Not Many People Say That I Look Like My Mom

Hapa Mag - MAY 13, 2020 

By Olivia Chen

Not many people say that I look like my mom.

When I was a baby some assumed she was not my biological mother. After I was born, people approached her asking where I was from, or telling her of their “one friend who had also adopted.” Later I would witness this happen to my sisters, seeing them flustered as people asked if they were from the same place as me.

I’m mixed, but I was not a mixed-looking baby. At a young age my features pulled more from the Chinese side of my heritage. I have joked before that this was a phenomenon called Asian concentrate—  that once my body became bigger the Asian features dispersed, as if diluted by the other half of my ethnicity.

Not many people say that I look like my mom, because the Chinese half of me is too distracting.

As I grew into my late elementary and middle school years, I came to look more mixed, which prompted many questions by classmates designed to box in exactly what I was. I was taught to define my ethnicity in fractions, half Chinese, three eighths German, one eighth Swedish; however, hardly could I get past the half Chinese part before someone would erupt in their aha! moment.

“Chinese! So you’re Chinese.” This statement wasn’t untrue, but for years I failed to see that it was incomplete. Gradually, the other half of me dropped off, not in title, but in importance, in understanding of who I was. In the Midwest, where there weren’t a lot of other Asian kids, and mixed almost always meant white and black, I accepted that I was just Asian, just Chinese, and that was it.

Not many people say that I look like my mom, and sometimes I hate that. 

I am sitting at a restaurant catching up with an old friend, who is talking about relationships and dating and Tinder. Somehow the conversation winds into the territory of interracial relationships (my friend is white).

“I would love to have mixed babies,” she says. “I just don’t think I could handle having kids that don’t look like me.” She says this as if it is an indisputable truth. As if when a child is mixed with white, they will automatically look nothing like the fairer parent. I am taken aback, defensive. There is silence between us and then I manage to utter: 

“I look a lot like my mom.” She backtracks, flustered. 

Not many people say that I look like my mom, and I didn’t know how much that bothered me until people started noticing that I do.

It normally comes from people who know both of us pretty well, or from people who are also mixed. I was overjoyed when an older cousin told me I was “really starting to look like my mom.” When people began to marvel at certain photos that bore striking resemblance. When I ran into a neighbor I’d never met before at a coffee shop, she took one look at me, and stated “Oh, you must be Jennifer’s daughter.”

It’s a validating thing to hear, not just because it’s a rarity with racialized undertones, but because I have long agreed. Bits of my mother live in my appearance, and in many ways that’s comforting. When I recognize myself saying or doing things that I think come from her, I instantly see her in my head. I take it to mean that I carry her spirit; that she is with me even when we are far apart.

Not many people say that I look like my mom, and when they do, they don’t appreciate the features that are more nuanced.

As I grew into my high school self, and what would become my adult face for at least the next thirteen years (my boyfriend often tells me my face hasn’t aged at all since then), my features grew into a mirror of my mother with certain characteristics from my dad. My nose is long and shaped like hers. My eyes have flecks of her hazel. I have her chin, her eyebrows, and her smile.

I also have many of her mannerisms. I have inherited the way she shuts her eyes tight and laughs soundlessly, only when something is really funny, as if to squeeze every drop of joy out of the experience. Like her, I often fold my bottom lip into my upper one when I am considering something or when I am dissatisfied, pushing my mouth into a small, pensive line. I have her passive (sometimes aggressively passive) temper, her even-keeled nature. I like to think I have inherited her desire to explore and become proficient at many different hobbies.

Not many people say that I look like my mom, and I have come to expect nothing less.

I spent some years feeling ashamed of my Chinese heritage, and so I spent several later on trying to forcefully reclaim it. In both mindsets I shrunk down a part of who I am, the part that comes from half of my family. I don’t want to do that anymore. To do so I believe is a disservice to my mother, her mother, her siblings, who have all been an important part of my life.

People who are mixed with white often come to identify themselves, understandably so, by the part that makes them different. As long as white is the default in our culture, people will search to define mixes by the nonwhite. But for those of us who are mixed, it does not diminish the importance of our white family members. I am as comfortable with that today as I have ever been.

Not many people say that I look like my mom, and that’s okay. 

Because it has never changed the fact that I do. More importantly, it has never changed her influence on me, her presence in my life, and how much I love her.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Olivia was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, went to school in Indiana, and has lived in South Carolina, Colorado, and now Connecticut. Despite the scarcity of Iowan Hapas, she grew up familiar with the term as a result of her parents' honeymoon in Hawaii. At her day job she coordinates small business loans for a nonprofit lender, but her passion is (and always has been) writing. Olivia has tried her hand at screenplays, plays, creative nonfiction, children's fiction and more, but her published work has appeared in Catapult and The Write Launch. Her goal is to write a hit debut novel that will go on to fund the rest of her writing career.