Asian Americans in California

Regarding “Cultural Balancing Act Adds to Teen Angst,” July 13 (part of Asian Americans in California series, July 12-15):

I just want to add my experience of having Asian descent. I’m a third-generation Chinese born in Mexico. I moved to the U.S. eight months ago to attend college. I used to live in Chiapas, Mexico. There were no Asians in my 300,000-inhabitant town. I felt alone and when I tried to look up to Mexican models their struggles did not [resemble] mine.

So I became depressed; I felt somehow confused, weak and weird. I did not belong to Hong Kong, because I speak very little Chinese. Nor did I belong to Mexico, because I do not look Mexican and I have Chinese culture in my family. As a result, during my high school years, I stayed away from the crowd. I helped my parents at their computer store, took care of my siblings and got a 94% grade average. I was inspired by putting all my effort into working to achieve the best. That is how I decided to go to an American university. I needed to do something different, such as coming to America to live with my grandmother and go to college.

Although we go through cultural differences, if we look hard, we can find our true selves; we can be our own inspiration and model by giving our best and not minding what the “Asian” stereotypes are.

HEIDY CHONG

Cal Poly Pomona

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I am a 46-year-old baby boomer who started a small chain of 18 chicken restaurants in the Inland Empire. I was born and raised in Southern California, as were both my parents. I don’t speak any foreign languages and have never been outside of North America, yet every time people meet me in my restaurants the first question they ask is, “How did an Oriental get to be the owner of a Mexican restaurant?” So I explain to everyone that I am an American of Japanese descent who grew up in a Hispanic community (Wilmington).

Unlike many, I am very proud of my parents’ generation, in that they assimilated into the American mainstream so well that 50% to 70% of my generation is intermarrying. It seems to me that this is what America was founded upon, immigrants coming to America for economic, religious, or personal freedoms, working hard, prospering and teaching their kids that America is indeed their new homeland.

ALBERT OKURA

Chino

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I almost choked on my breakfast cereal reading “Asian Americans Finding Cracks in the Glass Ceiling” (July 15). As an ex-employee of an Asian company in California, I had a concrete ceiling. I always said that I would take a glass ceiling, because you can see through glass and can break glass. After years of building a $100-million business for the Asians, which could not have been done by any of the “executives” they sent, I quit in frustration because they told me point blank that there would be no promotions, money or responsibility changes because I was not Asian. Too bad there is lack of reciprocity for diversity.

DENNIS MYERS

Laguna Beach