Microsoft FUSE Lab’s Lili Cheng & My Thoughts on Growing Up

Over the weekend, The Seattle Times did a profile on Lili Cheng, the General Manager of Microsoft Research’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs. What really caught my attention was where she grew up (as well as she was a fellow alum):

Cheng said she was one of three Asian Americans at a Nebraskan high school with 1,500 students. “Can you imagine being Asian in the Midwest? That’s hard core,” said John Maeda, a friend and president of the Rhode Island School of Design who grew up in Seattle.

I grew up in Western Massachusetts, about 90 miles west of Boston. In my high school graduation class of 273 students, I think there were about five to maybe ten Asian Americans: me, Albert, Irene, Kathy, Jun Jun, and maybe a few others. I can’t imagine growing up in Nebraska and I’m sure Cheng experienced West Coast Asian American Culture Shock.

Her father, originally from China, came to the U.S. for graduate work at the University of Michigan. After graduation, he started driving across the country to look for a job, got into a car accident in Nebraska and decided to stay. Her mother is Japanese, but the profile doesn’t go into how Cheng’s parents met. I can’t imagine there are too many Japanese or Japanese Americans living in Nebraska either.

Funny how life works out. I know my father was deciding between two jobs after graduate school and chose Western Massachusetts since it was closer to a big city like Boston, unlike his other option somewhere in upstate New York. I’m glad at least I didn’t wind up in Nebraska (though, I’ve never visited, so I can’t say for sure that it wouldn’t have been a nice place to have grown up). I remember I had met a fellow Taiwanese American on the Love Boat, and she said she was originally from somewhere like South Dakota, and I asked if her parents were professors. (They were.)

I really do think that there is a real difference growing up as an Asian American in different parts of the United States and how that shapes one’s view on race, interracial dating, “Model Minority” as well as a host of different issues. As I’ve commented to many native Asian American Californians, I’d really encourage them to live away from the West Coast to understand how the rest of the country thinks.

[Photo Courtesy of DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES]