Lions

My father is Thai-American and moved to the United States at 13 years old. He doesn't speak much about his childhood and tends to mask himself in his paternal whiteness. Throughout my life, my Koonyai, his mother, lived with us off and on. She had a beautiful collection of Thai and other Southeast Asian antiques. The tattoos I have are replicas of a set of bookends I inherited. I got these tattoos as a way to grapple with and explore my cultural heritage.

Despite being white-passing and heavily influenced by Western culture, I wanted to pay tribute to my heritage. However, adorning myself with traditional Asian imagery didn't feel entirely appropriate. It raised questions for me: What would it mean for a white person to get a tattoo from a culture that isn't theirs, even if it's also part of their own heritage? I opted for tattoos based on the bookends I own. There was something more respectful, to me, about representing an object I admire rather than directly appropriating Thai imagery.

I'm not sure if my hesitation stemmed from fear of societal rejection or from my internal conflicts regarding my racial identity. Even today, I struggle with these feelings.