Puerto Rico holds my earliest memories. As the children of Chinese immigrants, we grew up speaking Cantonese at home. The front of our home in Rio Piedras hosted my father’s restaurant. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn Spanish at home, save for a few moments of talking to the patrons at the restaurant. By the time we enrolled in school, we needed to learn a new language. Initially, we didn’t realize that the words we knew for trivial things like ‘shoe’ were different.
I believe that my parents enrolled me in school a year early. I’m not sure if they wanted to give me a head start or simply wanted me out of their hair during the day. I’m pretty sure that I failed that class and needed to repeat. No harm, though; I landed in the class where my classmates were mostly my age. While I could speak the language, I was still the only Chinese student in my modestly sized class.
As it happens, in addition to Spanish, my Catholic school taught English as a foreign language. While I did fine on most classes, English, at least as taught in Puerto Rico, proved to be too much. I failed that class.
Moving to Florida
My dad unexpectedly died in 1977. We finished that school year in Puerto Rico, but then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Those English lessons I failed in Puerto Rico came back to haunt me. During those days, we eased into the language through a bilingual classroom for that first year. In the afternoons, we consumed too much television. I’ve often said I learned English through M*A*S*H and Three’s Company.
I’ll spare you the graphic details on the bullying. The bullies were ineffective in that they didn’t break me. I did not submit to them, nor did I back down. However, they were effective in that it wore me down. I wanted to be a little less Chinese. I wanted to be a little less (culturally) Puerto Rican. Generally, I wanted to be a little less visible. I never prostituted my principles, but I wanted to ‘fly under the radar’.
Researcher Brené Brown teaches us that fitting in is the antithesis of belonging. To fit in is to be accepted for being like everyone else, in other words, to conform. To belong is to be accepted for being yourself. However, I spent my life straddling three cultures. Each culture pulled me in a different direction.
I could not surrender to any of them for the sake of acquiescence. Early in life, I realized that my life would be a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors that few others will see. Though it wasn’t until later in life that I understood that my experiences, both the good and the bad, shaped who I am. And I generally like who I am.
Finding my kin
My high school only had a handful of Asian students; we were scattered across four grades and different classes. I certainly had friends, good friends at that. However, high school is a microcosm of the outside world. I became accustomed to being the only Asian person in a group; the instrumental exceptions were my math contest teams. đŸ˜‰
Shortly after graduation, I attended a dance party with my sisters. Young, enterprising Asian-Americans rented a space, hired a DJ, and charged a cover. I found myself in a room full of people like me; it felt surreal. I found my kin. In a very real way, I finally found my home. These new friends were my people. I could talk to many of them in Cantonese, and even some of them in Spanish. I’ve occasionally called it my fairy godmother moment. For years, we’d meet every couple of weeks, typically at parties on weekend nights. This was the ‘Batman’ part of my identity.
As I enrolled at the University of Miami, I spent my days in engineering school. During the days, I navigated 16+ credit semesters and higher education. Early on, the prerequisite classes like calculus and physics filled my days. Towards the end, they were almost exclusively software projects that demonstrated a particular skill or solved a specific problem. I thoroughly enjoyed the hours dedicated to solving these problems. Furthermore, I was an exceptional programmer, better than most classmates. This was the ‘Bruce Wayne’ part of my identity.
Growing up
Then I graduated in 1991 and got a job at Microsoft. I subsequently spent the years that followed refining my craft. At the time, Microsoft was the top of tech, and I worked in the operating systems division on Windows. To a certain degree, I was the programmer equivalent of a fighter pilot in the Top Gun school, the best of the best. I learned from some of the most accomplished individuals in the business. A colleague once walked into the room, looked at a screen of assembly code, and root-caused the problem in about fifteen seconds. I became a sponge, absorbing information as quickly as I could.
I only attempted to reach out to the Asian-American community a couple of times. I felt a twinge of guilt for not making this more important, but it wasn’t. Knowing no one else in Washington when I arrived, I spent my spare time with the friends that I made from work. They became my new family.
Kinship has many forms. I felt that kinship decades before with those young Asian-Americans as we discovered our place in this world. Our language and our common experiences held us together. We never talked about the bullying, but we understood it. We knew that both Americans and the more traditional Chinese elders looked upon us with contempt, but we persevered. We survived as we huddled for warmth and strength like emperor penguins.
However, geek is its own kinship. It took me years to realize that I didn’t abandon my roots. My identity evolved. Finding my Asian-American community was precisely the home I needed upon entering college. Similarly, finding my geek family was the anchor I needed upon arriving in Washington.
It’s surprisingly simple. Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same person, inseparable.
The man in the mirror
These days, I get up and do my routine. I open my contact lens case and retrieve them one at a time, and put them in. As I look up to make sure they’re in appropriately and comfortably, I look at my reflection in the mirror. I see and recognize myself, Frank. I don’t necessarily see the Asian-American or the computer geek. I don’t see the baseball enthusiast or the AFOL. I’m just me.
As I navigate my days at the office, the same is true about my workmates. They see me, Frank. I’m a reflection of the projects I work on and the skills I possess. I’m the one with the Lego background on Zoom, the one who walks a good portion of the day on a desk treadmill. The one who gathers people to drink coffee in a cryptically named Slack channel. They don’t see the individual Lego pieces; they see the shape that the pieces build.
Most days, this is precisely how I operate. I don’t really think of the pieces of me, much like we drive our cars without thinking about the pistons and the universal joints that make up the whole. Why would I? However, occasionally something abruptly blindsides me, like being asked, “Do you speak English?” And in a split second, it reminds me. While I may not even think of myself in that way, that’s the first thing that people see: the Chinaman.