“Chinese virus” flashed across my Instagram Live. I was in the middle of giving a free online writing class during this chaotic time of COVID-19 school closures when the two words made me freeze. What do I do? Do I stop the class? I was just talking about the surging racism

and xenophobia in the wake of the coronavirus and how it has affected me as an Asian American creator. And as I opened up about this most vulnerable experience, I never expected to be blasted with “Chinese virus.” My first instinct was to ignore.

Decades of dealing with microaggressions ranging from “Can you actually put on eyeliner?” masked as a serious make-up question to “Are you really a person of color?” have unfortunately been weaved into the fabric of my “normal.”

Growing up as the only Chinese girl in my predominantly white school, these microaggressions permeated my day-to-day. My go-to coping mechanism was to ignore them and move on. I was eager to be liked, to fit in. To seem like one of my white friends, who never had to deal w this.

So I pretended I didn’t have to, either. Until I grew up and felt the double whammy of shame—shame at having been on the receiving end of so many “casually racist” comments, and the shame at having let them go.

Read my full piece for @ELLEmagazine: https://www.elle.com/ocd/a32107527/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism/