When you're a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you're alone
Women seem wicked
When you're unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
“People Are Strange” by The Doors
(written by Jim Morrison - 1967)
I kept singing this song in the kitchen after coming back to California. I’m not sure why, but the act of cooking seemed to spark it. I’m not even a big The Doors fan. Perhaps it was a mixture of coming back to my hometown in San Jose after being away for so long? Or maybe it was some sort of somatic response? Either way, I did feel like a stranger in a majority of the towns I visited. After traveling through Spain, Portugal, and Italy especially, I began to reflect a lot about the way I was treated in these places.
“When you’re strange. Faces come out of the rain. When you’re strange.”
I’m not sure if I felt a similar way as Jim Morrison did while walking through the subways in Manhattan. No. It’s entirely different. What I’m realizing is that my experiences being Asian in countries that are not accustomed to having Asian faces among the crowd ignites a certain response in some. They look at me in ways that make me feel uncomfortable, some treating me like a second class citizen.
Many would ask, “where are you from?” To be fair, it’s a common question, which generally elicits a common response.
“I am from the U.S.” I’d say, begrudgingly. Americans don’t exactly have the best reputation as travelers. Well, let me correct myself. Americans don’t have a great reputation in general.
“Oh! I thought you were Chinese…” or they’d say… Japanese, or Korean, or any other form of the Asian diaspora that would first come to mind in their THIS IS AN ASIAN PERSON box. Generally I’m not upset if people can’t tell that I’m Japanese American. However, what does offend me is when someone blatant (or ignorantly) is racist towards me.
“Oh! I thought you were INSERT ASIAN TYPE HERE… Because of…” The person pauses, brings their hands up to the side of their eyes, and then draws the skin back to make the quintessential Asian slanted eye gesture.
And so you see, the funny part about racism is the fact that the person who is being racist towards you is so ignorant of their blatant racist remark that the recipient of such a remark still needs to comport oneself in a dignified manner. What am I going to do? Slap them? Punch them? Kick them? And so… that’s exactly what I did… in my imagination.
Most of the time I am so shocked that I just kind of freeze, but it became such a common experience of mine in Europe (in 2024 mind you) that I’d almost want to laugh in their face each time. And yet, I didn’t. Why didn’t I? Why didn’t I stand up for myself in these moments?
You see, that’s the strange thing about racism. It silences you. It hits you in the gut and takes the air out of you. Because… you’re the stranger and people make you feel strange.
Going forward, I’m not sure how I will respond when this happens again. Maybe I’ll make some more images like these to express my feelings towards the vacuousness of human consciousness? Well, on the other hand, at least I got some good photos out of the experience.