How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

by Sabrina Imbler

It is tempting to write against The Question, and advocate for a future in which mixed-race people are no longer intriguing ciphers to be unscrambled on the sidewalk, in which we can simply exist, unbothered. It would be even simpler to dismiss these questioners as random asshats who need to get a life and stop interfering with mine. But I can’t. Because whenever I meet a mixed person who looks something like me, I want to ask them The Question. I want to know what kind of Asian they are. I want to know how their parents met. I want to know what words they use to identify themselves. I want to know how close or distanced they feel to their own whiteness. I want to ask them the questions I don’t want strangers to ask me. In other words, I am also the asshat. I can never abandon The Question because I am endlessly curious about our shared hybridity. Maybe it’s because I grew up longing for role models, surrounded by dozens of white and Asian families like mine but no mixed-Asian adults. We were all children, a new and blurry generation, all of us ogling the oldest of us for some glimpse into our uncertain futures, some idea of who we might grow up to be.