In the essay, “Growing Up Asian in America,” Kesaya E. Noda writes about her struggle to find her true identity through stories about her family and heritage. She wanted to combine her identities as a Japanese person, a Japanese-American person, and a Japanese-American woman, but she struggled with this. In her first identity, Noda tells a story in lines 23-42 about how she was treated as a child and how she feels that she will never be able to separate from this identity because she says, “I wear this history on my face.” (Noda 42) Through this Noda learned that no matter what she will be connected to her race. This is important because once she sees this identity from another view she understands that it only seems so strange because she …show more content…
I am usually devastated by anger. Not this time.” (Noda 119-120) This event helped her understand that she is very much like her parents and she responded the same way to anger so that the consequences would not be as bad. It was important for her to understand why her parents did what they did for her to truly accept being Japanese American as part of her identity. In the end Noda brings together all that she is with one final statement, “I am a Japanese American Woman.” (Noda 239) In her very last story Noda compares her mother to a nursemaid in a lullaby. In this comparison she says, “The nursemaid is the intersection of heaven and earth, the intersection of the human, the natural world, the body, and the soul.” (Noda 232-234) This makes Noda understand that she, like her mother and the nursemaid, is an intersection of very important, essential things that need to be recognized. This shows a lot of significance because it ties all of the parts of her identity together for her, and makes her stand proudly as a Japanese American woman. Kesaya E. Noda once had many small parts to her identity, but through many stories that she shared, she learned about her one true