Faces From the Past

Jiejie was proud last week to be helping a student who is new to her school. The little girl, Elissa, "looks just like me!" Jiejie told us excitedly. I asked her what that meant. She took her long, shiny hair and folded it up around her shoulders. "Just look at me. Her hair is like mine only this short. Her face is like mine."

This was the first time Jiejie has made a visual observation aloud about being Asian, an important step in building a strong identity as a Chinese-American girl. I have worried a lot that this might be something she learns on the playground in a difficult moment instead of observing it on her own. After all, when we watched Martin Luther King on TV when she was 5, when we stayed up late on election night, when we sat raptly watching the inauguration, Jiejie spoke sympathetically of the inequality black Americans had endured at the hands of "white people" like us. She often put her arm up to mine to show how closely our skin colors "matched." But as she gazed at me with the news of her classmate it was clear that Jiejie identified with her so fully that by changing her own hair she became Elissa.

I think she is on her way to understanding, really understanding inside, where she comes from, the first step to becoming who she is.