Culture as One - Raymond Dokupil

I am the middle child of three children, with a younger brother name John-Luke, and an older sister named Hannah.  My first name is actually Joseph, although I go by my middle name, Raymond. I was named after my grandfather from my Dad’s side, Joseph Raymond Dokupil, who also went by his middle name, and I’ve never actually known why. It’s a bit of a pain to explain in my paperwork, but I can’t complain—I like the name Raymond better anyway.  My mother’s full name is Meow Pyng Chen Dokupil, and she educated the three of us at home in Kent, Washington. She is fully Chinese, but was raised in Malaysia. Her family, in her own words, was “nominally Buddhist” but did not practice it very faithfully. She acquired some vague ideas about religion from the Catholic school she attended, run by an Irish nun, but never once heard the word “Christian” or “Jesus.” She came to the Americas to study biology when she was seventeen. She later met my Dad in business school studying computer science. Early on in their relationship, my Dad lent her a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and after reading it, she became a Christian. It was a remarkably simple conversion story: my Mom has always told me that she simply decided it was the truth.

My Dad is Caucasian and grew up in a relatively poor family in Texas. His family didn’t know much about school, and he ended up transferring through three different colleges before ending up with a master’s degree in philosophy. He was raised in public school and had very low opinions of it, which is why the two of them decided to homeschool us kids. As kids, we attended a small Baptist Church, mostly because it “had a good kids’ program.” Later, my older sister wanted to get baptized, but the pastor rejected her testimony over a theological dispute. My dad confronted the pastor, but had no success. In the end, my Dad decided to baptize Hannah himself in our own backyard swimming pool. Shortly afterward, my Dad got a letter telling him that he had been excommunicated from the church. So our family left that church (which was very painful for Hannah) and started attending a Presbyterian Church in Seattle. My Dad liked the pastor, the reverend Earl Palmer, but he retired shortly after we began attending. His replacement (in my own opinion) was rather soppy, and our connection with the church slowly faded away.  I have never been connected to a church ever since.

My mom has told me that she has never felt like an American. She says she has always felt like a sojourner in a foreign country, but she is at peace with it. In the broader sense, she tells me, we are all sojourners. Like Lord of the Rings, we humans live in Middle-Earth, a place neither here nor there. Whenever she feels like the stranger and the alien, she reminds herself that her citizenship is in heaven, not in America, Malaysia, or anywhere else. My Dad, despite being white, has never identified as an American either. He despises America, and was extra sure to prepare his children for defending themselves against “the powers of Mordor.” He’s never liked celebrating the fourth of July. Besides being too loud, Americans can hardly take credit for it, because the Chinese are the ones who invented fireworks. Being raised by one parent who calls herself a foreigner and another parent who hates America, I never bought into the narrative that America was the greatest nation on earth--past, present, or future. That's why I've never really understood why everyone wants so badly to be accepted "as an American." Why would I want to be called an American?

Sometimes I wish I was either more white or more Asian, because, just like my middle name, it’s inconvenient in the paperwork.  On the other hand, it’s kind of fun when nobody can really figure out what ethnicity you are. I am, in all senses of the word, the middleman: A middle child who goes by his middle name in the middle of two cultures living in Middle-Earth.  I’m not an “American,” nor am I a “Baptist” or a “Presbyterian” or a “Protestant.”  Those things all influence me, but they are not who I am. My identity springs from something completely outside all intercultural influences: Jesus Christ, whom I believe transcends family, school, tradition, or even Church. He’s the one who brought my parents together, and He’s the one that will keep us together.  The Chinese character for home (Jiā) is the same character for family, and that unity has always resonated with me personally. My homeland is not America: my homeland is wherever my family happens to be.