Two Last Names from Peru

Whenever I travel, people speak to me in Chinese or English because no one imagines my native language is Spanish. People hardly associate my physical traits to Peru or Latin America, and once I explain I am Peruvian, most people ask me about Machu Picchu, ceviche or cute llamas. My parents didn’t teach me how to speak Chinese though, and they weren‘t fond of traditions in general, so I wasn’t encouraged to appreciate neither Peru or China’s traditions.

And that’s okay, because I am so much more than two [Chinese] last names from Peru.

I was born in a Chinese immigrant family in Peru, and I belong to the first generation of educated working women on my mother’s side. My grandfather forbade my mother from going to college and threatened to disinherit her if she got a job because he thought it would bring shame to our family and it would imply that he or her future husband weren’t capable of supporting her.

I can’t fathom the frustration she must have felt, and though my parents did encourage me to get an education, a conservative mindset still ran through my family, especially because most of them are conservative Christians, which also greatly shaped the way I was raised.

Most of my life has been, and still is, a journey of questions with unclear answers, of struggles between opposing mindsets, and afterthoughts on what it means to identify myself as a Latina woman with two [Asian] last names. It only took about thirty years of my life and a few losses to really take distance from what I learned (or not learned), to love all of my identities, and accept that my own definition of myself is never final because I’m constantly becoming something else.

And that’s okay, because I am so much more than two last names from Peru.