Personal Narrative: My Asian American Community

Words: 453
Pages: 2

As I shuffled my way into the dark room and heard the door behind me shut with a “BANG!”, I knew I had reached the point of no return. Looking around the gloomy room, which contained nothing but a music stand and a figure resembling a man behind a curtain, I awaited my cue. “You may begin whenever you’re ready,” I heard the judge say. Even through months of training preparing for this moment, I couldn’t help but be nervous. After all, I was doing something almost unheard of in my Asian American community: auditioning for a choir.
With the choral community containing predominantly white and Hispanic individuals, being the only Asian American singer labeled me as an extreme minority. In my choir of 200 people, I was alienated from my peers when
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I simply acknowledged my status as a minority and moved back to my seat. This would go on for 2 years, up until ranking tests came around. With every singer in the choir competing for the coveted title of first chair (rank 1, basically), the usually calm atmosphere was now filled with rivalry and competition.
For me, this environment was perfect. My peers were too focused on ranking auditions to mess with me and the ranking test was mandatory, so I had to participate whether I wanted to or not. Seeing as this was the first time I could sing without behind held back by others, I gave it my all, practicing relentlessly day after day. As my vocal abilities improved little by little, so did my passion for singing; something about having the freedom to sing whatever I wanted lit a fuse in my heart, and I quickly longed to experience the same passion in the regular choir as well.
I was determined to do well on the ranking test, not because I wanted to prove to the others that I was better than them, but to prove to myself that what those cliques said about me didn’t matter and that I could still be successful even though I was