Finding Common Ground: Amy Lin on Intersectionality, Identity, and Coming out of the "Double Closet"
“As much as I appreciate my identities, whatever they may be, they a lot of times restrain us from talking about more human issues…I think what I hope for the future would just be [that] we can strike down these barriers that we’ve built for ourselves with the identities – if we can, in the most simplistic form, not [be] so black and white, documented and undocumented, [and take the] larger perspective of – if you’re a human being, you deserve certain things. You deserve equal treatment, equality.” – Amy Lin, 2013
Amy Lin is 22 years old and studies Political Science and Workplace Studies at UCLA. Currently an ASPIRE (Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights Through Education) member, she previously worked for the Chinese Progressive Association, organizing San Francisco's low-income and working class immigrant Chinese community against wage theft.
She was born in Taipei, Taiwan, but spent her early childhood in Burma, her mother’s home country. Her parents owned a chopstick factory there. Amy attended elementary school in Taiwan, where she remembers being transferred to a class for students with learning disabilities because she did not know a certain Chinese alphabet. In some ways, she says, she was looked down upon because she was the daughter of a Burmese immigrant. Despite this, one of the things that Amy now misses most about Taiwan – besides the food – is the strong sense of community that could be found there. In Taiwanese towns, it was more common to casually stop by a neighbor’s place to trade stories and inquire about his or her day. The United States, in contrast, is more individualistic and less group-oriented. Without the same prevalence of closely-knit communities in the U.S., Amy says, there is less opportunity to have meaningful discussions about contentious subjects, such as immigration:
“If you don’t have a relationship with your community, how can you engage them in a topic like this?...It clearly affects everyone, but we’re so far apart from each other that we can’t really talk about this heart to heart, and see what the problem really is, instead of talking about, ‘Oh, you’re illegal and undocumented.’ You know, the “I” word. I’m not going to say it!”
Amy and her mother were motivated to move to the U.S. in part due to complications caused by Amy’s father. When Amy was young, her father spent about six months in jail, while Amy’s mother was left to run the family chopstick factory on her own. Amy’s mother also discovered that her husband had taken a mistress on two occasions, before and after his jail time. Adding to the hurt he had inflicted, he even told Amy that he did not care if she was thrown to an orphanage, as he believed that a daughter was of little use to him. Throughout it all, the father pressured Amy’s mother for money, and Amy’s mother sold two of the family’s properties to raise money to pay off his debt. Although Amy’s mother eventually covered the man’s bail payment, his pleas for financial help did not let up, and she feared that she would no longer be able to afford a living place or Amy’s school fees. Amy’s mother arranged for her and Amy to live with an aunt and relatives in the U.S. to ease financial strain, originally planning for their stay to be temporary. Nine years have passed since that day, and the U.S. is Amy’s new home. She says she could “somehow claim a new identity just by being here” and that going through the American education system, “made me American.”
Amy arrived in San Francisco in May, stepping from her plane into a climate that was cold compared to Taiwan’s humid heat. She was surprised by the number of Asian people she saw on the street. Her mom found work as an in-house nanny in Richmond, so Amy saw her once a week and spent much of her time with her aunt and family friends. She enrolled at Westmoor High School, and later spent three years at City College before transferring to UCLA for her senior year.
Although Amy knew about ASPIRE and the AAAJ-ALC (Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus), it took her a while before she summoned up the courage to ask them for help. Before then, Amy worked with ASPIRE member Steve Li in 2010, when he was about to be deported. She recounts that she didn’t feel like “coming out” at that time as undocumented, and furthermore as someone who identifies as LGBT, because “…I wanted to do other things and would rather not have had people labeling me.” The second time Steve and Amy’s paths crossed, they were both running for student council at City College. Amy was elected, and after her term was over, spoke out openly about being an undocumented student and a queer woman. Amy likens this experience to coming out of a “double closet,” or having two shadows that followed her everywhere. However, she felt that if she could overcome the hurdle of coming out about one aspect of her identity, her sexual orientation, she could surely come out about another, her legal status. I am struck by Amy’s extraordinary bravery and maturity when she says, matter-of-factly, that she would rather be engaged in the challenging conversation about labels than have the “freedom to not explain [oneself].”
Amy states, “I came to the realization that people are going to label me, regardless of what I do. I came out as LGBT – queer – during student council…I came to that realization that people are going to label me anyway, might as well [label myself first]. So I came out to a small group of people at school and then I began to start researching on my own about undocumented students, undocumented immigrants. And then later in the summer, when DACA was announced, I said, maybe it’s finally time to visit the AAAJ-ALC and see what…I can do with this. And then I stayed with ASPIRE since then.”
When DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was passed into law, Amy decided that it was the right time to approach the AAAJ-ALC for help. She says it was a true relief, and validated her effort to seek help, to visit the AAAJ-ALC. She brought her DACA application, already filled out, to the AAAJ-ALC in order to speak with a community advocate there, and was able to meet a few older ASPIRE members while waiting in the lobby. Amy joined the group, which pursues political advocacy and provides a safe and supportive environment for undocumented youth. In ASPIRE, Amy found a community of like-minded peers with whom she could talk not only about school and her undocumented status, but other issues that she encounters in daily life, such as gender-based and racial stereotypes, economic inequality, and the American Dream.
Amy celebrates the the ways in which all of the different aspects of her identity – woman, Asian, queer, scholar, friend, daughter – intersect to form her unique narrative and life experience. Powerfully, she says, “There’s no such thing as a straight-forward narrative, there’s always that intersectional experience with every part of your identity, whether you’re a woman, queer, undocumented – any identity, really, will contribute to that. And I think part of telling my story is the opportunity to relate to other people. Whenever I talk about my experience as a woman, even though I am undocumented, the part of me being a woman will still translate to other people’s personal stories, to when or how they experience life as a woman. I think that’s a very rewarding part of being with ASPIRE, that I get to share these kinds of stories and build common ground with people. This is where we come from. We’re not so different. [I can] build sort of a family image…that we’re related somehow, and that makes us family.”