Logan Gutierrez-Mock’s essay "F2Mestizo" in Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity main intersections engage in that of being mixed race and identifying as trans.
In my eyes, there is nothing wrong with anyone who is transsexual, transgender, gay, bi, lesbian, queer, or anyone of ethnic “minorities”, there is something wrong with America. There is a complex array of different sexual and gender identities that ‘wholesome’ Americans are oblivious to and /or in denial of. Hello, get with the program America, there have been countless “minorities” founding themselves here for a great deal of time now
It's difficult to be concise, but there are several things I want to say. I identified with Gutierrez-Mock's articulations, that being in between races prepared him for being in between genders--the borderlands. My mother is a Thai immigrant, and since I was first generation and first born, she wanted me to assimilate--to be a doctor with a doctor's salary--for our security. I grew up thinking I was white, with very little of my Thai heritage revealed to me. Still, there came a point when I knew I couldn't pass into middle-class suburban bliss.
When I traveled to Thailand for the first time to study abroad and visit family, I loathed my white skin. I wanted to be the color of mud, dark like the sun. I wanted to pass as a Thai woman. Thais would either tell me, "You look like Thai people," or they'd snicker, and I'd think, over and over, I am not a tourist. I am not American. I am not white. I tried to cover up.
But "passing as a Thai woman" involves silence, the silence as cultural inheritance that I have unwittingly perpetuated. The parts I was unaware of hiding when I was in Thailand. The parts I hide when I'm around Thai people in the U.S. The parts I hide when I'm around my white family. I've often spoke about being queer as canceling out my color, as denying me access to that proper Thai daughter I could have been.
I perform...