Isabelle Khoo writes:
My mother calls me a banana. In her words, I’m white on the inside, but yellow on the outside.
She’s not wrong. As a Chinese-Canadian, I often call myself the whitest Asian you’ll ever meet. While this used to stem from a rejection of my Asian culture, being a banana has become my identity as a child of a Chinese immigrant.
My rejection of my Chinese heritage started at an early age. If you ask my mother, she’ll tell you that at the age of two, I matter-of-factly told her to stop speaking Cantonese to me. “Mom, don’t talk to me in Chinese,” I told her. “I’m Canadian.”
If you identify as having a bi-cultural identity through ancestry or upbringing, how does that strengthen you as a Canadian? Have you encountered challenges due to your bi-cultural or multicultural identity? Please let us know in the comments section below.