One Asian Eye: Growing up Eurasian in America

By Jean Giovanetti

"The great thing about being ostracized is there's no peer pressure."

Jean is the ultimate outsider. With a white father and Asian mother, she is too dark to be considered "white" and too white to be considered anything else. She catches grief from whites and minorities alike as she tries to piece together clues from her ancestry among a predominantly white populace.

This personal anthology is composed of a series of telling moments. Headed by popular songs, each carefully crafted short story and essay provides humor, drama and powerful insight into the changing face of America.

"One Asian Eye fills two important gaps in Asian American literature: accounts of the condition of being multiracial and literature in any genre about growing up in the Midwest. The book should fill the needs of many courses in Asian American literature and biography."
-John Streamas
Postdoctoral Fellow, Asian American Studies, University of Illinois
Assistant Professor, Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University

"Jean Giovanetti captures the often elusive feelings of conflict and confusion that are part of being Asian American in middle America, and she captures them with beautiful, evocative and righteous prose. Thanks to her, our voice-and our shared experience-are made louder and richer and more powerful."
-Gil Asakawa
DenverPost.com Executive Producer
Nikkeiview.com online columnist and author of Being Japanese American (Stone Bridge Press, 2004)

"Jean's writing is a rare find, and definitely shows that Asian Americans can flourish in the 'Great Void' between the East and West Coasts."
-Wataru Ebihara, PhD
Poet and a native of Cleveland now living in Los Angeles

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 16, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595783892

Jean Giovanetti

Jean Giovanetti is a former journalist and writing instructor living with her family in Wisconsin.

Book preview

Contents

ALBUM 1 SIDE 1

ALBUM 1 SIDE 2

ALBUM 2 SIDE 1

ALBUM 2 SIDE 2

This one is for my son.

ALBUM 1 SIDE 1

Logical Song © performed by Supertramp

I Am Woman © performed by Helen Reddy

(I’ve Got to Use My) Imagination ©

performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips

Imagine © performed by John Lennon

Bungle in the Jungle © performed by Jethro Tull

Half Breed © performed by Cher

Isn’t She Lovely? © performed by Stevie Wondep

Love is Blue © performed by Paul Mauriat & His Orchestra

Philadelphia Freedom © performed by Elton John

Blue Bayou © performed by Linda Rondstadt

Bless The Beasts and the Children © performed by The Carpenters

Even the Losers © performed by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Love Train © performed by O’Jays

Logical Song © (Please Tell Me Who I Am)

When I was growing up in Cleveland during the 1970s, I often wondered why Mom and Dad never warned me that people would give me a hard time about my race. Then again, my parents never talked about race. They treated me like I was one of them. That is, Dad treated me like I was Italian, and Mom treated me like I was Korean. At the time I figured my parents just didn’t realize that I was both.

Once when Mom was washing the kitchen floor, I asked her if Europeans were better than Asians. She threw the rag in the bucket and sat back on her haunches. She was mad.

Just remember, she said. While you ancestors make art and music, theirs club each other with animal bone.

Then she went back to washing the floor, and we didn’t talk about it anymore. But she didn’t make me feel any better. According to her, I was still half-barbarian.

I guess I realized there was something different about my family when I was about three years old. Every other week, Mom and Dad would take me to the Italian deli in our neighborhood. My 13-year-old brother and 11-year-old sister didn’t go with us. There was really no reason for them to come along because they were too old to be favored with free taste tests from the nice ladies who worked behind the counter. But I didn’t want to miss a single opportunity to stuff myself with Genoa salami, Leona bologna and imported provolone cheese while I was still small and otherwise, sample-eligible.

Dad often waited for us in the car because the place was always jammed on Saturday mornings. So Mom would take my hand and together, we would charge toward the sweaty glass doors. Even in the winter I could smell the place long before we entered. Just seeing the long purple salamis which hung from white cords in the windows made my mouth water so much, I was sure my teeth would drown. Once inside, all my senses went into overload. The air was hot and filled with the smells of sharp imported goat cheese, red wine vinegar, spicy peppers and antipasti, and the voices of a dozen loud Italian conversations all going on at once. Bulky figures shuffled around me with loaves of bread tucked under their arms and yard-long torpedo sandwiches. I held fast to the sleeve of my mother’s coat which I knew by the wad of clean white tissues which always peeked out of her pockets.

Always bring clean tissues, Mom always said. They good for everyt’ing.

Most of the women at the deli were twice my mother’s size, but that didn’t faze her a bit. Mom was a barracuda in that place. She elbowed right past the hulking old women with black hand-crocheted shawls who were complaining loudly to each other in the aisles because mass at the local parish was no longer being given in Latin. Then she shoved around the carts brimming with massive cans of tomato sauce that some women had a tendency to leave stranded when they headed up to the counter for their sausages. No one could make it faster to that counter than my mom.

Half pound Genoa salami, Mom yelled when it was her turn.

She yelled partly because of the noise in the deli, partly because her head barely cleared the top of the counter, and partly because she just liked to yell. Then she held up her right hand with her thumb and forefinger pressed tightly together.

Slice thin, she would demand.

In a lot of ways, my mother blended in with the deli crowd. She had dark hair like a lot of the other Italian women, except for the younger ones who bleached theirs in a weak attempt to look like Farrah Fawcett. Mom lived with my father’s family when she first came to the United States from Korea, and the recipes she learned from my father’s mother were some of the finest from the old country. In fact, my father’s family helped her with her English and Italian, and Mom could wave her hands and curse along with the rest of the Italian ladies when the checkout line was too slow. Yet there was something about my mom that was very different from the other mothers.

What was it?

Hey, you want salami or what? Mom asked, nudging me. She was eyeballing the scales while the woman behind the counter waved a tantalizing slice of imported heaven in the air.

I snapped my head up and down. She might as well have asked me if the pope was Catholic.

Say ‘thank you,’ Mom said as she handed me the slice.

Graczie, I said to the nice lady behind the counter. I learned that word from my Korean mother.

I Am Woman ©

My mother didn’t get a job in 1970 because she was tired of staying home with the kids. She wasn’t socking away extra money for a set of Tupperware bowls, and she wasn’t barbecuing her bra to assert her independence. She started working outside of the home because our family had developed a bad habit over the years. We had gotten used to eating on a regular basis.

Dad fixed air conditioners and refrigerators at a shop which constantly fluxed between layoffs and union strikes. Although he scrambled for jobs fixing large appliances for small restaurants on the side, it was simply becoming more difficult to sustain a growing family on his income alone. Government aid was never available. To his credit, Dad always seemed to earn just enough money to keep us from being eligible for food stamps and welfare.

So Mom applied for a position working as a clerk at a discount store six weeks after I was born. Because she quit going to night school in America when my brother was born almost a decade earlier, she lied about having a high school degree on the application. Whatever she wrote down worked, and she was hired to stock shelves at the store on weekends and evenings. Her boss would have been foolish not to hire her. Mom was smart, pleasant and efficient. She was also exceptionally quick. Back in those days my mother was so fast, she could shove a spoon in your mouth, wipe your nose and smack you upside the head all in one graceful yet breeze-stirring motion.

Her employers also soon realized that natural disasters, pestilence of biblical proportions and even near death experiences couldn’t keep her from stocking cigarettes and other tobacco-related products on their shelves. After two years, they offered her a promotion to be trained as a cashier and work full-time. Mom jumped at the chance.

The only problem with my mother working 40 hours a week became what to do with me when my siblings were at school and both my parents were at work. So my parents enrolled me in daycare for one month. I loved playing with the other children, but the fees consumed all but $10 of my mother’s hard-earned salary. Our closest relatives were too old to take care of a young child on a daily basis, and my parents didn’t know anyone else who would be willing to do so. With no other alternatives, my parents decided to leave me at home by myself until my siblings came home from school.

I was a latchkey child at the age of three.

Mom told me that everyone was doing their part to help with finances. I helped by behaving very well when I was alone in the house. I was not supposed to look out or stand near the window. I was not to answer the door. I was not to pick up the phone unless my mother called using a special signal which consisted of two rings, after which she would hang up and call again.

Despite the lack of adult supervision, I had a fixed daily schedule. Each morning, my mother made sure I was dressed and fed. After she left, I played with my toys until I heard the ring of a little brass alarm clock. When the alarm sounded, I took my lunch out of the refrigerator. My mother always left half a sandwich on a plate covered with plastic wrap on the lowest shelf. Milk and juice was pre-poured for me in little plastic cups. After lunch, I’d lie down for a nap or play until I fell asleep. Many times, my siblings would be home from school when I awoke. If not, I played by myself. My mother gave me a new wooden puzzle every week so I wouldn’t be bored. I got so good at putting them together, I’d try to build them upside-down.

I didn’t mind being at home by myself when I was little. In fact, I assumed that this was how all children were raised. My mother trained me well, and the rules of the house during my time alone were straightforward. I wasn’t allowed to go near the door or window, for fear that someone outside would see me in the house alone. I wasn’t allowed to go near the stove or go exploring under any sink. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, but I could listen to the radio. Music became my comfort and closest companion, and Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon were my nursemaids.

But even with the radio for company, I’d get lonely in that house all day. So I named all my toys. I named the plants because they were alive. Then I named the furniture. I pretended the vacuum cleaner was a dog and pulled it by the hose to take it for walks around the house. I once asked for a real dog, but Mom told me that soon I would go to school and it would be cruel to leave an animal alone in the house all day.

One time when I was alone in the house I felt so lonely, I did something I was never supposed to do. A meter man was at the back of the house, and I waved at him through the dining room window. He waved back and smiled. I held up an oversized toy rubber spider on a string for the meter man to see. Then I bounced the spider along the windowsill on my side of the glass. The meter man laughed.

Have a good day, ma’am, he said. Then he took his clipboard and walked away.

The funny thing was, I felt even more alone after he left.

(I’ve Got to Use My) Imagination ©

I got into real trouble when I was home alone only twice. During my first winter, a blizzard smacked the whole city blind. The schools closed early, and my brother and sister walked home with a friend. When they reached the friend’s house, their friend’s mother wouldn’t let my brother and sister leave. She insisted that they stay with her until my parents could bring them home. My brother and sister couldn’t tell the friend’s mother that they had to go home to be with their little sister who was alone in the house. This was a secret which we were never supposed to reveal to any adult for fear that outside knowledge of the situation might invite burglars.

Even though I couldn’t tell time, I knew something was wrong when my siblings didn’t come home that day. The phone lines were down, and my mother couldn’t even call me at home with the special signal to tell me everything was all right. When the day turned into night and I was still alone, I panicked. I ran around the house knocking things over out of anger and fright. I just knew that something terrible had happened to my entire family and no one would be home for me again.

My mother was the first to come home late that night with my brother and sister. She was relieved when she first saw me, and then she noticed the mess I had made in the house. When she went to the bathroom and saw that I had plugged up the commode with toilet paper while pretending I was a beautician washing hair, a day’s frustrations and worry finally took its toll. She kneeled over the bowl in her work smock with the oversized Can I help you? button sticking out of her lapel, angrily pulling fistfuls of the soggy paper out of the commode while I stood behind her, crying.

"Do you still love