupy a certain degree of privilege in the Asian American community as a whole. Based on stereotypes, some may assume that as an East Asian American woman, I’m particularly “smart” or “studious,” but these tropes are still harmful. Sometimes, just sometimes, I get exhausted by the relentless pressure to either conform to cultural expectations or be unbelievably excellent, and I wonder: Why, why can’t I just be average? For most of my life, I’ve run from being average. From the “A is average” mentality instilled in me as a child to my own neurotic perfectionism, I’ve subconsciously held on to the belief that to be average is to be invisible. That no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many A’s I got or how nice I was to the other kids in class, I would still be just another “bright but quiet kid” on my report card. That I must somehow negotiate the terms and conditions of my visibility. Where did I learn this? Well, the representation within the media — where the terms and conditions of being seen are numerous. Read more at michigandaily.com myself I didn’t need to say a word because you didn’t need to explain yourself, but that wasn’t true. At the time, I considered what people thought of me in the highest regard, that silence seemed to be the best solution when handling confrontation, but it wasn’t. This small, brief moment eventually led to countless other instances where people have deemed you “Black by technicality.” After a while, you listened and believed it to be true. You believed that because you didn’t conform to popularized Black stereotypes, you weren’t really Black. You didn’t listen to trap or hip-hop. You didn’t wear a pick in your ’fro or dress with your pants halfway down your legs like some people thought you should have. When you began to pick up on these small instances, eventually, an important part of your identity was internally questioned.