English: U4 L7-American Beauty

The beginning was always the best part—all fifty contestants came on for one and only one appearance. In alphabetical order, they stepped forward and enthusiastically introduced themselves by name and state. "Hi! I'm! Susie! Martin! Miss! Alaska!” Their voices rang with false cheer. You could hear, not far off, years of high-school cheerleading, pom-poms, bleachers full of moon-eyed boys, and moms on phones, signing them up for all manner of lessons and making dentist appointments. 

There they stood, fifty puzzle pieces forming the pretty face of America, so we thought, though most of the color had been left out, except for one, or possibly two, light-skinned black girls. If there was a "Hispanic," she usually looked all-American, and only the last name, López or Rodriguez, often mispronounced, showed a trace of a great-great grandfather with a dark, curled mustache and a sombrero charging the Alamo. During the initial roll-call, what most amazed us was that some contestants were ever picked in the first place. There were homely girls with cross-eyed smiles or chipmunk cheeks. My mother would inevitably shake her head and say, "The truth is, these Americans believe in democracy-even in looks." 

No one knew where the Dominican Republic was on the map. "South of Florida," I explained, "in the same general vicinity as Bermuda and Jamaica.” I could just 

as well have said west of Puerto Rico or east of Cuba or right next to Haiti, but I wanted us to sound like a vacation spot; not a Third World country, a place they would look down on. 

Although we wanted to look like we belonged here, the four sisters, our looks didn't seem to fit in. We complained about how short we were, about how our hair frizzed, how our figures didn't curve like those of the bathing beauties we'd seen on TV. 

"The grass always grows on the other side of the fence," my mother scolded. Her daughters looked fine just the way they were. 

We would have to translate our looks into English, iron and tweeze them out, straighten them, mold them into Made-in-the-U.S.A. beauty. 

So we painstakingly rolled our long, curly hair round and round, using our heads as giant rollers, ironing it until we had long, shining shanks, like our classmates and the contestants, only darker. Our skin was diagnosed by beauty consultants in department stores as sallow; we definitely needed a strong foundation to tone down that olive. We wore tights even in the summer to hide the legs Mami would not let us shave.

 Every day at 5 P.M., instead of playing with our fourth and fifth grade friends or sneaking out to the empty lot to hunt ghosts and animal bones, my brother and I had to go to Chinese school. No amount of kicking, screaming, or pleading could dissuade my mother, who was solidly determined to have us learn the language or our heritage. 

 Forcibly, she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, deposing our defiant tearful faces before the  stern principal.

 The language was a source of embarrassment. More times than not, I had tried to disassociate myself from the nagging  loud voice that followed me wherever I wandered in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown. The voice  belonged to my grandmother, a fragile woman in her seventies who could outshout the best of the street vendors. It was quick, it was loud, and it was unbeautiful. It was not like the quiet,  lilting romance of French or the gentle refinement of the American South.

When I spoke English, people nodded at me, smiled sweetly, and said  encouraging words. Even the people in my culture would cluck and say that I would do well in life. "My, doesn't she move  her lips fast," they would say, meaning that I would be able to keep up with the world outside Chinatown.   

After two years of writing with a moc but and reciting words with multiples of meanings, I finally was granted a cultural  divorce. I was permitted to stop Chinese school. I thought of myself as multicultural. I preferred tacos to egg rolls; I enjoyed  Cinco de Mayo more than Chinese New Year. At last I was one of you; I was not one of them. Sadly, I still am.