NOTE: The word hapa comes from the Native Hawaiian term "hapa-haole" or someone who is part Native Hawaiian and part foreigner. But the word has been co-opted over time to signify a person who is half or part asian.
1. You have been asked a million times, “What’s your mix?”
2. Everyone’s favorite game to play with you is “guess what you are.”
3. You’re a racial Rorschach test: Depending on where you are, people assume you must be Latino, or Italian, or Native American, or Middle Eastern...
4. You have an Asian and non-Asian name.
5. People think your parents aren't your parents, or even that you're adopted.
6. Chances are good that you’re much taller than half of your family.
7. You and your siblings don’t always agree about which race each of you more closely identifies with.
8. Whether or not you inherit “Asian glow” is a real crap shoot.
9. Sometimes you look at one or both of your parents and don’t see yourself in them at all.
10. People assume your Asian parent is your nanny (especially if it's your mom).
11. And people tend to assume your mother is the Asian parent because of you know, "yellow fever."
12. It still blows your mind that in some places your parents' marriage would have been illegal within their lifetime.
13. You light up when you find out an actor is a hapa too and you follow them from then to forever.
14. But whenever someone says, “You know who you look like?”, you know it is going to be one of two hapa celebrities even though you look NOTHING like them.
15. Big Hero 6 is your kind of Disney movie and San Fransokyo is your kind of town!
16. You’ve been shipped to your Asian parent’s home country to brush up your language skills.
17. Sometimes you get dual citizenship!
18. You get used to being a novelty wherever you go.
19. At times you’ve felt like you weren’t Asian enough (and vice versa).
20. Sometimes you feel like you have to identify with only one race or the other.
21. And you’re not sure what to do when you can only check one box for "Race.”
22. But you didn’t check "Asian" on your college admission form, because you were worried that would make it harder to get in.
23. When you are dating another Asian or hapa you wonder if you are “sticky rice” or a “rice queen.”
24. You can change the race others identify you as just by changing your hairstyle!
25. You get to celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, Moon Festival, Christmas, New Year’s and Lunar New Year — fall and winter are the best!
26. Your two sets of grandparents are so different they have nothing to say to each other.
27. You have had a meal like stroganoff on rice on a regular basis.
28. Growing up, your fridge could contain at any given time: jook and lasagna, shoyu chicken and corned beef, tamales and samosas.
29. You’re tired of hearing that mixed babies are the cutest or the most beautiful—even though it's true. ;)
30. The more you look around these days, the more you see other hapas — and that’s pretty damn great.
31. You are free to pick the best of your backgrounds and make your life what YOU want it to be!
This post has been updated to include a note on our usage of the term hapa.