The Vancouver Sun claims 43% of Metro Vancouver share an Asian heritage. I am one of those in that 43%. I am a Chinese-Canadian. In reading Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill I was pushed to reconsider my identity and place in Canada as a claimed Chinese-Canadian, and to question why can I do not simply claim to be a Canadian, alone?
Fred Wah Jr. of Diamond Grill is one fourth Chinese and “white enough to get away with it” (Wah 36), but he still identifies himself as a Chinese-Canadian. There is an obsessive need to identify the self as Euro-Canadian, African-Canadian, Japanese-Canadian, or (Insert Country Name)-Canadian because one can never be simply Canadian in Canada. I have been asked and caught asking the question, “What are you?” I considered the question of why do Canadians feel inclined to dismiss “I am Canadian” as a reasonable response? Logically, I Googled Canadian identity. Many of the search results simply reiterated a statement of how Canadians do not have an identity or that it is still in question today. The obsession with this question is a response to the unidentifiable Canadian identity.
Fred Wah calls his experience with the hyphen as “riding the hyphen,” and although I have no Caucasian heritage, I can say I ride the hyphen just as he does. Wah is able to slip between the two ethnicities unnoticed. Mixed-ethnic Canadians is a growing norm in Canada – there is even a blog dedicated to mixed Canadians – but what I am interested in is the growing number of second-generation Chinese-Canadians here in Canada. I ride the hyphen just as Wah does, because I am what Vancouverites call whitewashed. I believe it’s a crime to not use chopsticks when eating noodles, only stepped into Asia once, cannot speak, read or write Chinese, studies English Literature, am educated in a Western culture, understand both Western and Eastern ideals, and can easily ride the hyphen between Canadian and Chinese cultural practices. The hyphen allows mixed-racial and second-generation Canadians a claimed identity, but as Diamond Grill notices, there is no clear Canadian identity to be claimed; there is merely a hyphen to consolidate an unidentifiable identity.