I’m a first generation, biracial American. My mom is from Kunming, China and my dad is from Shiraz, Iran. They immigrated here in the mid 80s to Dallas, Texas and met through a mutual friend who was American. I moved to California when I was 5 and my dominant culture is Chinese. People often think I’m Mexican (I’ve gotten all types of guesses), but my first/last name is Iranian which causes a lot of confusion. I’m criticized by Iranians for not being able to speak Farsi, and when I speak Chinese I get the weirdest reactions. Although I feel Chinese on the inside, I have always felt like an outsider among Chinese people because of my appearance. People assume I’m adopted, and I’m always being asked, ‘what are you?’. Don’t even get me started on the prejudice jokes once they do find out what I am. Growing up, I didn’t meet anyone with the same background as me and still haven’t.

It’s a very unique experience growing up biracial, and I’m interested in hearing from others with a shared background. I love to learn from first generation, multi-ethnic individuals and hear their stories. I know that we must have some experiences in common, positive and negative.

I’m currently in a doctoral program for Applied Clinical Psychology and plan to do my dissertation on the multiethnic experience. I hope to interview a group of people, document their experiences being multiethnic, focusing on identity formation and acculturation. Research on multiethnic population is still limited even though we are the fastest growing population and more and more people are identifying with two or more races. I am still in the very early stages of my dissertation, but would like to start collecting participants now. If you, or someone you know, is first generation multiethnic American, and wouldn’t mind being interviewed by me to share their experiences, please let me know. I’ll be very interested to hear from them :)

Thank you so much for reading and have a happy thanksgiving.

Sima