How can we improve the Chinese-American Image?
                                                              Vincent Chiu

      When people ask me what my nationality is I tell them “I’m Chinese” instead of Chinese-American. It’s already understood that I am an American equal in every right, but when it comes to social issues, favoritism, and living my best at pursuing the American dream, my identity as a Chinese here in America renders an image for me sometimes contrary to the one I want to create.
      By my very nature and heritage, I am already a different kind of American. My Asian facial features, my elders’ methods of communication, and my diversity alone make it all the more difficult to even the odds with the rest of popularized America. Socially, I am already fixed into a set of Asian stereotypes and prejudices. It is as if my ethnicity here in America has already predestined my future that somehow I’ll grow up to be a dentist, marry a Chinese woman of fair skin, and have sons who will excel at the nation’s top universities so that one day they too can repeat exactly what their father did. And though this is a sound path to success, an expectation like this does not reflect my ambitions in life because I am a regular nineteen-year-old student who’s still using his youth to discover himself.
      And for those like me who are still defining what it means to be a Chinese-American, we struggle to balance the cultural differences between the American way and the ways of the East. In a two-faced world where our individualism sets somewhere in its cultural spectrum, Chinese-Americans feel that they have to satisfy both worlds by honoring the expectations of their family versus honoring their own self. Life is a compromise but the Chinese-American image has no one identity because not all Chinese-American are the same. As a Chinese, I must honor the rooted values of the Chinese culture, yet as an American, I’m expected to harness the energy of the American dream, but as an individual, I choose to fuse the two together for what I take as my own. Wherever you’re rooted, whether in the East, the West, or its compromise, there is no right or wrong way for a Chinese-American to live by, because in the end Chinese-Americans are left to not define what their nationality means to them but who they are as a person in their own category.   
      We should be a people of great confidence, vigor, and enthusiasm. It is because of our uniqueness and self-assurance that people will see beyond the current Chinese-American image. So to improve the Chinese-American image, we must be ourselves and do what we do best. Represent the individual that you are and people will see beyond all of their prejudices and stereotypes for Chinese-Americans, to ultimately find a person of true character and honesty. It is this kind of self-respect that will not only honor the Chinese-American image but also define what it means to be a great individual as a Chinese-American.