 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. 

