| “It’s just too bad,” Vivian Mabuni’s father said as she got into the car after a theater rehearsal in Boulder, Colorado. “You’ll never play Juliet because you’re Chinese.”
Mabuni’s father wasn’t just making an assumption—he was speaking based on what he had seen. As a professional in the theater, he produced the Colorado Shakespeare Festival for decades. He’d directed the Romeo and Juliet rehearsal he and Mabuni had just attended. At just nine years old, Mabuni knew every word of the play and spotted lines for all the characters. Even still, her dad knew that his daughter’s prowess couldn’t overcome the fact that she did not meet the cultural expectations for a lead character simply because of her Asian heritage.
Decades later, Mabuni still thinks about what defines her identity as a Chinese-American. As someone who grew up in a predominantly white community, Mabuni was continually made aware of the ways she didn’t fit into the majority crowd. But when she spent time with other Chinese people, she didn’t feel like she belonged among them, either.
Now, Mabuni is an author, speaker, Bible teacher, and podcast host of Someday Is Here, a podcast for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) leaders. On a new episode of Where Ya From?, she talks about the cultural representation of Asian Americans and what it’s like to be someone who spent much of her early life trying to conform as much as possible in order to belong. She shares how coming to know Jesus began to change her sense of identity and where—or who—it originates.
May Mabuni’s story of finding her place in the body of Christ compel us to pay attention to those around us and to invite them into what we all ultimately crave: belonging in the family of God. |
