I grew up within the San Gabriel Valley — additionally known as SGV or the 626 — an ethnoburb in Los Angeles County the place Asian immigrants go to by no means assimilate. Immigrants within the Nineteen Seventies, initially largely Chinese language, constructed our personal ethnic economic system and ecosystem in SGV, with Chinese language banks, grocery shops and hair salons, and Chinese language-language colleges on Saturday mornings for ABC (American-born Chinese language) youngsters. I grew up with two Wing Hop Fung retailers a 10-minute drive away from our one-story, three-bedroom dwelling within the ethnoburb.
Wing Hop Fung was the place I fabricated tales in my head about my mother being a Chinese language herb witch as I watched her collect pungent, brightly coloured seeds and crops to sluggish prepare dinner medicinal stews that will restore my yin and “undo the results of all of the fried rooster and pizza I ate at Jessica’s birthday celebration final weekend.” Dr. Lee supplied psychiatry providers in Mandarin, Cantonese and Toisan down the road. The Chinese language Baptist church held worship providers, Sunday faculty and weekly Bible examine in English, Mandarin and Cantonese across the nook. 99 Ranch, Shortly and King Hua for the most effective dim sum outdoors of Hong Kong have been all in our ZIP Code. Throughout the road from King Hua was Costco, which carried mooncakes, lap cheong and dehydrated sea cucumber in bulk (hoarding dehydrated sea cucumber is seemingly a love language of immigrant dads).
All the things we would have liked was within the ethnoburb. Even so, once I was youthful, naive and presumptuous, I discovered it embarrassing, “too ethnic.” I didn’t see the way it instructed a narrative of resistance and rebirth, for Southern California and my household.
From the start of World Struggle II till the Sixties, Monterey Park, the origin of the San Gabriel Valley as an ethnoburb, prospered as one of the crucial inexpensive white suburban communities. The wartime economic system introduced transplants from throughout the nation to Southern California, and Monterey Park grew to become an rising web site of comfy single-family properties and manicured inexperienced lawns. Postwar Monterey Park remained predominantly white however started to attract upwardly cell Mexican, Japanese and Chinese language Individuals from completely different ethnic enclaves round Los Angeles, together with East Los Angeles, the Westside and Chinatown.
In a time of charged debate and political battle round race, segregation and housing rights in California and throughout the nation, Asian Individuals and Mexican Individuals approached dwelling shopping for in Monterey Park cautiously by gathering intel from intra-ethnic networks and assessing the attitudes of native actual property brokers. It helped that lots of these trying to purchase properties in Monterey Park have been second- or third-generation immigrants: educated, acculturated and pursuing the dream of suburban life. As a result of that they had social and monetary capital and have been few sufficient in numbers, they have been perceived as much less threatening to present white political, institutional and cultural dominance in Monterey Park.
Nevertheless, lots of them nonetheless skilled racial discrimination on the time of their more and more built-in social worlds. And Black Individuals continued to face overt and violent resistance to dwelling shopping for and integration. Geographer Wendy Cheng notes in her guide “The Changs Subsequent Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California” that anti-Black racism allowed Asian American and Mexican Individuals to buy properties and settle in Monterey Park, whereas Black Angelenos have been frequently hyper-segregated in South Central Los Angeles and precluded from shopping for within the suburbs.
White suburban residents went to nice lengths to exclude Black Individuals from shifting in, whereas slowly (begrudgingly) permitting Asian Individuals and Mexican Individuals to take up residence. In 1960, white residents made up 85.6% of Monterey Park, Latinos 11.6%, Asian Individuals 2.8% and Black Individuals 0.04%. By 1970, Monterey Park grew to become the primary ethnically diverse middle-class suburb within the nation, with white folks holding a majority at 50.5%, Latinos at 34%, Asian Individuals at 15.3% and Black Individuals hovering at 0.2%.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, my popo, who was in her 70s, relocated from Hong Kong to affix us in San Gabriel. As she and her husband ready to retire and quiet down in Hong Kong, he as an alternative determined to begin a brand new household with a lady many years youthful with whom he’d had a secret affair for nearly 10 years. With out choices and overwhelmed by disgrace, my popo left her dwelling, her house the place she had raised three youngsters together with her ex-husband, and her mah-jongg group in Hong Kong to dwell with us. She began over in a international place the place she couldn’t communicate the language, didn’t have friends and couldn’t get round. She was remoted and heartbroken.
With barely a kindergarten schooling, her life ambition had been to change into a spouse and a mom. In true Cantonese matriarch trend, she bragged incessantly to her social circles about her husband’s and youngsters’s accomplishments. Now, with three grownup youngsters with households of their very own, she was not wanted as a mom, not a spouse and shamed by her group. Once I was a toddler, she would insist, “Your popo has change into a ineffective nothing.”
It perplexed me as a result of I by no means noticed her that means. Getting left by her husband didn’t transform the tip of her story.
With the security internet of the ethnoburb, my popo rebuilt. After residing with us for a couple of years, she moved into her personal one-bedroom house on Essential Road in neighboring Alhambra. She walked to 85 Levels on a regular basis, the place they rang a cowbell every time recent baos got here out of the oven. She made pals with Cantonese neighbors in her constructing, and so they began their very own mah-jongg group at which they’d debrief the newest episode of whichever Cantonese drama had aired on TVB the earlier night time. She discovered a Cantonese church and received baptized. She by no means discovered English. She drove recklessly within the 99 Ranch car parking zone and didn’t care. She might have confirmed a couple of stereotypes, however the ethnoburb saved her. She stayed unapologetically herself by means of the upheavals of divorce and displacement. Within the security internet of SGV, she received her groove again.
Typically my mother would take my popo out to go window-shopping in Beverly Hills and they might drag me alongside. For me as a toddler, Popo outdoors of the ethnoburb was a daunting, multisensory expertise. She all the time introduced her full self. She was massive and in cost. She tried to discount and make offers. In Cantonese. At Saks. Her voice and presence have been all the time loud, even and particularly once we have been the one Asians round. You don’t communicate Cantonese? Too unhealthy and sit tight: 626 or 90210, my popo didn’t code swap.
I, alternatively, began my PhD in code switching once I was 9, after transferring to an uppity, predominantly white personal faculty. I noticed Popo as an unassimilable twister that left me within the mud, embarrassed and flustered.
Now, having moved away from the San Gabriel Valley for over 10 years to self-actualize in additional “fascinating” areas, I discover myself longing to return. Paying exorbitant lease to dwell someplace fashionable is overrated and unsustainable. I would like Asian strip malls, I would like Hong Kong cafes and I would like my youngster to develop up listening to Cantonese repeatedly and know that we’re not yelling; that’s simply our default quantity.
As my popo did, I embrace my ethnoburb — in all of its limitations, prospects and unassimilability.
Bianca Mabute-Louie is a sociologist and the creator of the forthcoming guide “Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the 21st Century,” from which this piece is tailored, copyright 2025 by Bianca Mabute-Louie. To be revealed by Harper, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.
