A Narrative Essay About My Ethnic Identity

I was born into a Bouyei family, which represents an ethnic minority in China who mainly lives in the impoverished mountainous rural areas, such as the Guizhou and Yunnan Province of China. In China’s 2010 national census, the Bouyei ethnic minority was 2.87 million, only 1.75% of them received college degrees, and only 0.06% of them held a master’s degree or higher. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that I’m from a historically underrepresented group in higher education, as well as in an American graduate school.

I don’t take education for granted because I’ve had to overcome oppression and obstacles along the way. I was born and raised in a middle-class family where I attended school and enjoy a relatively comfortable life. However, I was not treated equally by most people because of my ethnic identity. We are stereotyped by the Han, the major population of China. We’re perceived as a primitive tribe who cannot be educated and for whom knowledge is useless, so my teachers seldom expected me to succeed in my classroom performance. Although my middle school teachers were strict with my classmates, they ignored my occasional failures. They assumed that after graduation I would return to a village, take over my parents’ land, marry a Bouyei man, and perform domestic chores for the rest of my life. They disregarded the fact that my family lived in the city just like them, and that I would pursue a higher education just like anyone else who believes in the power of education.
When my new classmates discovered I was from Buoyei, they were curious about the world I came from such as what we ate, wore, and where we lived. They treated me like an alien. My ethnic identity brought many frustrations, but it also inspires me to think of ways to contribute and build a more diverse