Impostor Syndrome.
It's not me, it's them.
If you’ve never heard of impostor syndrome, you are one of the lucky few. I envy the fact your brain isn’t filled with crippling self-doubt. I’d love to share my feelings of impostor syndrome with you - and once again, I’m only speaking for myself, as we have different life experiences that lead some of us to doubt ourselves.
“You have really good luck”
Impostor syndrome hits me whenever I hear “You have really good luck”, or “It must be really easy”. Did I not just spend 2 weeks meticulously folding thousands of dumplings, driving hundreds of miles to procure ingredients not found at the local Kroger, or be my own hype woman bombarding social media with flyers? Deducing all of it to luck or ease is wildly dismissive of my hard work. It’s like thanking God for saving your son’s life after the doctor did surgery on him for 16 hours. And then the self-doubt creeps up. Maybe what I’m doing IS easy, and I’m just so bad at my job that it seems difficult.
Imposter syndrome also hits when I’m being told I’m a prop in the industry as an Asian female. I’ve had a couple recent situations where this was the conclusion. In one situation I was asked to provide my food for a certain awards ceremony (*cough Michelin cough cough*). In another situation, I was asked to be a part of a cookbook featuring Atlanta chefs. It was alluded I was taking up space of more deserving chefs in both situations because I was merely picked as a performative act of racial inclusivity. Being invited to showcase my food at the Michelin ceremony and being included in the cookbook were both virtuous attempts of the organizers to pay homage to a diverse group of innovative chefs merging their cultural traditions with local fare, or putting their culture’s cuisine on the map in Atlanta. That creativity and diversity is what makes Atlanta ‘Atlanta’. To consciously ignore us would be an act of complicity in furthering the narrative that once again, we don’t matter, as we are the token ‘ethnic’ chefs designated only to the outskirts far away from the main road of culinary excellence deserving of recognition and respect.
If anyone read the cookbook, or watched the stories of us being interviewed on Discover ATL, or listened to the organizers explain their thought process that went into organizing these events, they would understand this. If they took it at face value, it would look like a performative act and nothing more. And I’m betting money they are choosing to remain ignorant to call it at face value, because it feeds into their confirmation bias and lets them remain complicit in keeping us down the gastronomical totem pole.
I’ve also experienced impostor syndrome in the writing world. When an editor reached out to me to write some food guides (what? real money for words?), the confidence boost quickly disappeared when someone told me anyone could be a writer. I also heard something along the lines of how they’ll hire anyone without experience or knowledge to write now (credit goes to an ex-friend, for my starting a substack out of pure spite).
Women, especially minority women, carry this unnecessary mental load of trying to prove themselves against the most mediocre people out there, being told they are only where they are because of everything and everyone helping them, and not by their own merit.
It’s a cheap and easy retort to dismiss one’s hard work by simply saying someone handed you what you claim to have earned. Then there is the mental load of preparing a rebuttal that only sounds defensive because you have to prove yourself EVEN MORE. It should not be so exhausting, but that’s the world we live in.
*The problem doesn’t ONLY apply to minority women - I’m only speaking from personal experience, and know it applies to others fighting for respect and equality in the industry they are in.
How many times was I told that women couldn’t stir fry because they were too weak to hold the wok? Or that women belonged in kitchens at home but not at the restaurant? How many times was I asked by a man if I could handle it (‘it’ being the same job we both were equally qualified to do) back when I worked as a graphic artist? How many hours of my life have I wasted trying to defend my worth by proving my expertise when others got to move up the ladder without being questioned of why they deserved success? And once I do prove myself as fully capable, assholes will impetuously and deliberately mislabel my pride as ego in order to knock me off a peg. With all of these experiences, it makes me think I do not deserve to be happy when good things happen, I am not allowed to be excited, I need to keep my head down, make myself smaller, “dim my light” as the gen Z’ers say, or just disappear.
It got to the point that anytime there was good news, my anxiety kicked in, and the demons would be there to tell me why I didn’t deserve it, like a built in defense mechanism. If I don’t let myself enjoy things, I won’t have joy taken from me. What a way to live.
During my darkest moments, I seriously questioned if my food was actually good, or if people were just humoring me, and concluded none of what I had accomplished mattered. I’ve sat at rock bottom for months this year, believing that. The picture I had of myself started shattering and pieces were replaced with shards of self-doubt and inferiority caused by other people’s perception of me, creating a distorted image of myself and my business, as successes and failures blended together, which ultimately prevented me from self-growth and improvement.
Impostor syndrome isn’t something that you bring upon yourself, it’s something that is brought upon you by experiences in society. I mean, Sartre did say that ‘hell is other people’. That ongoing fear of being found out you’re a fraud is caused by years of people treating you like one. It’s not you, it’s them.
There’s a quote floating around the internet, and I believe it’s from Eleanor Roosevelt, "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent”. While that sounds empowering, it screams victim-blaming the same way you’d tell someone they can’t rape you without your consent. Well yea they can, that’s why it’s rape, it’s something done to you by another, out of your control. It puts the responsibility on the victim and not the abuser, or in this case, society. Even the name ‘impostor syndrome’ itself is very victim-blamey, when everything I stated above more or less confirms it’s just a misogynistic scheme to keep people (women, minorities, etc.) in their place.
And then, just when I thought nothing productive comes from doomscrolling my life away, after months of feeling depressed and defeated I read a post from the famous writer Ibram X. Kendi that resonated. Along the lines of seeing people fail upwards on the ladder of success, and not daring to feel inadequate because of them. Something clicked. All these years I was wasting my time playing this game, trying to defend my right to feel validation, to enjoy recognition without shame. And that these people who question whether I belong in “their” space are merely projecting their own insecurities onto me, but I was too busy being insecure because of them to notice.
I’m not inadequate because I’m a woman, Chinese American, or a mom, I’m more adequate because I had to overcome sexism, racism, and juggle multiple tasks while navigating motherhood. And these things are an uphill battle within themselves, in every possible way, adding more exhaustion to an already full work load of running my own business.
I didn’t get a recipe published in a cookbook merely because I am Asian - that fried chicken sandwich recipe in there? I sold nearly 100 of those sandwiches at a pop up within 2 hours. Not just one pop up but multiple ones, with repeat customers buying a half dozen at a time. Because that sandwich was really good.
We don’t live in a perfect world where we start with equal footing. That’s why we have spaces to amplify our voices. Do I get writing gigs because of my cultural background, along with experience? Yes and proud of it. There’s no denying it and would be stupid to do so. We need writers within the ATL Asian restaurant scene who know that not all restaurants that sell dumplings are dim sum restaurants. I have experience to educate and provide insight where it’s lacking. To assume everyone in the world treats minorities or women as charity cases and not fully competent human beings, it says something about the person hiding behind that sweeping generalization. I assume people do this so as not to be perceived as naïve in the off-chance you are used as a prop. And I assume the people making these generalizations perceive me as taking someone’s (white, male, or both) job away from them instead of adding value in the industry. With their logic, I guess I’d have to reject every opportunity that comes my way under the guise created to ‘protect myself in case it’s not genuine’ when in reality it’s to trick me into preserving the social construct within the food industry. And I might as well cook without cultural influence nor speak of my lived experiences as a Chinese American woman if my race or sex is seen as distracting or inferior.
The irony is, if I choose to ignore how my food, culture and personal story are so intertwined, my food will lose all its flavor and soul. What is the point anymore? I might as well serve food to people who say “I don’t see color” or “women don’t experience inequality in the restaurant industry anymore”. No thanks, I’ll take my chances with everything that gives me purpose, and everyone that has a good heart. Call it naïve, but this is the world I’m choosing to live in.
Even with my experience, I am brutally honest when I admit what I do and don’t know, and that makes me vulnerable to criticism in my abilities. I guess that’s the cost of not needing to cower behind an overinflated ego constructed to conceal a lack of talent.
Some of my character traits correspond with negative stereotypes as well, making me an easy target for people to justify how less deserving I am of success. Because of my upbringing, I was taught to be humble and reserved - I say this without blame to my culture. But humility doesn’t invariably equate to low self-confidence/incompetence, just like arrogance doesn’t always equate to confidence/competence, and it’s sad these traits correlate to these feelings/abilities in our society. Does it make me want to change my whole personality to conform and integrate into the world of boisterous extroverts who talk a lot without much to say? See meme below -
My brain was rewired after these realizations. I guess taking an overdue break to reflect was worth something. And then something happened -
I received the recognition that made my year. For once, I didn’t have any demons telling me I got it because I was Asian, or a woman. It was hard work, with lines out the door at pop ups and customers picking up hundreds of frozen dumplings in multiple coolers to prove it. That doesn’t happen out of pity, or charity. I will finally lift my head up and accept something with pride, although it was bittersweet I’ve wasted years of my life not being able to. And yes, we don’t need validation to be proud of ourselves, but we also shouldn’t shut it out when something good happens, as some fucked up defense mechanism to protect oneself in case it comes with backlash, feelings of rejection, guilt, or other kinds of negativity. I can understand how constantly seeking validation could hinder growth, but rejecting it to the point of ungratefulness is also a hinderance, and seemingly well intentioned folks telling you NOT to celebrate because you don’t need validation, don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart, as they’re all fighting internal battles with their own form of imposter syndrome. Just accept the good things that happen in life, damnit. We deserve that much for all the shit we deal with.