I'm a real banana.

Being a “banana” means that you’re a person who is yellow on the outside and white on the inside. And this banana label is often thrown around in many ways. For example;

• Amongst Asian Australians, it’s often used in jest to point out unusually white traits in Asians like, you’re a banana if you have zero trouble drinking milk (lol).

• Asian people who have grown up in Asia, might call an Asian Australian person a banana with a little more distaste. It’s a way to highlight, “you are not like us” as well as sometimes implying, “it’s a disgrace that you’ve forgotten your roots”.

• Caucasian people might call an Asian Australian person a banana as a way to say, “even though you look different, you’re a safe one… I can handle you”.

As stupid as this sounds, I wonder if people can see that a banana is not actually white on the inside, but instead I’d describe the colour as more like a cream kind of colour. Like a real blend between yellow and white.

Which is exactly how I feel. I am 100% yellow on the outside but on the inside, I am a creamy combination of both white and yellow and definitely neither one or the other. My personality, my values, my work ethic etc are a unique combination of both Japanese and Australian influences and often I’m a little too Japanese for Australia, and a little too Australian for Japan.

And although many of us may share the same colour on the outside, our inside shade varies dramatically based on our families, schooling, reason for migration, peers and environment. Each Asian Australian has their unique “shade” of cream and it’s taken me a very long time to understand that there is no way that another Asian diaspora shares the same inside colour as I do. If you’ve watched or read Fresh Off The Boat, you can see that there is a variance in “shade” even amongst siblings.

There is no singular Asian Australian experience and the more stories and voices we can bring to the surface, the more we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves both as individuals and as a collective.

I believe that many mental health services just aren’t quite addressing our needs as Asian Australians probably due to the fact that we all have such different experiences of growing up Asian in Australia. This diaspora culture is not new, however it’s only in recent times that people have actually started to articulate the experience of living between two cultures. So for example, if we’re Chinese Australian, our experiences and subsequent needs are actually different from both our Caucasian and Chinese Chinese peers.

It’s not about having an interpreter present or receiving treatment in a different language when it comes to receiving effective mental health support. Instead, we need practitioners who understand that there is a world between cultures in which many of us exist.

This is why I am in the process of creating an Asian Australian mental health practitioner list, full of professionals who are passionate about supporting those living between two cultures. So please stay tuned by joining us over on Instagram or pass this growing resource on to someone who you think this may be of value.

Well, I think I’ve maxed out my allowance to talk about bananas and cream in a public forum. Thank you for reading my fellow banana friends!