This past week, my advanced composition students and I read Emily Wong’s short essay, The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl. Our initial discussions about race and Wong’s desire to be “granted a cultural divorce” from her Chinese heritage so that she could better fit into American society sparked great enthusiasm.  Next, however, I encouraged each of my students to look beyond this primary focus of race and instead analyze why so many of them could relate to the essay so well.  Because I teach online, I don’t have a real way to tell if my students are Asian or not, but my guess is that the majority of them are not.  Still, almost all of them were able to relate to Wong’s position, likely because so many of us have had our own identity struggles in life.  Personally, I’d say the majority of my life up to this point has been one long identity struggle after another.

That struggle feels to be waning to some extent.  I’m perfectly content where I am, geographically and emotionally.  I’m getting ready to marry the man I know to be my soul-mate and I live in one of the most beautiful places in the US.  I feel lucky each and every day.  Still, I am faced with a huge identity crisis as I decide the fate of my last name, a decision I have 201 days to make.  I never thought it would be such a big deal to change my last name to my future husband’s.  My struggle isn’t rooted in feminist theory (although there are certainly points to be made there) – I don’t feel slighted, as a woman, to take a man’s name.  My struggle is that leaving my last name behind feels impossible, as if I’m giving up a part of myself.  But, I wonder, is that the point?  Are we supposed to give up a part of ourselves when we “join with another”?  Surely not.

My fiance really has no clue what this means.  No man really can.  And some women can’t either.  I envy those women – the ones that look forward to changing their names.

And, yes, I know I have options.  I could keep my last name, but I don’t think that’s the best decision in the long run.  I could take his last name, but I can’t help but feel like I’m giving in if I do that (although I don’t know what I’m giving in to).  There’s the middle last name option, but that feels like a cop out.

And then there’s the hyphen.  That one perfect little dash that joins two names into one.  It seems so simple and it makes so much sense…so why are so many people encouraging me NOT to do it?  They warn that it makes my name too long, it’s too hard to say, it’s annoying, it’s too much.  I’ve even said this myself in the past, when I’ve had professors with hyphenated last names.  ”I would never do that,” I honestly said.  But the truth is that I and these “other”  people won’t be the ones writing this name down each and every day.  Sure, they might have to add it to their address book and perhaps use it to address the occasional Christmas or birthday card to me, but how much of a nuisance can it really be for any other person?  And, why should I care if it is annoying to them?

But, like Wong, I fear that I’ll look back on this decision years later with regret, no matter which name I choose.  Perhaps the hyphen will feel like too much.  Perhaps I’ll want to have only the same name as my children.  Perhaps I’m making too much of this hyphenation dilemma in the first place.  It is, after all, just a piece of punctuation.  And so the dilemma continues…  Good thing there’s still 201 days to decide.

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