Chapter 7: Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation (Part 2)

If Vietnam had disoriented me with its homogeneity, Mater Dei High School provided a perfect reflection of that disorientation. An inverse.

I hadn't realized how much I'd taken for granted growing up in Garden Grove's diverse school district, with roughly equal numbers of Asian, Hispanic, and White students. St. Barbara had featured a surprisingly larger percentage of Vietnamese American students.

But at Mater Dei, we were unmistakably a minority.

I could name every Asian student in my graduating class of 350.

We weren't invisible, but we were countable.

The culture shock was immediate. Girls wore their uniform skirts hemmed short—especially on windy days—and shirts a size too small.

Water polo players strutted around in speedos, showing off chiseled abs as girls watched with undisguised interest.  

Students drove cars more expensive than the teachers', casually mentioning “wrecking” a luxury vehicle before their parents replaced it with another.

And the blond hair—everywhere I looked, natural blonds unlike any I'd encountered in my previous schools. It was astonishing.

Mater Dei was a private school drawing students from affluent communities like Newport Beach rather than Santa Ana. It emphasized sports, attracting wealthy families seeking prestige and scholarships.

Meanwhile, my parents were sinking into debt to pay my tuition. 

One irony of being a Tran: my name was common enough to be recognized as Vietnamese but not as ubiquitous as Nguyen. In a school organized alphabetically, all my Nguyen friends clustered together while I sat among Thompsons, Tomlins, and Torres. 

The White students termed the area where my friends gathered at their lockers between classes “the Asian Wing” because the Nguyens all had lockers near each other.  

Todd Nguyen. Mia Nguyen. Stacy Nguyen. Vincent Nguyen. Jason Nguyen. Katie Nguyen. Bridgette Nguyen. Valorie Ngo.

I deliberately stayed away from “the Asian Wing” whenever possible. Not because I didn't like my friends, but because I didn't want to be seen as just another Asian boy in an Asian cluster, talking about whatever Asians supposedly discussed among themselves. 

Whatever that was, I wanted nothing to do with it.

*** 

“Hey Jackson,” called a voice with that distinctive Mater Dei affluence—a tone I can't quite describe in words.

“What's up,” I replied, continuing to walk. 

“I have a question for you.” He quickened his pace, stepping in front of me to block my path.

“What is it?” I sighed, humoring him.

“Do you see the world in wide-screen because you're so chinky?” He pulled at the corners of his eyes, stretching them into a mockery of mine.

I gave a humorless laugh, and he continued on his way, satisfied with his wit.

It wasn't the first time I'd heard this particular joke. It circulated through the school, with White students targeting any Asian student they encountered. The stupidity of it was almost more annoying than the racism.

But there were endless variations: jokes about math, driving, accents, height.

Once, a student standing on the English building's outdoor stairwell waved at me. When I waved back, he folded his arms and performed an exaggerated bow.

I stood watching him, weighing my options: Ignore him? Flip him off? Or play along?

I played along. It was easier to laugh at yourself than to challenge a “harmless” joke. At least then the cool White kid might continue speaking to me rather than render me invisible.

One joke in particular crossed a different line—a joke said with such frequency I wondered how it never got old:

“Hey Jackson, is it true Asian guys have two-inch dicks?”

“Asian guys are so small...”

“I bet you have a tiny p***s because you're Asian...”

On and on they went, reducing me to a racist anatomical stereotype.

A supposedly small one, at that.

***

Her name was Stephanie Dvorak, and she would become the most significant person in my four years of high school.

Let me explain.

I met her during freshman year while volunteering at Sacred Heart Kids Club. Mater Dei required us to do “community service hours” as part of each year’s requirement to move from one grade to the next. Failure would result in recycle.

I remember seeing her for the first time—running among the children we cared for.

Unlike my Vietnamese female friends who were quiet, studious, and deferential, Stephanie was loud, occasionally obnoxious, and often irreverent.

She snorted when she laughed—a sound I found both shocking and fascinating.

Through our volunteer work, we became friends, and she soon joined our social group, bringing a disruptive energy that our sequestered Asian community needed.

High school lunchtime follows complex social algorithms. At Mater Dei, the divisions were clear: the campus split between "Uppers" (juniors and seniors) and "Lowers" (freshmen and sophomores). We were Lowers, which meant we had our own lunch time.

The cube-shaped cafeteria stood at the center of campus with three entrances and tables both inside and out.  

Football players and cheerleaders claimed the interior. The rest of us spread across the grounds in distinct territories: Hispanic students in one area, White non-athletes in another, self-proclaimed rednecks discussing guns and trucks in their corner, nerds playing Magic: The Gathering under the library stairs. 

And then there was us—the Asians—gathered outside the cafeteria's main entrance. Our particular group represented about 90% of the Asian population in our grade.  

Stephanie Dvorak's arrival in this space was dramatic—a White girl lounging among us, making casual jokes about Asians even as she made herself at home.

A stark white against our yellow.

Soon after came Trevor Hawks, a football player and friend of Kris, a Filipino American student who had joined our group. “Hawks,” as we called him, had copper hair, pale skin that never tanned, and a red mark under his left eye like burst blood vessels.

He balanced Stephanie's energy with his own comedic timing and sarcastic observations.

Together, Stephanie and Hawks transformed our group.

They blew open our racial boundaries, inviting others to join what had been an isolated, one could say segregated, cluster.

I didn't recognize it then, but Stephanie's presence granted me a kind of social currency I desperately craved—a proximity to whiteness.

*** 

One afternoon during freshman year, our friend group was hanging out after school when someone suggested playing Truth or Dare with an empty Coke bottle. After several rounds, Hawks spun the bottle and it pointed toward Stephanie. He smiled broadly.

“Truth or dare?” he asked.

“Truth,” she replied. 

“Have you ever thought about having sex with me?” His question hung in the air, bold in a way I could never have been. 

A sheepish grin spread across Stephanie's face. “Yes,” she admitted. “I even dreamt about it the other night.”

That confession sparked a relationship that would define much of my high school experience. Watching them that afternoon, I felt layers of emotion I couldn't fully name:

Happiness for my friends finding each other.

Bewilderment at how freely they expressed attraction.

Jealousy of Trevor's confidence—his ability to simply exist and command attention.

And something deeper—a yearning for Stephanie that went beyond romantic interest, a longing to share the ease with which she moved through the world.

*** 

Two forces collided within me during these years: internalized racial self-hatred and a sense of emasculation tied to broader racial stereotypes.

Both converged around my relationship with Stephanie.

I formed many close friendships in high school, but none shaped me like Stephanie did.

By junior year, I had transformed physically. At sixteen, I had lost sixty pounds and grown my hair long against dress code (which I could get away with because, as an Asian student, I was often overlooked by authority figures). 

Our social circle had expanded dramatically. I'd introduced Stephanie to our group, and she'd brought others. Eventually I merged several friend groups, creating a diverse collection of White, Hispanic, and Asian students. 

I became an accidental desegregation activist, reversing the Tower of Babel in our small corner of campus.

One morning, after a long summer break, I rounded the corner of the outdoor locker hallway and found my friends all there. The diverse group now many times the size it had started out as.

I found Stephanie and Trevor.

“Steph!” I called, before impulsively pressing my lips against her cheek. I only briefly registered what I had just done and I pulled her into a tight embrace.

I held her close, perhaps too long, before releasing her. We gazed at each other, wide grins on our faces.

“I missed you,” I said. She returned the sentiment before I turned to Hawks, who jokingly said he'd missed me too.

This was our strange dynamic. Hawks was her boyfriend—the one she made out with, the one who would later share stories of their physical intimacy to me.

But I occupied a peculiar space as one of her best friends, allowed liberties that seemed reserved for romantic partners—blurring friendship's boundaries. 

Once in the computer lab while working on a marine biology project, I wrapped my arm around hers and rested my head on her shoulder without thinking.

I closed my eyes as she continued to work on our assignment.

“How long have you guys been dating?” asked BJ, eyeing us with suspicion and amusement.

I straightened immediately, suddenly aware of how we must appear. “We're not dating. We're just friends,” I insisted. He raised an eyebrow. “Sure, you are.”

Stephanie didn’t reply, I don’t she even acknowledged BJ.

Maybe that silence was her way of keeping things safe—letting me be close, as long as we didn’t name what it was.

Or maybe she didn’t even register it at all.

Maybe it was only confusing for me.

If you'd asked me then about my feelings for Stephanie, I would have emphatically denied any romantic interest.  

She was Hawks's girlfriend.

I would never cross that line, even in thought.

The contradictions were confusing, but high school is a confusing place. 

***

Looking back without teenage idealization, I can see Stephanie more clearly. She was a friend, yes, but also capable of casual cruelty.

She mocked the way I blinked.

She referred to our Asian friend group as her “pets,” positioning herself as a white goddess among loyal subjects.

She mimicked Asian accents, made fun of Asian eye shapes, Asian height, Asian parents, Asian grades.

She joked about Asian girls being “flat-chested” and Asian boys having small penises.

But one comment cut deeper than all others. I can't recall the exact context, but I believe we were discussing Janie, a Vietnamese friend who had briefly dated Hawks before Stephanie.

Janie had started seeing Kalvin, another Vietnamese student, which somehow triggered this exchange.

Stephanie's face wrinkled with disgust as she shook her head.

“I could never date an Asian guy,” she said simply.

She actually shivered, as if the idea was physically repulsive. “I just can't.” 

Perhaps she was speaking about Trevor, fighting her own insecurities about his previous relationship with Janie. I had always sensed a bit of unvoiced jealousy. 

Perhaps she wasn’t thinking at all about the specifics in her generalized statement. I don’t think she thought about me at all, even as she talked to me about it. 

But that’s the point, isn’t it?

She was confiding in me—as if I weren’t what she was describing.

Invisibility masked in acceptance. Selective color-blindness.

Those words gutted me—like knives in my stomach—as I looked at my best friend’s face.

I tried not to flinch.

This was deeper than a teenage romance.

This wasn’t about unrequited love.

This was about being erased—my identity, my personhood, my desirability—dismissed in a single sentence.

The idea of me was repulsive, even as she let me curl beside her like a dog to be petted.

And in that moment, I was crushed. 

Not loudly.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t rage.

I don’t think I even said a single word.

I probably laughed it off—let the words slide past like water on oiled paper.

But the truth was, they didn’t slide off.

They seeped in.

They dissolved me—quietly, thoroughly, and without resistance.

***

I had convinced myself I didn't have feelings for Stephanie. She was Hawks’s girlfriend, and I respected their relationship. They were both my friends. And they had given me a taste of belonging, of acceptance within whiteness. 

That was, until she was no longer Hawks’ girlfriend…

“Hey, what do you think about Erik?” Stephanie asked one day, biting her lip as she watched a tall blond boy down the hallway.

“Fine, I guess. I've talked to him a few times,” I replied cautiously, noting how she swayed slightly, eyes following him. “Why do you ask?”

“I think he's cute,” she confessed. “In an old man sort of way. He already has a receding hairline, but I think it adds to his appeal.”

“Devi,” I said, using one of my pet names for her, “you're with Hawks.” She'd been dating him for three years.

Her playfulness vanished. “I don't know what I think about our relationship right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I should date around more. It's not that I don't think Trevor is the one. I just want to explore my options. What do you think?”

“Well,” I managed to say, “I think you need to be fair to him and talk to him.”

I don't know what motivated that advice. I loved them both, and the idea of them breaking up had never occurred to me. But in that moment, as she questioned their relationship, something shifted in my consciousness. Not fully formed, but present nonetheless—like the first flicker of a dream upon waking.

“I think you're right. I need to talk to him,” she agreed.

Later that day, I learned they had broken up. The news felt surreal—like watching movie magic dissolve when you glimpse the cameras behind the scenes.  

Their relationship had been a place of refuge for me. In my attempt to blend in, the push past the boundaries of my chinky eyes and Asian friends, I had found comfort in being around their relationship. I could pretend, in moments when they didn’t point out that I was Asian, to be one of them.

Stephanie began dating Erik, and while we remained close friends, she drifted toward new social spaces—theater club, school newspaper, a primarily White friend group. She would tell me about her dates with Erik, seemingly oblivious to my discomfort.

Meanwhile, Erik began targeting me with Asian jokes, mocking my eyes, my accent, my mannerisms. He spoke of Stephanie as a prize, his tone almost taunting.

I burned with anger—at Erik, at his jokes, but most of all at Stephanie. Even as she explored alternatives to Trevor, I remained safe. Asian. Out of bounds. 

When she eventually broke up with Erik, I found myself distancing from my original Asian friends. I gravitated toward her new White social circle, where I was accepted as an individual rather than part of “the Asian Wing.”

I stopped sitting with my Asian friends altogether. I didn’t hang out with them before school at our usual spot, didn’t sit with them at lunch in front of the cafeteria, didn’t meet with them after school.

I didn't recognize it then, but inside me grew a powerful longing—to fit in not just with white kids but with the world as I knew it.

To be reflected in movies, books, and the faces of authority around me.

Deep inside me, there blossomed a quiet but powerful longing to simply be wanted… to be white.

***

During senior year, I stayed home sick one day. I rolled over in bed and checked my phone, which sat precariously on the window AC unit. My house in Santa Ana had notoriously bad cell signal and my room had it worse of all.

Close to the window though, the outside world could communicate in.

From my bed, I texted Stephanie: “Hey, Stephie-poo. I'm feeling sick today. Not going to make it in. I love you.”

Looking back now, the text is awkward, even painful. The pet name, the confession of love wrapped in friendship. But it felt natural, right. I sent it without hesitation because I had sent dozens of texts like that to her and she to me.

Then, after a moment's reflection, I added: “I heard you're taking Brett to Prom. I wished you had taken me like we talked about. Really.”

A few months earlier, Stephanie, Michael Huy, and I had discussed Prom plans. She had already broken up with Erik by then. When I asked if she was going with anyone, she had shaken her head.

“I could go with one of you,” she'd suggested.

“Let's do it,” I'd replied casually, though inside I'd felt elated.

Then I found out that she was going with Brett—another White, blond guy I barely knew. He wasn't particularly handsome.

They weren't even dating.

I was frustrated.

Frustrated at my own Asian face and chinky eyes.

Frustrated that she had asked a guy she barely knew over one of her best friends.

Frustrated… at the world.

Shortly after sending my text, my phone buzzed with a message from Michael Huy: “She knows about you liking her. Talk more later. Going to class now.”

I froze, mortified. Stephanie had received my text and asked Michael about the Prom comment.

And Michael had apparently spilled the beans.

I couldn't delete or retract the message that now felt humiliatingly exposing.

For weeks afterward, Stephanie and I maintained an awkward coexistence. We shared a class and friend group, exchanging necessary pleasantries while avoiding the elephant in the room.

We reached an unspoken agreement to pretend nothing had changed, though tension simmered beneath the surface.

Then came the rainy day.

As we left class during a downpour, I opened an umbrella, and she ducked underneath it with me. She wrapped her arm around mine and leaned her head against my shoulder as we walked through the rain.

It fell in steady rhythms against the umbrella, a soft papery patter, like someone drumming fingers gently on stretched vinyl.

Each drop landed with a small thud—not sharp, not hollow—just enough to be heard.

It wasn’t loud, but it wrapped around us like insulation, muting the outside world.

Under that umbrella, it felt like we were in our own little sphere.

The kind of quiet where the world keeps moving but leaves you alone… if just for a moment.

We talked and laughed about things I cannot recall now.

The more the rain fell, the more it blurred the edges of everything.

She didn’t need to ask me to walk her to her next class, it was assumed.

I had walked her many times before. It was just what we did.

Eventually we got to our destination, and I turned to her.

I remember looking into her large round eyes, so unlike my own.

And the words came out of my mouth, unrehearsed.

It simply came out because it was true:

“You're making this too hard, Stephanie.”

I should have asked more questions.

I should have pressed what she was thinking.

I should have addressed the awkwardness between us.

I should have questioned why she would wrap her arm around mine, why she would lean her head against my shoulder… if I was so repulsive in my Asianness.

There were so many things I should have asked.

But I didn't. I couldn't.

She had shivered at the thought of dating someone like me.

She had chosen Brett for Prom despite our previous conversation, despite our friendship.

She had, too many times, let me break the social boundaries of physical closeness without ever meaning for it to be more.

We stood there in the rain, a moment suspended in time that would echo for many years. 

She looked sad at my words but nodded before turning away.

It was the last meaningful exchange I would ever have with Stephanie Dvorak.

As my best friend walked out of my life, one question haunted me:  

Would it all have been different if I had been White? 

***

Looking back now, with distance and growth that accompany the years, I understand that Stephanie represented something beyond herself.

My feelings for her were tangled with what she symbolized—whiteness, acceptance, belonging.

She moved through the world with confidence in her identity, embodying the very social structure that simultaneously marginalized and magnetized at me.

With her hand extended, she invited me close enough to glimpse a world I could observe but never fully inhabit.

Stephanie was just a teenage girl navigating her own complex journey—her identity, sexuality, privilege, insecurities, and prejudices.

She was capable of both deep compassion and cruel indifference.

Like all of us, she was trying to make sense of the systems into which she was born.

I suppose we all exist in the space between longing and belonging, reaching for what feels just beyond our grasp.

Too many of us, I think, feel like we don’t belong anywhere.

That our longings are always beyond our reach.

My mother had said that money would break down the barriers.

It would even mean that we could date white girls, she had said. 

My father’s ranking of racial hierarchy in dating had been, to me, one of the most explicitly racist statements I had ever experienced.

It was grotesque—almost comical in its absurdity.

But hadn’t Stephanie, in her disregard of Asian men—of me—done the exact same thing?

And when she said it, what had I done in response?

I laughed it off. Played along. 

And even more revealing—in my anger, growing self-hatred, internalized shame, and a desire to be something I wasn’t, I made a vow to myself:

I would not end up with an Asian girl.

My mother had been wrong in her conclusion.

Money was not the solution. Not a real one.

Whether I liked it or not, my mom had hit on something real.  

She had been right about the barrier—the thing that makes us not see eye-to-eye.

There was in fact a wall between someone like me—an Asian—and someone like Stephanie—White.

Jesus, as he left the Apostles to the task of spreading the gospel, tells them to make disciples of “all nations.” All authority had been given to him—beyond the confines of race.

Everyone—Jews, Greeks, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, everyone is included into the family that was purchased by the Lamb who was slain for the whole world.

Paul, in revealing the power of this gospel says in Ephesians 3:4-6:

4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 

This, we are told, is what reveals the manifold wisdom of God. It causes the authorities in the heavenly places to stand and take notice.

The wisdom of God, the mystery of Christ—a central revelation of the gospel—is that the barriers that separate us, the “wall of hostility” according to Paul, is separated by the torn flesh of Jesus.

Jesus was broken so that the wall would come down.

The Apostle John gives us this breathtakingly beautiful future reality:

9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

Race divides, but when washed by the blood, we will all be united one day—beyond our nationality, our tribalism, our language, our culture, and, I suppose, even the shape of our eyes. 

We will sing to the Lord and know that we are accepted by the love of God, no matter how we look.