By Leyna Summers
The chorus of indie rock artist Mitski’s 2016 single “Your Best American Girl” is a volatile burst of emotion and dissonant guitars. This song, along with several others from her discography, is centered around how the “American” ideal is not fully attainable for immigrants and their children. In the music video, she juxtaposes herself with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman— the spitting image of the “best American girl”— as both vie for the attention of the “all-American boy.” (Ironically, the other girl is clad in traditional Native American clothing, as if to point out that the American beauty standard isn’t even derived from the original Americans.) The viewer knows how this love triangle is going to play out; the American girl gets the American boy, and Mitski is left to find fulfillment within herself.
Anyone who’s grown up in an immigrant family knows the feeling of “trying to be the best American girl.” It’s the feeling of your two identities pitted against each other, and in trying to divide yourself up evenly you’re spread so thin that the effort seems futile. It’s the feeling of being a seven-year-old with no nuanced understanding of race, but when your teacher asks where your classmates’ families are from and they all point to Europe on the map, you point to Europe too because you don’t want to be on the opposite side. But as life goes on, you slowly begin to realize that you’ll always be on the opposite side.
Is it really a matter of sides when you’re perpetually in limbo, stuck between the two of them? When I call myself an Asian-American, I connect those two identities with a dash. Perhaps that is what I am: not Asian, not American, but the bridge that connects them. Maybe, then, I don’t have to be the sun or the moon. I don’t have to be Asian or American. And just as Mitski sings to the birds in hopes of reaching the all-American boy, her music helps me reconcile these pieces of my identity and live in the gap between them.
When I get in the car with my mom, she connects her phone to the Bluetooth speaker and puts on Korean songs. On one hand, I know this sets me apart from other people my age, who were raised on distinctly American music. However, the Korean lyrics of my mom’s music are a bitter reminder that I never learned the language— not because I was never granted the opportunity to go to Korean school during my childhood, but because I adamantly refused to do so. If I didn’t grow up on American music and I couldn’t understand Korean music, then what music did I have for myself? “Your Best American Girl” made me consider the importance of resonating with the music I listen to on a personal level. The burden of isolation as an Asian-American can be shared between artist and listener. We want to see ourselves reflected in the stories we consume, and music is one of the media that lends itself most easily to conveying raw emotion. Due to artists such as her, I went from a passive listener of music— someone who only cares about how a song sounds and not its meaning— to an active listener, someone whose image is painted in the lyrics of each song they listen to.