C. Kumaradjaja

I’m 23, grew up in Westchester, New York. I am half Chinese-American and half Chinese-Indonesian. On my mother’s side, I am a fifth generation Chinese American, tracing my ancestry back to the railroad workers. My great grandmother was the first female Asian-American filmmaker. Her husband, my great-grandfather was the first Asian-American to graduate from UC Berkeley.

My very long last name, Kumaradjaja, is something my paternal grandfather made up. In the 1960s, the Chinese in Indonesia were racially profiled and targeted, and one of those policies involved a required name change. So my grandfather changed it from my Chinese name, Ko, to Kumaradjaja. It is a Sanskrit name with colonial Dutch spelling, and my grandfather was very proud of making that name. My dad says that this new name was a result of the fork in the road for Overseas Chinese; our ancestors choosing to be less Chinese by internal and external forces. Our Chinese name lives on in Kumaradjaja as an “encoded” message, carefully designed by my grandfather, which has gone through Chinese-Indonesian history.

However, growing up in predominantly white suburban New York, I found that everybody could not pronounce my name. They often gave up on pronouncing it. I was so ashamed of my last name. Writing my signature would always haunt me. But when I went to college, I was with many Asian-Americans, who were not only interested in my name’s story, but also could correctly guess that I am Indonesian. I felt like finally my story mattered. I could explain to them, and they would understand that I am Chinese, Indonesian, and American. All at once.

I have spent my life fighting to not be “nothing”, but rather to be “both”. In Singapore, I could use my Chinese, Indonesian, and American names and they would know my cultural background. This keen sensitivity and conscientiousness is part of the Overseas Asian experience that I realized, I never want to let go. I want to continue the tradition of giving Chinese names to my family and my future children. My ancestors stopped speaking Chinese at the third generation, but it is becoming more important to me to embrace multiple names as a way of holding on to one’s heritage..