Roy Cheng
How have you struggled with your immigrant identity in the U.S. and Taiwan?
“It’s like you don’t know where you belong. It’s important and inherent for all human beings to find a group you want to identify with. For a very long time, I didn’t know where I belonged. I always thought I belonged with the Taiwanese Americans who grew up here, but I also realized they don’t really understand the original cultural aspects of Taiwan. But being born in the United States and growing up in an international American high school, I am also viewed as a foreigner in my home country.
A lot of Taiwanese Americans say they care about Taiwan, but not in a way that they want to go back. They see Taiwan as more of a tourist attraction than as home. When I say, ‘My friends and I are going back to Taiwan,’ we are going back home to Taiwan. But for a lot of Taiwanese Americans, they would say they’re just going to Taiwan, like on vacation. That’s something very different. They don’t see Taiwan as home. We see Taiwan as where we’re from - that’s where we belong.”
