The Tryout

For the first several months of middle school, Christina prioritizes keeping her friendship with Megan and becoming popular by joining the cheerleading squad. Christina feels extremely out of place when she enters middle school, which intensifies her need to be liked by her peers. This desire is shared by Megan and many of the other students. Aside from school, Christina also feels distanced from her community and culture, exacerbating her anxiety about conformity, as she seldom feels secure being herself. Throughout the story, Christina learns that it is more important to embrace the talents and traits that make her unique than to conform to the interests of others. 

As she begins middle school, none of Christina’s teachers can pronounce her last name and she is bullied with racist name-calling on the first day. She just wants to be popular, but instead, she is immediately “othered,” bolstering her need to gain approval from her peers. Christina notices that all of the girls wear loafers, and the cheerleaders seem to have a glow around them. When she sees them perform at the football game, Christina instantly wants what they have, believing that the key to being accepted and happy is to be popular. After years of being made fun of, stereotyped, and seen as strange, all she wants is to be the same: “The cheerleaders glowed because they were POPULAR. Popular kids wore the right clothes and told the right jokes. And no one ever made fun of their names or their lunches” (56). This desire motivates her throughout the cheerleading tryout process and remains steadfast even when her friendship with her long-time best friend begins to weaken, showing the importance that the idea of popularity and social acceptance holds for Christina.

Further, even outside of school, Christina struggles with fitting in. Christina feels like she fits in with her immediate family but feels out of place when she goes to temple because she often forgets particular Thai customs or the language. One of the family friends even comments that Christina is “too American.” Christina wants to belong somewhere, and although she does feel like she is part of something bigger when she practices religion, it doesn’t seem to fulfill the gap in her life. Christina’s mother reminds her, “You belong here as much as anyone else” (81), but Christina feels like becoming a cheerleader would confirm this. Even after months of effort, she doesn’t make the squad, and she comes to the painful but ultimately liberating realization that she does not need to be popular or the same as everyone else in order to feel understood or be accepted: “I’m not waiting around for someone to tell us we deserve to be here. We DO, no matter what they think” (223).

Christina’s need for approval and human connection is a shared trait of humanity, but it is often magnified in the tumultuous period of middle school. In a world suddenly fraught with change and heightened emotions, and in the microcosm of the school environment, adolescents are often increasingly compelled to adapt to become likable. Christina’s experience with cheerleading tryouts and her cultural struggles reflect a universality in humanity and become a learning experience by which she learns to embrace her uniqueness instead of conforming to others. Christina finds her place among the artists and the storytellers, and she looks back at her cheerleading tryouts as just a stepping stone that led her to where she is now: surrounded by loved ones and looking forward to her future.