Why Many Mixed-Race Asians Struggle With Language and Heritage

My father is Chinese. My mother is French. They met in 2002, fell in love, built a life together in the Bay Area, and raised two mixed-race daughters. As a child, it was simple — I was both Chinese and French. 

But the older I grew, the more the world began to chip away at that certainty. 

What are you?
You don’t look Asian. 
What’s your ethnicity?

The comments were always irritating at first, then unsettling. I didn’t know why they bothered me so deeply, only that they did.

Because, of course, I was Chinese. Every Saturday for more than a decade, I woke up at 8 a.m. for Chinese school. During Chinese New Year, my sister and I eagerly lined up before our grandparents, palms outstretched for the glossy red hongbao they handed us. This culture was ingrained in me. 

And, of course, I was French. My papi and I made an unbeatable team in belote, a classic French card game. At Christmastime, my sister and I strolled through the twinkling markets, our mouths watering at the rows of chocolate bûches de noël. We received weird stares as we effortlessly communicated with locals, disbelief flickering across their faces: How could these little Chinese girls speak such fluent French?

I lived in this limbo, always belonging and never belonging. Was this shifting identity a superpower? Or was it tearing me apart?

Today, I speak fluent French but continue stumbling through Chinese, embarrassed by my limited vocabulary. I can’t help but wonder, how do other mixed-race Asians carry their languages, their heritages? Do they feel the same weight of being two things, yet never quite one?

Language Journey Shaped by a Grandmother 

From the day she was born until she was 6 years old, Jaela Bard, a Chinese American student from northern Virginia, was raised by her maternal grandmother. She grew up surrounded by three languages: English, Chinese, and American Sign Language. 

“My grandma was kind of the sole connection I had to my Chinese language,” Bard shared. “My mom did grow up in China, but given that she’s deaf, she was never able to relay that [experience] to my brother and I growing up.” 

When Bard’s older brother was born, their parents tried sending him to China to pursue a more well-rounded education, but that experience was short-lived. In Bard’s case, instead of being sent to Shanghai, they brought Shanghai to her. 

“A lot of the intention behind having [my grandma] here was not just so my parents could work full time, but also because the values that my grandmother had were so strong and still have such a strong impact on my life,” Bard reflected. “I really appreciate that, because it really instilled motivation in my brother and I, and set us up with a good foundation.”

Together, they spoke in Shanghainese, a Chinese dialect. “The only time I would really use it again was with her, so when she moved away, I lost a lot of that practice and opportunity to keep learning,” she reflected. 

Although Bard is biracial, she shared that growing up, society always perceived her as fully Chinese. Despite the often racist remarks of other children growing up, Bard is confident in her identity. 

“It’s not that I take offense to looking Asian, that’s not the issue,” Bard said. “There’s nothing that anyone could say that would make me ashamed of my background, especially because I value diversity so much in myself and in other people.”

Bard remarked that one’s connection to their heritage truly depends on the way their parents raise them. “I’m really happy that my parents wanted me to embrace my background, and that I got to learn some of my language from an early age,” Bard said. “That’s a really unique experience that most Americans don’t have.” 

Her parents intentionally raised her in an environment where many people shared her experiences, but that is not the case for everyone. 

“In America, a lot of families or parents of the older generation might want their kids to assimilate, so they prioritize them learning English and becoming fluent because they never were,” Bard noticed. “Learning their home language is kind of on the back burner for them.”

Navigating Life Without a Cultural Anchor

On the other hand, Marina Parker, a 20-year-old from the Bay Area, was never raised with a bond to her Indian or Jewish cultures. 

“I wasn’t raised with a strong connection to either side, and it’s not something that I’ve really been able to build on my own without my parents having instilled it in me,” Parker said. 

I asked Parker if she ever wished she had been raised with a closer bond to her Indian culture. 

“I used to be pretty upset and lost about the fact that I don’t really have a cultural identity to lean on, because I’ve seen how important that is to the people who do have it,” she told me. “But as I’ve gotten older, I have much more of the perspective [that] my parents are just people too, and they’re products of how they were raised. I don’t blame them at all for my upbringing, and I wouldn’t have expected anything different from them, because they also started from a point of disconnect.”

Parker’s mom was born and raised in India, but grew up speaking English as her primary language. Unlike many Indian families, Parker’s mother was not raised in a religious household. While she does speak Bengali and Hindi, she never passed those languages down to her children. When she immigrated to America to continue her education, her brain was already wired to speak English.

“She also just practically assessed the value, and decided that, because every single person in her family spoke English, it wasn’t important for us to be able to speak to them arbitrarily in another language, when it would be easier for us to communicate with them in English,” Parker added.

Parker described her experience as “pretty unique,” especially having lived in California her entire life. She noticed that most Asian people, even those of mixed heritage, are in touch with one or both of their cultural backgrounds. Parker does love to eat Indian food, which brings back fond memories of her trip to India as a child. Those brief moments of connection bring her joy, and she often looks back on the memories of navigating India’s big-city lifestyle. On her dad’s side, the family’s Jewish background was not passed down through religion or cultural practices.

“As I navigate my identity now as a young adult, it’s not really at all related to my ethnic background, because I don’t have a big foundation there to build from,” Parker reflected. “I kind of focus on other parts of my identity and character, and try to build elsewhere, rather than dwell on this absence.” 

Faded Heritage over Five Generations

Like Parker, 22-year-old Kathrina Welborn only ever spoke English with her family. Welborn is a fifth-generation American who is one-quarter Japanese and one-quarter Chinese, but neither her mother nor her grandparents spoke any of the respective languages. 

“My family, on all sides, has been in California for a long enough time that it’s kind of evolved into its own thing, and that’s not really connected to any specific culture,” Welborn said. “I don’t really seek out more of a connection because I feel just as connected as previous generations.”

She echoed Bard’s sentiment, saying that connection to culture and language often depends on how you were raised and what languages you spoke at home. 

“Most of the people in my family don’t speak any language besides English,” Welborn said. She learned Chinese on her own as a second language in high school, but never felt that those classes connected her more with her Chinese heritage. 

When I asked Welborn why she thought the cultures faded throughout several generations, she shared that her great-grandmother was one of the only people in her family who connected everyone to their Japanese heritage. 

“When she passed away and family gatherings became fewer, I feel like that resulted in less of a connection to culture,” Welborn said. 

She also shared that her Japanese grandfather and great-grandmother were both taken into custody and interned in concentration camps during World War II. She explained that as a result, a lot of her family history got erased as they tried hard to assimilate. 

“It was really surprising to not have that be taught in schools,” Welborn recalled. “My great-grandmother never talked about it, and I didn’t ask, because it’s obviously an upsetting topic.” 

Welborn doesn’t think this cultural distance has to do with being Gen Z, but rather, how long your family has been in the United States. However, she recognized that an entirely separate Asian American culture has sprung from her family’s years living in America. “From what I’ve observed, it seems like the more generations your family has been in the U.S., the further people are removed from their home culture,” Welborn said. 

If my conversations with Bard, Parker, and Welborn have taught me anything, it’s that cultural identity is an ever-evolving puzzle. Mixed-race individuals connect to heritage in countless ways, or sometimes not at all, and each is valid. 

Whether it is defined by the language we speak, the food we eat, how we were raised, or the generation we are a part of, there is no right or wrong way to define oneself. 

The layers of connection, disconnection, and everything in between are just part of the many layers that make us who we are.