devils in trinidad

{Lisa}

I was walking alone back from a grocery store when I heard a middle-aged woman shout out from across the street, “You! What you doing here?” I wasn’t really sure what to reply, so I didn’t say anything. “You Chinese come here and you don”t even learn English!” She shouted at me. I was tempted to stop, turn around, and ask her to repeat what she had said. But I didn’t.

Throughout the past few weeks, I have been confronted with an identity I rarely think about in America. It’s true I am ethnically Chinese, but I am American; I was born here, English is my first language and I’m culturally American.

Here, I’ve heard locals call me “China girl” and made assumptions about my proficiency in English. I’m not suprised by the stereotyping; even in the States, I’ve often been asked, sometimes by strangers, where I am really from and I’ve been complimented for picking up English so well. But I think what is unsettling for me is the undertone of resentment or anger that colors these recent remarks made here in Trinidad. I remember hearing from some staff of the embassy we had visted last week that many Chinese here were new immigrants and many Trinigonians were unhappy that they were given construction jobs that should have been given to natives.

I have always believed in the power of the individual; I choose how to define myself and who I am. But these experiences point to a truth hard for individualists like myself to accept: no matter how you define yourself, there are times that others will define you.