Karen's Blog

American on the weekdays and Japanese on the weekends (1970) I am a hybrid, not belonging to one but a mixture of multiple identities. Owning two identity cards makes me multicultural: dual citizenship with Japan and America.  With my experiences of living in Japan and America during different developmental years, I’ve become more aware of how important my Japanese-American identities are. It has been a necessity to code-switch because when I’m in the majority, I feel that I can never completely live up to the societal scripts associated with my “Japanese” or “American” identity. Just like how my peer, Hannah Rivera stated in her essay “Battling my Cultural Identity”, “There is a constant ‘struggle of borders’ for me and where I fit in, as I am not White ‘enough’ to be considered Caucasian, but at the same time I am not Salvadoran ‘enough’ to be considered Salvadoran. I do not fit in anywhere, no matter how hard I try. I am constantly facing an ‘inner war’ between these different ...

  Trying to Understand My Japanese-American Identity (1292) I am a hybrid. Owning two identity cards makes me multicultural; dual citizenship with Japan and America.  With my experiences of living in Japan and America during different developmental years, I’ve become more aware of how prevalent my Japanese-American identities are. In this paper, I argue that I have never lived anywhere where I can fully embrace my Japanese-American identity and being a woman. It has been a necessity to code-switch because when I’m in the majority, I feel that I can never completely live up to the societal scripts of “Japanese” or “American” identity.  For the first half of my life, I lived in different parts of Japan. When I lived in Japan, I felt fully Japanese and never acknowledged my American identity because it is rare to have dual citizenship and the Japanese government prefers people to choose one citizenship over another at a certain age. At the time, I was not as tan, fairly th...