But Where Are You Really From Podcast

Episode 8 – Time to Get Loud

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Full Transcript

Jesse Lin 0:09
Aloha, I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:11
And I’m Angela Lin. And welcome back to another episode of But Where Are You Really From?

Jesse Lin 0:16
This month is May, which means it’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. And the reason that May is designated Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is for a number of reasons. But the two primary reasons are May is the first month that Japanese first immigrated to the United States in the 1840s. And it’s also the anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was primarily fueled by Chinese laborers.

Angela Lin 0:45
So we were inspired by this year’s theme of uniting through equality and wanting to interpret that our own way in terms of a topic to focus on. So today’s topic, in celebration of our heritage month, we’ll be talking about the equality or lack thereof, of the Asian American community within the context of the workforce.

Angela Lin 1:18
So in talking about Asian Americans’ place within the workforce, I think the broader theme here is around our history as a community of fighting against this concept of breaking the glass ceiling. Breaking the glass ceiling as a concept first came out within the context of women in the workforce, and it’s called the glass ceiling because the concept is that you can see where you’re trying to go, but there’s this quote unquote “invisible barrier” that is, it’s keeping you down. As this concept has evolved, it’s also started to encompass any group that is facing some sort of inherent bias or prejudice that’s keeping them from being able to excel as fast and as as easily as basically a white man.

Jesse Lin 2:10
So the first thing we really wanted to dive into are stereotypes of Asian American workers in the workforce and in general, and how that really affects us. So I know a lot of you guys will probably thinking like, well, I’ve never been stereotyped in the workforce, like “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I think if you really walk back your experiences professionally from when you first started, you can start to realize that there are kind of opportunities or pathways or interactions that you’ve had with people that probably are not really above the board and are related to your race. You may not have had an experience where it’s like in your face racism or saw a comment about your race specifically, but I think in the workforce, there are definitely a lot of smaller things that people do jokingly that can make people feel really uncomfortable.

Jesse Lin 3:03
You know, some of the things that I’ve personally noticed specifically in the professional sphere, let’s say for example, in hiring, a lot of the times people who submit a resume for a new position that have foreign names, it can immediately trigger basically kind of a vetting process like do they need a visa? Do they need to be sponsored? And that really happens before you even have the chance to evaluate the merit of the person. So I think that from that perspective, that’s really one of those small things that kind of occurred immediately that limits the opportunity that a Asian American person with a more foreign name can get.

Angela Lin 3:41
First of all, having a quote unquote “foreign name” doesn’t even mean you came from like you’re born in China, born in Japan, born in whatever, like you could be third generation Korean or whatever, but like, you know, your parents wanted to name you a traditional Korean name to honor the culture, but your English was like perfect. But no one would know that just based on seeing the name on a resume, they would assume you’re not super westernized. So I think there’s other prejudices of like, assuming that that person then would not have good enough English or that, like I think a lot of times in hiring, what you’re hiring for is quote unquote, “culture fit.” Like if you can imagine that person fitting well into your team. And like, even just seeing a foreign name someone could project like, “I don’t know if I would hang out with that person,” just because they’re already thinking it’s like someone from a different country and not like someone they could relate to easily. So I think there are other implications coming from the foreign name besides the visa.

Jesse Lin 4:45
As we were talking, it just triggered in my memory that there was this really interesting paper done where it was basically like “Are more ethnic names subject to higher levels of rejection in the applicant process?” Basically, the end the day, the same applicants with different names get rejected outright, like literally, I think they submitted the same exact resume with different things. So there definitely is a ton of bias on all these different things, as you mentioned, and also in the workforce, when you’re looking at managerial positions, or C suite positions. A lot of the times, we don’t really see ourselves represented there. And I think that that can make you feel like you don’t really belong at that level of the company, right? You don’t see yourself there, you don’t see a clear pathway to get there.

Angela Lin 5:35
I definitely feel that very strongly. Prior to my current role I worked in tech and there’s already like a very bad rap around the tech industry at large and where women fit in to that, but outside of being a woman also being a minority, what’s interesting is that within tech, within the world of like engineering, it is largely like a lot minorities, there are a lot of Asian people and Indian people there. But when you look at more of the business functions, that’s where it gets a little less minority driven.

Angela Lin 6:09
So I was in a role that was very closely adjacent to sales and sales is a super like white man driven function. And I distinctly remember being in a, walking up to a client presentation, like in the elevator with a bunch of my extended sales team. And when I looked around, I like, immediately realized that I was just surrounded by a bunch of old white men. And I was like, oh fuck, like it had never been that clear to me as when I was like, stuck in that elevator with them. It was like eight of them and then me, and I like I made a joke where I said, like, “Oh, I feel like Meryl Streep in The Post,” where she’s like, she’s a woman like trying to like fight against a bunch of men essentially. And like, I got just a bunch of really uncomfortable chuckles and stares from these men who like hated it. And that was obviously in the context of like just being a woman amongst all these men, but in my mind it’s like, it’s like double whammy because as a woman, I was the only woman and I was the only minority in that elevator. So it was just like “God, privileged white people,” is all I could think about when I was in that elevator, and it definitely did not help me feel like I belonged in that situation. I was like, “One thing here is not like the other, and that’s that’s me.”

Jesse Lin 7:35
I think there are also a lot of different verticals where we don’t quote unquote “belong,” where you see very few people of color represented or very few women represented. And usually for Asian people, I think it’s generally stereotypically split on those roles which have a lot more logic or mathematics or engineering built into them versus those roles, as you mentioned, which are like business, or creative industries, or media industries, we typically, as we’ve discussed, seen a lot less Asian representation there.

Angela Lin 8:14
I think that is a stereotype we’re reinforcing, right? Because we’re not seeing a lot of Asians represented in those more creative left brain type roles. So so people could argue like, oh, Asians aren’t good about them, but because what we’re like what we were saying before, when you don’t see people who look like you represented, you’re not encouraged to then pursue that yourself. It’s like a self fulfilling.

Jesse Lin 8:39
Exactly.Yes, exactly. The other thing regarding is, regarding these positions, I also think that these left brain fields or like business, creative, media, they’re also fields that have more risk involved, and I think for most of us and what our parents want for us, they don’t really want us to be part of fields like that where there’s a lot of personal risk being involved because you don’t get paid as much. You might be working in creative on a contract position instead of like a full time position. So I think there’s also that aspect of it where I don’t want to say destiny involved in it, but there’s like a pathway defined for you, and those roles don’t fit as well because there’s no clear route to success there.

Angela Lin 9:26
And to the point of like, so you were discussing this within the context of Asian people being in certain industries or functions. I think there are other types of roles that Asians are also more stereotypically associated with. I think Asians are constantly thought of as these kind of quiet, put your head down worker bees, and are not as often considered as top managerial candidates. I do think part of that has to do with our cultural upbringings. Like we’re saying like, of course, you and I were born in America and we have inherently in our minds this like idea of individualism and like making a path for ourselves and that comes from being born in America. But we’re still raised by Asian parents that came from Asia. And in Asia, the culture there in the workforce really is kind of a like, shut up and do the work. You need to like show respect and deference to the people who are higher up than you. And generally just like don’t rock the boat there. Even if we’re American, and we’re like, trying to do the opposite of that of like, being independent, like being strong and vocal and whatever. We’re constantly fighting against our nature of what how our Asian culture was bringing us up to think of like, you aren’t supposed to be loud. You’re supposed to be like, quiet and just do the work.

Jesse Lin 10:55
I agree. I mean, honestly, even when I was about to come out to New York to go to school. So for those who don’t know, Angela and I went to the same like temple growing up, and the lead pastor basically had a conversation with me when I told him that I was going to go to NYU to study hospitality. And he was like, “You shouldn’t do like hospitality or business functions, because you don’t have this ‘stature’ for it,” quote, unquote, he was like, “You’re not like, you don’t have a commanding enough presence to succeed in an industry that’s dominated by white individuals.” And this is such an interesting story. I think we discussed it before, because it’s not a person that’s outside of our community, keeping us from that it’s a person inside of our community, keeping us from that. So when we’re talking about the pressures that you feel in the workforce, it comes from both sides. So you kind of are, you end up like squeezed in the middle you don’t, you have pressure from people who are not in your community and you also have pressure from people who are in your community to walk the same same kind of path.

Angela Lin 11:59
So along the same train of roles that people don’t necessarily associate with Asian people. So you don’t necessarily think Asians are meant for managerial positions because they’ve thus far only proven that they are worker bees. The other role that people are kind of hesitant to allow Asians to play is if you are not like as fluent in English, but you just happen to have an accent. I think there’s been a lot of unspoken prejudice, maybe even unrecognized by the people who are making these decisions that like they’re not willing to put those kinds of people in front of client facing or like presentation heavy type situations. I hated when the leaders that were making these decisions were also minorities themselves. Like, shouldn’t you understand that like you shouldn’t be pumping us, pumping all of us up because you’re not a white man either. Like shouldn’t you know that every opportunity matters and to like, try to give us an equal playing field when we deserve it all. Also, like, it’s not like, this person was like demanding to be the face of this presentation just because they felt like they should be. It was like they did all the work and they like knew it best and would be able to convey it the most clearly out of all of us.

Jesse Lin 13:23
Well, so what do you think about workplace groups that are meant to foster diversity and inclusion specifically for Asian Americans?

Angela Lin 13:32
I don’t think we do enough. So I have been in companies big enough that have like Asian diversity groups within the company. And like, I sign up, I’m like in the group, I get the occasional email. But I kind of feel like we, again with a self fulfilling prophecy type thing like of risk aversion a little bit like, I don’t think Asian groups compared to other diversity here. Like, like the Black diversity groups, our African American diversity groups are always like super loud and proud and like do a lot to not only celebrate their community but also to continue educating and like pumping up the community with things like panel discussions with like prominent African American folks across the industry or like, I don’t know, debates or whatever that like actually have kind of more intellectual contributions and are like challenging the way things are structured now and trying to provoke the community to like figure out ways that we can keep elevating the rest of the community.

Angela Lin 14:42
I feel like with Asian diversity groups, at least the ones I’ve seen, like they tend to stay with the safer stuff. So like, I remember they like put on the like, Chinese Lunar New Year’s celebration or whatever and like, you know, had social gatherings Yay, that’s fun. But like, yeah, I think we went to like dim sum one night or whatever. Like, it’s nice to do the community building, I think that’s important too. And like, so you can network with other Asians in the community. But I don’t see so much of those groups doing the things like having famous Asian celebrities or journalists or like other people in media on a panel to discuss kind of like, how they got to where they were, what challenges they face being Asian and like, their ideas for how we could better elevate the rest of Asian people in media. I didn’t see any of that kind of programming happening. And that’s the kind of stuff I I wish we would have had and I thus far have not seen that in any Asian group that I, that I’ve been part of at least.

Jesse Lin 15:46
Yeah, I agree. I think that they don’t come out and represent as visibly as some of the other groups too. So I have, again, the same experience like actually, in my last job, I had a friend who was part of the women of color group and they have tons of events, like they had one event every month where I think there was like a speaker, and it was like an hour people with drinks like they would talk about, the speaker would talk about their professional experiences and how they got to where they got to, which I think is such an empowering thing, because we were just talking about how we don’t see people in the places where we want to go with our careers and having a person come in and talk to you about how they got exactly to where they are and be there to represent for you, it’s very clear, like you can then say like, Okay, I understand how you got to where you got to and I can make the appropriate steps to try and do the same.

Jesse Lin 16:43
And also in my organization, the LGBT group was also the same like they represented very loudly and clearly for their group. And I think part of that is, goes to some of the things we’re talking about. We have to, in order to try to get the visibility we have to kind of break the cycle in a sense and break out and be more of those things that people don’t expect us to be to get the kind of visibility that we want in the workforce.

Angela Lin 17:11
My opinion is that the reason why African American diversity groups and LGBTQ community groups are much more vocal, loud, and like, will not shut up type groups are because they faced a lot of backlash and like harm to their community. They’re staying loud to say like, never again, like we will not deal with that, again. Asian communities are so disparate because we are made up of many different ethnicities. We’re not all the same so like they’re, there are Chinese people. Sure. There was like the Chinese Exclusion Act like we talked about before, like Japanese will have like the internment camps and things like that, but we’re not all the same. So it’s kind of hard for like the broader Asian community to say like we all banded together at some point because there was like massive Asian shut down of some sort, and now we’re going to say never again. So I think that’s like, that’s my opinion was like one big reason that we’re not as loud.

Angela Lin 18:17
And the other reason is what we already just talked about, which is like Asian cultures, even though we’re all different, there is like this uniting factor of that thought of like, just shut up and do the work. Like, don’t don’t rock the boat and so like, Asians aren’t trained to want to be loud and fight for what they want. And so that perpetuates again, self fulfilling prophecy, it perpetuates the model minority stigma, right? Like why do people think we’re model minority because they understand that we have had prejudice against us, we have had inequality, but we just don’t bitch about it because we’re holding ourselves back.

Jesse Lin 19:05
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the closing section of our podcast, “Fortune Cookie.” We hope you really enjoyed this week’s episode about how we feel as Asian Americans in the workforce in the context of Asian Pacific Heritage Month. And if you really like the content in this episode and what we were speaking to please let us know, let us know if you have similar experiences different feedback, or you just want to comment on how lovely we sound. You can email all of these comments to our email telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com, that’s y-o-u-r-e.

Angela Lin 19:46
In the context of equality in the workforce and celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. We wanted to talk about modern day Asians in the community that are paving the way forward. So, in celebration of this month, there was a list that came out called the A100, where they were highlighting the top 100 most impactful Asians and they separated these honorees out into the different categories that they were under. So there was, someone was named for activism, finance, lifestyle and sports, things like that. We thought it’d be really fun for each of us to highlight one of these honorees and what they’re doing for our community to help move us forward. Jesse want to start it off?

Jesse Lin 20:37
I picked Bowen Yang. I don’t know how many of you guys are familiar with him, but he is a recent addition to the SNL cast. And he’s a comedian and writer that lives in New York City. I think what I really take a shine to about Bowen like, what I really relate to is that he’s a queer Asian man and he’s like living that as openly and proudly as he can. And that’s kind of like what I aspire to like to a level of confidence where I can be like, these are these, these are these two weird intersectionalities of my identity. And I’m just gonna celebrate the eff out of that all the time. And also, he went to NYU, which we also went to NYU, and I saw a party once and I saw him on Zoom, so super connected. How about you?

Angela Lin 21:27
Well, in the context of people we have like loose connections to, the woman that I’m choosing I have a super loose connection to as well. Her name is Michelle Lee and she is the Editor-In-Chief of Allure Magazine. And I met her in passing in like I don’t know one meeting ever in my life but when I was at VH1, and I think she was working for a different magazine or online entity at that time, but like it’s kind of cool that like we’ve crossed paths because she has taken such strides since then, and like made such a name for herself to be the editor in chief of like a major fashion magazine is fucking huge. And last time we were talking about media representation, right and like for her to be in such a powerful position is the reason why she has been able to progress our community forward so much. So she is the one who’s making the decisions about who gets to be on the cover of Allure and thereby who gets to represent what normal is and what beauty is right. She put the first model in a hijab on the cover in 2017. That was huge. And she’s also since put a bunch of Asian stars like Gemma Chan, who we love from Crazy Rich Asians on the cover as well to celebrate Asian American beauty, and what’s more, so beyond getting to decide who’s on the cover, she also hosts the podcast for the magazine. And apparently, he’s been super vocal about like Asian American issues. And she’s had tons of conversations on the podcast with other prominent Asians in the fashion world like Philip Lim and all these other folks. So she’s a perfect example of one of the few Asians that has like, infiltrated the media industry, and used her platform to give us opportunities to be in the spotlight, and make us more normalized within the broader context of society and what beauty could mean. So I love that.

Jesse Lin 23:37
Well, speaking of normal lives, we hope that you enjoy listening to our experiences on how we live as Asian Americans. As always, if you like this episode’s content, please give us a plug. Send us a DM, share our stories, drop us a note in our email. And as always, there will also be a new episode next week. So with that said…

All 24:03
Zai jian, bitches!

Episode 7 – #HateIsAVirus

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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 0:09
Hi there. I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:09
And I’m Angela Lin and welcome back to another episode of but where are you really from?

Jesse Lin 0:16
Before we get started, we just wanted to let you guys know that we are discussing topics around racism this week. So if this is not comfortable for you, you’ve been warned.

Angela Lin 0:28
But if you are comfortable, we are about to get into it now. So yes, first we want to talk about the elephant in the room. It is Coronavirus right now, we’re all stuck in quarantine. And something that’s been popping up and headlines over and over again is the fact that there’s a ton of anti Asian racism happening as a result of COVID-19. So we wanted to talk a little bit about why this racism is happening now. why it should not be happening. And if it’s actually something that’s like, net new or if it’s based on a pretty strong foundation of historical racism against our community, in terms of the ladder, I think our hypothesis is that it’s not new. It’s just a new reason and kind of forum for people who are racist against our community to feel justified in kind of doubling down on that hatred, because there is a history behind keeping Asians out of the community and kept in this kind of other label. So looking back at like 100 plus years ago, when Chinese immigrants were first coming to America, at that point, there was a Chinese Exclusion Act because you know, our people are hard work and we’re willing to take up whatever jobs there are and make our way through and white people weren’t happy about that back then. So they were already trying to borrow Chinese immigrants from coming to the US back then. That was a long time ago, you could argue that things have gotten better since then. But then in the 1940s, Japanese people got the brunt of the hatred and they were forced into internment camps. That’s not that long ago. And then as you get further into modern day, you realize, wait, it didn’t stop at all the civil rights movement wasn’t just about black people. Obviously, that was a huge part of that movement. But it also had huge impacts on the quality of all people of color. So we’re definitely included in that. And then 911 was probably like the most recent case of anti Asian in the the kind of broader sense. But basically, if you had brown skin, you were racially profiled during that time and had a lot of hate towards you. So net net, not new.

Jesse Lin 2:56
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look back at the history that you just walked us through. What I see basically is there’s a legacy of racism. But I think coming off of our episode last week where we talk about media representation, I think it’s also really important to take a look at things that are being really pushed by how the media or certain figures in the media, cough, cough, our president, are representing this pandemic to the public. And one of the things that we really want to talk about is why it’s problematic to present the virus as a Chinese virus or the Wu Han virus. You can see a lot of the reasons why from the who, but there are a number of problems with that. The first is that it really connects the illness to a specific group of people and creating that connection suggests or some kind of fault of the illness belonging to that region or that people and somehow that they caused it or they intended This Joker. It’s also problematic from the standpoint of people within here, because I think people can start to think about it. And of course, I think we all did through the lens of false security, because we were like, Oh, it’s simple on China, like, that’s so far away, like, there’s no way that’s gonna like get all the way here. It’s just like stars, it’s gonna die down. And I think that really gave a sense of false security to people where they should have been more more careful at the time. In a sense, it also scapegoats people, so people care less about what’s happening, where you’re talking about, oh, it’s, it’s a situation or it’s a disease, it’s happening over there. It doesn’t really matter to us. So I think there are things stemming out of the legacy of racism in the US, but there are also many, many things that are being instigated by, let’s say, exaggerated or miss information around the pandemic.

Angela Lin 4:52
Another challenge that’s been coming up and the reason behind a lot of the attacks that have been happening lately is that aside from the sense of have false security of like it it’s only happening in China. There’s also this misperception that like it’s in Chinese people’s blood or something that like if you’re Chinese you already have Coronavirus so like if you encounter a Chinese person on the street and they cough then like you’re gonna get Corona virus because they’re Chinese and they happen to be around you. I think that actually a huge portion of the attacks have been because they’re like, you Chinese person you have Coronavirus I don’t want and they’re like trying to they actually think that like ultra is love Coronavirus or something. So, that’s just like another form of stupidity but is like an association that we’ll have. Just because if you call it like the Chinese virus, especially, you know,

Jesse Lin 5:46
yeah, I definitely agree with you there. It’s a situation where immediately connects our community of people to this particular pandemic. And it eliminates all of the kind of critical thinking that happens in between Besides that, like all of that kind of is removed and replaced by this like terrible kind of gut reaction to the person based off of what they look like. Totally. Okay, so then to wrap up this kind of opening section to set up this topic, we want to talk a little bit about how it’s making this anti Asian movement right now is making us feel as Asian Americans. I mean, for me, it’s just kind of like getting a cold glass of water thrown in your face. Because, you know, part of the pursuit of my own personal life has been to go after all the things that will make me appear successful. And people always think that once you get to that level, you’re not touchable in a sense, like you’re above the lower layer of being able to be brought down by superficial things, and that people will see you for your merit and your contribution. And this is one of those situations where I mean by co glass of water, the phases you can see, it’s really not the case like there is really really deep seated hatred for other type people. And it really just comes roaring out and like that ugliness comes out and becomes a very visible in situations like this where it’s very extreme. There’s a very extreme circumstance. So for me, it’s literally like a cold glass of water to my face. I don’t know what to do. I’m a little bit in shock. I’m just kind of wondering what has happened because someone threw a cold glass of water in my face. So that’s how I’m feeling about seeing all this kind of new surface.

Angela Lin 7:45
Yeah, definitely for sure. For me also the I can relate to that cold glass of water feeling it also kind of like wakes you up to remind you that you’re different that you just from like an appearance standpoint, right? Like, that’s all they can base off of right now, especially when everyone’s wearing masks, right? It’s just like top half of your face pretty much, but they’re gonna judge you instantly based on that. So for me, it’s made me frankly scared and like paranoid to go outside because even though we both live in like, you know, super Metropolitan, multicultural cities, there’s still racism in both these cities. And certainly a lot of the attacks that have been happening have happened in both our cities. And so I don’t feel I don’t want to kid myself that just because I’m in San Francisco and not like Middle America that when I walk outside, there isn’t a chance that I’m going to get some negative attention. So when I do I really go outside now and when I do go for like grocery shopping or whatever, I’m super paranoid. I look all around me. I’m like expecting someone to yell at me at any moment. It’s just not a great way to live I hate it.

News Clip 9:04
Three Asian American family members, including a two year old and six year old were stabbed. The suspect indicated that he stabbed the family because he thought the family was Chinese and infecting people with the corona virus. It’s a

News Clip 9:18
disturbing video that has gotten worldwide attention. video posted to Instagram showing an older Asian man in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, collecting empty cans being confronted, assaulted and humiliated by a man as others watch

News Clip 9:36
Sunday night in Decker heights. Police say this 51 year old resident was simply taking out her garbage when a man doused or with some kind of chemical which burned her face, neck, shoulders and back. The Asian American victim was rushed to the hospital while the man took off.

Jesse Lin 9:55
Wow. So these are pretty heavy stories and I’m sure they’re stories that you You guys have heard they’ve been around the news pretty heavily. But we also wanted to take some time to focus on some local stories, some stories that are kind of near and dear to our hearts in our local communities. So I’ll kick it off to Angela to feature her first story.

Angela Lin 10:19
This story came from the incident report that’s run by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. So because people are scared to report these attacks, these daily incidents are happening to them to the police. So this council, which is a nonprofit that you all should donate to, but they starting like a month ago or more, created this incident report that is translated into many, many different Asian languages, making it as accessible as possible to all the various Asian communities that are facing hatred right now for people to easily and anonymously report what’s happening to them. them in the streets and just want to throw out a stat so everyone knew like the degree to which this is happening per week. That Council is receiving 1100 reports every week, which is insane because if you think about it 1100 is way low balling it, because these are only the people that are willing to fill out this form work. Yeah, like think about how many people are just like taking these, especially the verbal assaults and just like trying to brush it off, but obviously it’s like impacting their lives, right? If 1100 is what’s documented, I can only imagine how many are actually happening per week. It’s just crazy. So I wanted to highlight one that is a bit untraditional and shows you that this racism is like pervading into all different channels, platforms like ways of community, and it is just harboring this feeling of like we’re not safe anywhere. So The story that I’m choosing here was written in by someone in a university. And they talked about how they were holding a zoom conference because everyone has to, you know, do everything over video call right now. And I’m sure most of you have heard that zoom has been under a lot of security breaches recently, because so many people are now using zoom. And it’s like fairly easy for people to hack into other people’s conference calls. So basically, the student organization was using zoom to hold board elections for their organization. And there were 40 or more people on the call of all different Asian American descent and then all of a sudden, the call was interrupted by a bunch of random anonymous hackers, who started flooding the call with all this hateful speech, racial slurs, they were using, like fake broken English to mock everyone because they could see that everyone’s using And one of them apparently yells like all y’all have Coronavirus every single one of you. So this just goes again to that like, first of all just blind hatred but like definitely points to that bullshit of like people just assuming that because you’re Asian you have Coronavirus like fuck is that?

Jesse Lin 13:20
I agree and situations like this I always find really strange in a sense because like, you must be going like way, way, way way out of your way I’m talking like you drove five hours in the wrong direction to piss somebody off to show how deeply I think racism against Asians and racism in general is ingrained in the American like society, the public that someone would go so far out of their way to really put a group of people down for no reason like these people were minding their own business they were doing their own activity that had nothing to do with it. Wasn’t even organizing or anything, you know, that really pisses me off because you’re basically just, you’re basically just going into someone’s activity, like flipping them off for no reason. And then like leaving, that’s awful. And I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that.

Angela Lin 14:15
It also feels so invasive. Like, can you imagine if like, our FaceTime that we’re doing right now is someone randomly like hacked it and started yelling racial slurs at us? Like, I would be so shocked at like, you wouldn’t know how to react because that’s not what I expect within the context of like having this seemingly intimate conversation.

Jesse Lin 14:36
Yeah. And I also think it’s to what we were saying earlier, like, it’s not what you would expect from another person in general, right, like that level of hatred. Usually, people are like, you have to work to earn that hatred from somebody like you really got to work, but like to, for somebody to just come up into your private space, as you mentioned, and be so vile to you, you know, that’s really deep, deep. In great hatred, I think, as with all things like this, it hurts both you and the person that you’re trying to attack, right? Like, frankly, it’s a personal waste of time for a hacker, not because they’re just gonna reschedule their board meeting and they’re gonna move on,

Angela Lin 15:17
like, at

Jesse Lin 15:19
least so you’re really just wasting your own time. You know, twiddling and pissing other people off for no reason.

Angela Lin 15:26
It also makes me kind of sad because like, when hatred is directed towards young people, especially like these were University kids like they’re not even like full grown adults out in society, right? Like, I don’t know, part of me is like, I’d like to shield them from from all the hatred that’s happening outside and it makes me really sad that like they’re experiencing this there was like, No, there’s no shelter right now because everything’s happening over the internet. So it’s like all all bets are off. I have

Jesse Lin 15:59
to agree with with you on that point regarding, I think what you’re talking about in terms of their sense, although we know we’re not at innocence in college, right? I’m just saying, like, college for me was such a great couple of years because I found a group of people who like really treated me for me uplifted me and celebrated the person that I am. For that not to be the experience of someone else, I think is it is really, really sad and disheartening, something like that is just like, really, you just feel icky about it, and you feel gross, and you don’t feel nice, because you didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t like anything that you did, and there’s nothing you did to deserve it and nothing you can do to prevent it. And I think that both of those things are really hard for a person to swallow.

Angela Lin 16:48
So that was mine, and what did you want to share?

Jesse Lin 16:51
Yeah, so what I wanted to share was kind of just a very local incidents of basically something One being tact or looking Asian. And basically what happened was there was an attack of a woman on a New York City Bus by a bunch of teenage girls. And it happened up in the Bronx. I think in like, basically the middle of the day, she wasn’t doing anything. So this is one of those things that I wanted to feature. There are multiple things that go against the idea that racism doesn’t exist anymore. And the first thing is, it happened in a very visible place. The woman is riding on public bus. It happened during the day so it’s not like the woman was riding the bus at like a really late hour or an hour you might consider to be unsafe. So those are like the first two things like you know, people always blame the victim time in the place. Well, it’s not the situation for her. And the third thing is that there is always the kind of everybody loses scenario with these attacks because then people immediately Always minorities attacking minorities, look at how gross all of them are. And so I think that those are all, like huge problems that are like lumped up into this, this one attack. And what makes me feel really sad about it is that same with your situation, it’s unprovoked, like people are kind of going out of their way to make other people miserable. And in doing so harming themselves because if she got the Coronavirus, you have it now from attacking. You probably wouldn’t have had it. So, you know, like, it’s all these things where you’re kind of just like, you can slowly, slowly see people devolve into just the like, like the gross, emotional like nasty gut reaction. That is what racism basically is where you’re just kind of like, Oh, no, like, Oh, this other person. I don’t like that. with that. Really analyzing what’s driving those emotions. This story was just very upsetting for me.

Angela Lin 19:07
The minority against minority thing really troubles me because it’s interesting the way you put it up, like it puts all of us down when this kind of stuff happens. But the way I read it was more like, we should be standing up for each other, like, you know, every PRC has gone through some shit for, you know, each community has had its own struggles based on the way they look and the history that they’ve had with America and with white people. And so, especially during this kind of time, we should be banding together, not trying to like separate us apart even further. So that like really bothered me. And then the attackers were like 15 or something, right, like they were younger kids. And so to your point of like, hatred and racism, just being these like gut reactions, like you’re not even thinking about it. Kids also I, I feel kind of bad for them. But I’d also also not, but I’m kind of like, was it worth it for you to have to display that kind of act? Because you’ve now probably like ruined your life? Because if you didn’t already have a criminal record before you certainly do now and like, what implication does that have on your future?

Jesse Lin 20:24
Yeah, I think that really goes to the insidiousness of racism related to kind of what you were saying with age I it’s another it’s another thing that refutes the idea that racism is just extremism right. It’s only those crazy people who live in their you know, who live in the swamp and where kkk hats. It’s like a minority of people. It’s not, it can like you can anyone can have a racist reaction to something I can’t speak to you and be and tell you that I’ve never had a racist reaction. Just something I had tough. We have, I think Everybody does. But it really matters. What happens after you have that feeling like, are you going to think about what you’re feeling and try to diffuse that, or you’re just going to act with crazy. And I think that’s, that’s one of those. This is one of those situations that really highlights that racism is not like a pocket thing that lives in only areas that are not Metro, major metropolitan areas. It’s everywhere. It’s in everyone. And there’s always the potential that it can kind of pop out. The other thing that I wanted to talk about with age, and I think I feel particularly privileged about it is I personally feel like most of these I mean, anecdotally, I feel like most of these attacks happen against older Asian Americans, people who look like they might have immigrant immigrated here because I think that’s what people are seeing on the news stories when they see like oh, virus came from China cut just shot of Wu Han is like old people like people who look just like people here because They emigrated from there, right? They dress the same, they kind of maybe have some of the same mannerisms, versus like we don’t, we look very much like we’re westernized kids, basically. So that’s the other thing is that I feel in a way, privileged in a bad way because I don’t look like I’m from there. And as as a result of that, I don’t feel as I do feel like I need to be more careful as I go outside, but I don’t feel as pressured as I think I would if I looked like someone who just immigrated here.

Angela Lin 22:34
That’s a really interesting point of view. I would play devil’s advocate here in that when I was in Spain and you also studied abroad in Spain, we have very similar college lives, but I’m one of the thoughts that I kept having in my mind was like, I literally look nothing like these Chinese immigrants that are in Spain, because for those of you who Don’t know, in Spain, all of the people who own the kind of like corner stores delis, and like pawning things on the street are Chinese immigrants, and they are like straight from China Chinese people. So I didn’t feel like I looked anything like them. Like I’m very dark, they’re very light, I dress very differently. I obviously my like accent for when I speak Spanish would be very different because I’m basing it off an American accent, you know. So there are all these things in my head where I’m like, it’s so obvious that I’m like, different from those people. And yet, we talked about this before, but like, you know, I was getting called Cina like on this tree every fucking day every five seconds because in their minds, I didn’t look any different from from those people. So like, I do think there was a bit of like a narrow view when we’re thinking of like, I’m so different from that group, because to the point of before, we’re talking about us as an Asian community being seen as the other and itself. actually being carved out as other now during this like dividing time, I think it’s very easy for non Asian people to group us all together, whether you’re straight from Asia just moved here a month ago or you have you’re born here like sixth generation Asian American, I don’t think that line is necessarily there right now. And for me the age of like that woman being old and a lot of old people being attached for me, I see that more as like they are easy targets. Like these attackers have a lot of hate and they’re trying to find some scapegoat. And they know that old people are an easy target. Like you’re not going to fight back as much as a young person who’s fit and healthy. It’s easier to attack a helpless old person that makes me really sad. But that’s my perspective of why it’s happening a lot to old people not so much. I think there is definitely a point of like similarity that you could perceive of like, you know, they they act orange Press more like the people in hon. But I think it more has to do with like their fragility.

Jesse Lin 25:06
Wow. I mean, honestly, that just makes me feel worse about it like, person while they’re down like, yeah, Jesus. So we know that there are many, many reports of things that are not great that are happening across the country and in our communities. But we also want to highlight some really good shining, bright moments that have been happening through all of this and how members of our community are really coming together and making things happen in this crisis. So Angela, would you like to share your uplifting story of the week?

Angela Lin 25:45
Yes, for my uplifting story today, I wanted to kind of tie together our last few episodes and draw on something that is coming from our homeland, Taiwan. So for those who are not aware, Taiwan is one of the major success stories of the COVID outbreak right now because they opted super early like as soon as the first few cases were reported from Mohan they’re like shut the shut down because you know Taiwan’s very close to China so they were able to take super swift action make sure that they the cutoff travel they implemented the must wear masks or you’re going to be fined heavily rules and overall just did like really, really well to the point that now months after the first case was reported in hon like they are reporting some of the lowest numbers today. And that’s it’s just such a shining light. And so it’s already really awesome that like you know, our motherland is one of the shining examples of having really strong policy during this time. But not only that, they’re not just like gloating about their success. They’re doing something about trying to help the rest of the international community. So So my uplifting story is about how Taiwan in the last week or two announced that they are donating 10 million masks globally.

Jesse Lin 27:10
Wow.

Angela Lin 27:12
So they are donating 7 million to Europe because you know, Spain, Italy, etc are getting hit real hard. So they’re disproportionately donating a lot to Europe and 2 million to the US. This is just so uplifting because it’s like, it’s such a good show of leadership to you from the president because she has come out in a lot of speeches to be like, you know, this is not the time to just focus on our little community. This is the time to band together as the international community like we are one, you know, human race, so we need to help each other out and donating this much of your money and your resources to help out countries that are not your own is just like such an uplifting story for me, and I’m sure for a lot of people, so I’m very proud of our motherland. Oh, oh, this is such a cute story. By fact, the man who invented the at 95 respirators Peter Tsai is Taiwanese. I did not know that.

Jesse Lin 28:17
I actually was listening to NPR. And they were he’s retired now. But when all of this happened, they brought him out of retirement. They’re like, Can you figure out how we can reuse these masters? Because we don’t have enough of them.

Angela Lin 28:30
That’s amazing. Yeah, yeah, Taiwanese, I love it. All right. So what’s your story uplifting stories.

Jesse Lin 28:37
So my uplifting story is about a restaurant called Zen Ya. Here in my neighborhood in Sunnyside, Queens, maybe one or two miles away from one of the most hardest affected areas in the city, which is like the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens. So that hospital has been hit really hard with patients and not enough equipment. So they’ve been looking. I mean, they really been looking for like resources peepee like people to just help out. And I think what I’ve seen come out of the community in terms of like restaurants and people, volunteering their time and services, there has been phenomenal. And I just wanted to focus on this particular restaurant because I have eaten there before. And it’s really nice. And be actually the owners of this restaurant, their restaurant burned down last year. So they’re technically like, not even really in the community anymore. But they’re still helping to support the Elmhurst hospital by joining the community kind of push to have food made available for all the hospital workers during this time period. And I think that this is just it’s really it’s a small thing, but it’s small acts like these like small gestures like this that come from the local community that I really do think matter and are really important to kind of counterbalance the terrible things that we were just talking about earlier. So I really love that this effort is community driven. I really love that despite the hardships that this restaurant and restaurant or team has gone through, they still feel like they belong to the community and they want to give something back during a difficult time like this

Angela Lin 30:20
so selfless, especially after having a disastrous fire burning down your restaurant moment. So recently, it’s like going beyond your own personal troubles and focusing on the bigger picture.

Angela Lin 31:07
All right, so we are now in our fortune cookie closing section. And even though this episode has been quite heavy in a lot of ways, we wanted to make sure that we still end on a sweet treat. And Jesse will tell you more about what that is. Don’t worry, it’s tasteful. But before we get into that, we did want to plug our usual call to action to have you guys email us about your opinion on this topic. So we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter if you have experienced any harassment during this time, or if you’ve seen some really uplifting stuff coming from the community or helping the community during this time. Those are all things that we’d love to hear from you. And we’d love to share on an upcoming episode. So feel free to email us. telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. And again that y-o-u-r-e

Jesse Lin 32:09
So speaking of uplifting things. We wanted to cap off our episode this week by giving you guys information to some local and national groups where you can donate if you’re interested to contribute to the fight against racism and empowerment of our communities. So, I’m going to feature the one that I picked for New York City, which is the Chinese American Planning Council. And their mission is to promote the social empowerment of Chinese American, American, immigrant and low income communities. And if you didn’t know this, you can donate directly to them through the link in our description, or you can set them as your default donation recipient it smiles.amazon.com

Angela Lin 33:00
Other groups nonprofits, Jesse covered off East Coast, I’m going to cover off West Coast. So earlier I mentioned the group that founded that incident report that’s helping give a voice to all of the people in the community that are experiencing harassment during this time. That is the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. I think they’re playing a huge role right now in shining a light on what’s happening to our community and giving legitimacy and data to our policymakers to do something about it. And a fun fact they are la based so they are representing California and they are also a nonprofit. So you can either donate to them at the link that again is in our show notes, or you can set your amazon smile preference to them if you prefer to donate to California base one.

Jesse Lin 33:55
The final organization we wanted to plug tonight is a national organization, Southern Poverty Law Center. I think many of you guys might notice that from seeing various press releases that they put out. But this organization basically tracks and documents racist groups around the US and their focus is on addressing inequality both from the racist racism standpoint, Immigration Equality, LGBT equality. So once all this is over, and kind of the immediate in your face racism is gone. We hope that everyone will continue to donate to the organizations which is plugged before as well as national organizations like this to continue to empower our disenfranchised communities.

Angela Lin 34:43
Yeah, I just want to plug that like even though we focus this episode on what’s happening to the Asian community right now, under the context of the COVID-19 situation. Racism happens all the time and not just to our communities. So this is The time to band together for all people of color. So that’s why we wanted to highlight an organization that’s not just focused on the Asian community but helping to stop hatred of all of all communities.

Jesse Lin 35:13
Yeah. So link to SPL center will also be found in the description of the podcast episode. Yes.

Angela Lin 35:21
Yeah. All right. So, as always, if you liked this episode, we ask that you please like follow, subscribe, and share. I think that’s something that we share a lot. But please do if you’re enjoying this so that we can make sure that we keep coming out with new content each week. And with that said, Come back next week because we will have a new episode for you then.

Jesse Lin 35:46
Until then…

All 35:47
Zai jian, bitches!

Episode 6 – Hey Mom, I’m (Not) on TV!

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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 0:09
Hey there, I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:09
And I’m Angela Lin, and welcome to another episode of but where are you really from?

Jesse Lin 0:16
This week we’re going to talk about media representation. So why do we care about media representation? I think that what we see in the media creates kind of boundaries or barriers for us every day that we have to confront and knock down. We really wanted to after reviewing the movie Tiger tail and discussing an immigrant story, really dive into how Asian American stories are told in the media now how its transformed through the years and where we think that it’s gonna be.

Angela Lin 0:51
Yeah, the reason why media representation and showcasing Asian stories is so important is that the media For better, for worse represents what people think is normal and representative of the real world and who matters. So the fact that we are now starting as Asians and Asian Americans to be represented more and more in mainstream media, not just TV and film films in our motherland countries makes it so that we’re being legitimized as like, just as important as anyone else in society versus before when you never saw Asians on the silver screen. You know, I think at least for me, growing up, it was like, Am I normal? Is this like, how come I don’t see anyone who looks like me when I watch something, right? Mm hmm. So that’s why we care.

Angela Lin 1:48
But let’s get into kind of where is it now. my perspective is that we’re in a way better place than we were when movies and TV and all that for started so Obviously the fact that Jessica and I were able to dedicate a whole episode to a movie about the Taiwanese immigrants story last week says a lot about the breadth and depth of Asian stories that are able to be told today. But back when TV and film for started Asians were actually included as characters, but in Super problematic ways. So if you think about things like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, all of these like old school productions that people constantly think of as cult classics, they have Asian characters in them, and yet they’re actually played by white people. And they’re always played in this super stereotypical, like, exaggerated, frankly, racist way. So that character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s like he’s wearing huge fake teeth, he has slit eyes and it’s played by like Mickey Rooney ears like like it’s totally not an Asian person. So offensive. Fast forward to like today. Yes, we have like, the john shows the world breaking through and like not just cast because he’s Asian but cast, despite him being Asian kind of characters, like that’s phenomenal. But there’s also a bunch of whitewashing again, white people being cast in what should have been Asian character roles. So some progress has been made, but fuck, we have a long way to go.

Angela Lin 3:34
Within the context of knowing that we’ve made some progress, but have a long way to go, we wanted to talk about media representation in terms of some big themes that we find either problematic or are trying to get kind of like why we haven’t been fully represented up to this point. So the first theme that we learned to hone in on was Around kind of this concept of being typecast into roles,

Jesse Lin 4:06
yeah. So from what we were discussing before about how media representation is no way a reality it helps normalize and also make visible, different people through different stories. And the way that those stories play out and how frequent and common they are create what we also discussed, which are I feel personal like barriers, both external and internal, meaning that what you see is basically what you get in reality in a lot of situations. So I think something that has improved but has continued to be a problem in media is the roles and ways that Asian people are used in those specific roles. So we see in a lot of like television shows or movies, that a usually Asian people are not cast in the roles and be If they are casting any roles, they’re usually very stereotypical roles. They’ll have like the Asian person, as a doctor, as a lawyer, as an engineer, so things that are very stereotyped to being Asian. And this is really challenging because there’s a whole set of Asian people that don’t do those occupations. So it’s, I think, a problem to be only seen in that way where you, you only possess these specific characteristics, because then you also become fit into a general description of those particular roles. So they’re like very, those roles are all very like clinical like uptight, straight and narrow roles. The roles themselves enforce some characteristics upon Asian people that we don’t always want to adhere to, like, we’re people and we have dimensions. So I think that the idea of seeing model minority in media is really negative in the sense because it forces you to confront this general idea of what others think of you, when you know it’s not true. So it’s always really, really uncomfortable to see, like typecast model minority bulls. I totally

Angela Lin 6:12
agree. And I feel like a big reason why we’re typecast is because we are not the main character. Most of the time these kinds of characters are just like background filler, right? Like they’re so nice and they’re one dimensional is because it’s like, we had to like check a box of like, we included some minorities, caste or whatever, but like, there, I don’t have time, nor do I care to flesh out this character to have their own story or personality to enhance just the super one dimensional stereotype that I’m attributing to them.

Jesse Lin 6:49
Honestly, I think that’s the biggest shame in the whole way that Asian people are represented because what you just said is basically that it’s lazy thinking right? Like they don’t want to take the time to fly to really think about how a character’s background and really play into how they’re seen in that particular scene or movie or whatever. So I personally think it’s just a shame because it’s also an opportunity to really improve the stories we’re telling by integrating a wider the more dynamic range of a person into the into that role.

Angela Lin 7:21
Alright, so speaking of kind of stereotypes, I outside of occupational stereotype, there’s also the way that Asians are portrayed in terms of masculinity or femininity. Let’s split it by gender so that we present I feel like from a like a female standpoint, certainly for sure, like in the older film, and I think even to like more modern stuff to Asian women are constantly portrayed as just these like, super dama saw like quiet obedient. Honestly, just like don’t holes that are there like Billy’s the man and I hate when they are cast as like the trophy wife or like fuck no, not trophy wife we don’t even deserve that label as Asians we’re just the mail order wives, right of like old white men because then you really are just like you’re not a real person. There’s this like side thing that has been bought and is like serves one purpose and one purpose only which is like sex and like to be there so they’re not lonely that’s like it. And I think it’s rare that Asian women outside of the context of like, kung fu movies, which another like whole rant to talk about but like it when they are not the main character and it’s not within the context of like a historical drama or kung fu type movie like Asian women just are portrayed as like meek

Jesse Lin 8:59
Yeah, I have to agree with With that, I mean, even in the movies where you do have strong Asian woman leading a lot of the times, they’re written in a way where it’s like, she’s portraying inner strength and they’re just like putting her through the wringer. And you’re kind of just like, okay, but like she, she could have betrayed also, like, outer strength, strength and confidence, like you should didn’t have written in that way. So, I like 100% agree with you on that.

Jesse Lin 9:24
From the masculinity side, I actually think it is pretty tied to the role in some aspects and then other aspects of not. And what I mean by that is, if you think about those roles that we just discussed, doctors, lawyers, engineers, these are very male dominated industry. So it’s kind of a very interesting typecast to put an Asian man into a male dominated interesting because they align right so you’re like, very logical, methodical male and a logical, methodical industry. But then when you try to get into like the new ones, The character bring more depth into the character, you start to see that that’s not like consistently applied, especially when you look at romantic movies or movies that have scenes of romance in them. There’s almost never any way where an Asian male is seen as sexy. And it’s so funny because on one hand, you have them in these like very lack of a better man the roles but on the other hand, you refuse to acknowledge the fact that they can also be seen as desirable attractive, and so you only have like one piece of that person, which always comes off as one dimensional, right? It’s just like, this person is a doctor and that’s really all there is to them. Which when you’re watching something that’s dramatic, it’s emotional. It’s trying to get a rise out of you seeing that is kind of just like, oh, okay, like this is not like I don’t really, I can’t connect with that because that person just literally has that one, one facet. to them.

Angela Lin 11:00
Yeah. And I also feel like this emphasis on masculinity and like being sexy or portrayed as sexy for men is super detrimental in the real world, right? Because I definitely remember seeing some stats around like online dating from maybe a few years ago, but like Asian men are like, the least desirable statistically or like one of the least desirable groups of people on online dating, at least I think it was only for straight people. But like, yeah, the sad I saw what was reflecting that and I think it is because people are seeing these reinforced like, fake, fake stories about what a male Asian is supposed to be like. So they just assume that like, they’re not able to find their sexy, hunky masculine man in an Asian because that’s what media is. telling them about these people.

Jesse Lin 12:02
Absolutely. 100%. I mean, like, I can just anecdotally say, like, when I was on Grindr here, that’s how I felt. When I was on Grindr and Asia, I felt like a frickin celebrity. Like being hit up, like non stop. So it hundred percent is because the local people in Asia are used to seeing themselves represented in the media. So they’re like, they are attracted to the people there because those are the people there. But here where we have a mix of people, the media still predominantly portraying masculine, sexualized role as like this one kind of binary and then everyone else kind of just misses out.

Angela Lin 12:40
Yeah. Okay. We kind of touched on kung fu and martial arts. And I did want to dive in a little bit here because in terms of kind of like, additional stereotypes and ways that Asians have been able to break into Hollywood, for better for worse, I mean, the like Bruce Lee’s, of the world. worlds right? Like we’re able to kind of mainstream the presence of Asian people in Hollywood. And like in very early days, but that is only because it was kind of through this accepted vehicle that white people felt like okay and not threatened by which is kung fu and martial arts because they’re like, Well, yeah, is when people do those things and we don’t do those things. That’s fine. It’s like an Asian man is, is the one kind of being the star lead here. But I think it was really hard for us to break away from that, like think about Jackie Chan, right. Like, he was only doing martial art related fit. Yeah, yeah. Asians just kind of had to like accept the the roles that white film producers and directors and writers were willing to cast them in, because it was like take it or leave it. You want to be in this or not like you’re allowed to fit in a certain square that we accept you to be So go for it or don’t,

Jesse Lin 14:02
unfortunately, I feel like for a lot of Asian American actors really like their only opportunity to make it big in Hollywood was probably to do one of those blockbuster films where the role is one of those fetishized things that people like about Asian culture with the hopes that you could do like a wider range of work afterwards, but to what you were saying about Jackie Chan, I think he has done different movies with wider, like wider scope, but definitely not like American blockbusters. I think a lot of people don’t want to be stuck in that position where they are basically like, you’re always the kung fu person, you’re always making the, you’re always making the kung fu movies. So I think that part of that leads to hesitancy in producing stories like these because people don’t necessarily want to be like that person who’s always going to be making that story.

Angela Lin 14:57
So we’re getting into this like people not wanting to like pigeonhole themselves into certain roles or story types. And I do think there are some good examples of Asian and Asian American folks in the entertainment industry today that are trying really hard not to be pigeonholed and so like awkwafina is a really good example like I mean she was this like unexpected breakout right to be an Ocean’s eight with like all those huge weight and mini killing but like look love money and it didn’t matter that she was Asian in that you know, like she just happened to be Asian and then like she’s been very thoughtful of the roles that she’s taken since then and even if she’s in quote unquote Asian movies like they are ones that shot that tell the story in like a genuine and and positive light right so like the farewell was definitely like a very breakthrough movie in terms of like how Crossing that barrier of English and caption, like necessary type movie and like telling the Chinese family and like cultural story in a really authentic way. And then now she’s actually in she’s in a like Viacom show where she’s like a stoner like a college dropout or something like just like defying the norms of what Asian people are constantly being cast of. I think she’s doing great. And then like Aziz Ansari, for example, is like, you know, always breaking the mold of what Indian people are supposed to be. He’s a great example. And then, of course, Mindy Kaling, I could talk the whole episode about her. I love her so much.

Jesse Lin 16:44
I mean, it does speak to the progress that we’ve seen that these individuals are able to pick and choose the stories that they feel that they can truly embody and bring to light because I feel like you know, if fuzzies for awkwafina or Mindy Kaling had been trying to break in at that point in time, it would have been really difficult. But now, people are interested in seeing and hearing these stories. And that allows people to take more risks on the type of projects they want to do with a type of stories they want to tell. And in turn, it gives everyone more opportunities to do really interesting creative things and bring to light stories about people cultures, experiences that haven’t been told before.

Angela Lin 17:29
I think we’re getting to a really important topic, which is kind of like why haven’t we been fully represented? A Novel not a lot of Asian people are working in the industry. So it’s hard to be authentic to our culture, if you’re not actually from our culture, right. I think that the reason why we’re making progress a lot of times now is because we are getting more Asians into this like non traditional career path. It’s not something that was supported. by a lot of Asian parents, so these people had to like, go against what their parents are pressuring them, I’m sure as young kids and like what they were supposed to do for their future. But like they got their way into Hollywood and like kind of paid their dues doing other things. And then now they have like credible reputations. So like a lot of reasons that stuff’s being produced now is because they’re the ones like writing it. So not easy work, but like we’re getting it done because we’re infiltrating the system or ourselves,

Jesse Lin 18:35
aside from the fact that there are now people in the industry where there weren’t before. I think part of the reason why we really didn’t see a lot of detailed stories about different experiences in the past is that the general American population is not interested in seeing stories because they’re nice stories. So I think that’s been part of the reason why a studio or produce or company would not invest in a movie or production or story that has no these Nish elements in it but I think part of that is really not true right like we see now all these movies are coming out and there is a lot of demand for them and not just demand from people with Asian backgrounds but a lot of those popular movies with Asian cast that just came out like these rich Asians or the farewell are like really received well received by a wide range of people. And I also think that people stopped waiting just like how we’re producing this podcast we know someone’s interested we’re not going to wait for someone to remind you what we already know we’re gonna go and make it

Angela Lin 19:39
I mean, I do think one movie that was like taking good strides to change things in the right way is crazy rich Asians, which like, I think is a polarizing movie people have like different feelings about it, especially amongst Asian community but I am going to put out there that like trying to be like objective have about it in terms of like, Okay, forget if you like them or not, but in terms of casting an all Asian cast into a mainstream hollywood movie, and really portraying the men as like super sexy means that you like people that you really want to get with, like, I remember being a little uncomfortable, but like also he when like, they, like panned in on kind of unnecessarily long shower scene or whatever at the time, you’re like, Oh, wow. Like they’re trying to change it. So I do think there are strides that are being made to try to like change that identity, but it’s like little baby steps at a time, right.

Jesse Lin 20:52
Yeah, I agree. I also think that that movie contained a lot of things that were specifically things to break The stereotype so while you’re saying like having an all Asian cast, number one having Asian males in lead roles where they are seen as sexy and sexualized awkwafina was also in it. So female comic Asian, so someone that’s loud and boisterous as opposed to introspective. I’m also just depicting like the whole gamut of Asian families that exist. So you have like Henry Golding’s family, who’s fabulously wealthy, and we have that we know we have families like that. And then on the other hand, you have constant whose family who’s like a very similar story to our parents. So there’s all these really great kind of things that are hidden in there. They’re like, really, I really enjoyed because they’re, yeah, they’re like a big fuck you to how how Asians have been portrayed. So I think something else that is really great as some of the new blockbusters that are coming out are like this fusion that’s span the gap between Western interests and Asian interests.

Jesse Lin 22:04
So some of the examples that we’ve seen so far are the live action Disney remake of Mulan, where there is a very, how would you say it Angela like “wu xia” to it, or like, it is very like martial arts, but the blockbusters done in a way where it’s very like, almost like a Western action movie. So it’s like combined two good things to produce kind of happy medium between Western and Eastern filmmaking where there’s, let’s say, a more Western approach to the action, but it respects the roots of where that form of action is coming from.

Angela Lin 22:41
I do think this movie in particular is like taking something super familiar, and putting a twist on it. So like, to a certain extent, I’m kind of like man Disney be ripping off China, but on the other hand, I’m like, hey, whatever it takes to like, get authentic Chinese storytelling and filmmaking, to be accepted in like mainstream Western media so that we can start making these like blended forms of media more common and acceptable. So Fine.

Jesse Lin 23:14
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s good and more people are exposed to it. I think it’s also a really good example how studios and companies in general are willing to take more risks on telling stories like this. It does really show how far things have come. I mean, I just I remember like, literally maybe like two years ago there was that Matt Damon movie great. That’s like the opposite of what we’re talking about. To go from Mac to this. I think it does show a lot of progress. We’ve also seen kind of like, I feel like everyone talks about culture in the sense that it like leaks from the west to the east and like, everybody loves our stuff, but there’s also reverse of that. So like Bollywood is already A great example of something that’s produced locally and has gained a lot of popularity here. I mean, within the Indian community, but also in general is just so amazing and memorable and just fun to watch. And also, things like Kpop which, which is not like movie media, but it’s music media that a lot of people here are interested in that are not Korean or are interesting.

Angela Lin 24:29
Yeah, it’s a it’s like so heartwarming to see a bunch of white people singing Korean, they had to like intently learn those words and like what they mean and they do it because they love it so much. And it doesn’t matter that these guys are Korean. They’re actually willing to go past that barrier to like, learn a different language to a certain extent, so that they can fulfill this fandom. I love it. I love it so much.

Jesse Lin 24:58
Yeah, I mean 100 percent speaks to the fact that if what you’re producing is good, people will want to listen to it, they will want to consume it. It doesn’t really matter who is communicating it as long as it’s great content. And it’s really great to see that kind of like cross culture pollination were things that are foreign are coming here.

Jesse Lin 25:30
We’re now in the closing section of our podcasts fortune cookie, as we always like to end with something sweet. If you like this week’s episode, or you had some thoughts about media representation, please let us know what your thoughts are. Send your feedback, your personal thoughts, anything that you want to tell us about today’s topic? to our email? telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that’s y-o-u-r-e. So this week we want to close with something fun. We’re going to talk about which famous Asian actor actresses we are currently crushing on.

Angela Lin 26:10
Yeah, so I’m a huge The Good Place fan, really sad that the series just ended. But I love Jason from the good place. Manny Jacinto he is so hot as most Filipino breakdancer people are. But I also really, really appreciate it that throughout the entire series Kristen Bell’s character constantly reminded everyone of how high Jason was. Because again, like just is subconsciously reinforcing that Asian men can be sexy and like doing that anti masculinity stuff that we were talking about before. So, Jason from the good place. That’s mine. How about you?

Jesse Lin 26:53
Before I started, have you seen him read through his tweets on BuzzFeed? Oh my god, you should go. You should go do it. Oh my god. It’s so funny. Hilarious I love it. It’s so funny. Okay, so for me, I am picking will Yun Lee, he’s been acting for a while now he’s like 49, almost 50 but I recently like rediscovered my crush for him because he was on altered carbon, the new Netflix season and he is smoking in altered carpet like he is in such good shape that it’s like, it’s like so amazing. And like so I’m like immediately crushing on him. And he’s also pretty, like he plays the part like really well. It’s like really physically intensive. It’s just like amazing to watch him perform in the physicality of our role.

Angela Lin 27:43
Yeah, that’s crazy.

Jesse Lin 27:45
Yeah, I mean, go watch it and you’ll be like that man is not 50

Angela Lin 27:49
he’s like the Asian Jared Leto vampire for life.

Jesse Lin 27:53
Yeah vampire for like, he was really good.

Angela Lin 27:57
Nice and to the point of sending In stuff feel free to email us with your favorite Asian celebrity as well just for shits and giggles. That’d be a fun thing for us to repost those. Yeah. Love it. Okay, well, so as always, we really appreciate all of your support each week would really help us if you like, follow and subscribe to us at whichever of your favorite podcast listening platforms you’re on. that’ll really help us get more visibility and ensure that you get the latest episode each week. And with that said, definitely come back next week because we will have a fresh episode for you.

Angela Lin 28:36
in closing…

All 28:36
Zai jian, bitches!

Episode 5 – A Tiger’s Tale of Finding Home

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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 0:14
Hey there, I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:15
And I’m Angela Lin, and welcome to another episode of but where are you really from?

Jesse Lin 0:21
So this week, we’re going to have a little discussion around a new Netflix movie called Tiger tail, directed by writer and director Alan Yang, who I think was really famous for capturing this on the episode parents in master of none. So this movie is really about the experience of a Taiwanese immigrant and kind of all of the hopes and dreams he left behind when he immigrated to the US. So we’re definitely going to get into some of the specific plot points and what happens in movies. So big spoiler alert right now. And why do we want to cover it? Angela?

Angela Lin 1:04
Yeah, we thought it was really important to cover for two main reasons. One, I think we have a, we had a personal interest in covering it because like Jesse and I have said, We’re both Taiwanese American, and the movie is loosely based on Ellen’s father’s experience. So it’s like, supporting a movie about a familiar ish story that we can relate to just based on our on our own families. And also from a not just us standpoint, in general, I think it’s important for Asian Americans to be making this kind of content watching and supporting this kind of content. Now, we’re in a new age where Asians are being represented more given more opportunities to show their voice and tell their stories in mass media. And so it’s really important to Shine a light as much as possible on these stories and give it that halo effect that it deserves. So that’s why we wanted to cover it. The way that we wanted to talk about Tiger tail as not just as a kind of subjective review of like, did we like it? Did we not like it? We thought that the most productive way to talk about this movie was more in terms of what are some of the big themes that and topics that they highlighted within the movie? And how do those resonate with us based on similar experiences that either we have had or parents have had, and tying that together so that it builds on what we watched?

Jesse Lin 2:37
Yeah. So I think one of the first things that’s really noteworthy about this particular movie is that it comes from the perspective of an immigrant, specifically a Taiwanese immigrant versus a lot of other movies and media out there are really about kind of the first generation child or Asian Americans, or even a step past that where you just have Asian American actress count And kind of generic roles that don’t have a story about their ethnic backgrounds or their cultures. And so this is a really interesting refreshing step back to look at a story about someone who immigrated from Taiwan, and to tell a story that very few people have heard. And I think a lot of people will feel that when I say that, because even for myself and Angela, we only very recently asked our parents about their experiences coming here and what they left behind and what their lives were like. It’s not something that they voluntarily put out there. So this is the kind of story that is really rare to hear.

Angela Lin 3:36
Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things coming out of this movie is this concept of our immigrant parents having entire lives that we didn’t know about, like they were once young too, and they also have struggles and really rich experiences in very different contexts than we did. And I think because of a lot of what we’ve discussed previously about Trying to like hide your emotions and not showing too much of your cards out into the public. I think our parents just generally don’t like go about talking about their their lives unless we care to ask. Right. So based on your recent talk with your parents, what’s the most interesting thing you didn’t know about their past life?

Jesse Lin 4:23
Most of the things I feel like it’s not like trying to read a book. It’s almost like a interrogation with a not very interested person who doesn’t want to be there. In a sense, like, Oh, I didn’t know. I was here I thought, but like, whatever. So usually, the information I get out of my parents is pretty limited because I have to ask them very probing questions really hard to have a continued conversation about like what actually happened in their lives.

Angela Lin 4:54
That’s interesting. Your parents are probably more similar to my mom. When I asked Her stuff, she was willing to answer my questions but she didn’t color in additional areas I didn’t ask about versus My dad is really funny because he actually in general is like fairly strong and silent type like the, like the father kind of in the movie in the tiger tail movie, but when you do get them talking is like quite the storyteller. It’s hard to get them to stop. And one of the most interesting fun facts that he told me was when he was a kid, he went to Catholic kindergarten, because at the time, they were out in like, you know, rural Taiwan and there wasn’t free education or caretaking for kids of that age. And when missionaries came to Taiwan and they started trying to get people you know, converted to Catholicism, one of the things they did was set up kindergartens and so my dad attended one of those, and it’s super funny because he’s like, I still Remember, like all all the prayers to marry and like when I go into a Catholic church today I can still like sing like, Latin song and whatever. But he said he went because you know, similar to the movie integrity already, like our parents going away poorer than we were, he was like, Yeah, a big reason I went is because every week they gave us like a free bag of corn meal or like grain or rice or something got like we could take home.

Jesse Lin 6:29
Yeah, what I bought from the movie is kind of how I feel about the conversations with our parents. Because I think throughout the movie, the main character is really struggling with how to reconcile the different parts of his life, and then also how to how to like tell the story to someone, or if it even matters, he says to the fact of you know, even if I told you, what would it have affected what would have changed, and I feel that a lot of the times in the conversation With my parents because I feel like they’re thinking like, well, what are you trying to understand from it? And like, if I tell you like, you know, what does it matter anyways? It’s very much a cultural thing because like, even as a little kid, one of the main things that his grandmother tells him is like to not cry, to not feel emotions about it. You know, it’s not really even if you do feel emotions, even if you do cry, like what good is that gonna do you anyways?

Angela Lin 7:26
You’re not rewarded for showing emotion or vulnerability. Yeah,

Jesse Lin 7:32
yeah. In a way. Makes sense, right? Like, I feel like it’s a very different world where there’s really not space for that in the sense because you’re so busy trying to just make your life work out that like, you don’t really have time to like sit and stew and ponder those things, which is kind of really interesting. And you see it play out throughout the entire movie where they kind of just accept the situation and move on. And they don’t really think about what could be their options. When The main character leaves, there was no real exploration of how he could have done that there or why he had to go to American. And the same with not communicating the fact that he was leaving with the girl that he was in love with. Right? Like, in retrospect, we see that he says, you know, again, what could it would it have done, but it’s very pointed when she responds, she’s like, well, we’ll never we’re never going to know now because it’s like 4050 years later down the road, like it’s way too late to revisit that now. But at the time, there could have been other options. And they just, there was no moment to sit and contemplate what you could have done in the situation. And instead, there was just kind of like immediate, let’s just go forward in, you know, whatever direction I’m already moving.

Angela Lin 8:47
I feel like that that has a lot to do with the sense of duty and like the expectations that people have a view because I think those kinds of decisions come from more You actually believing that you probably don’t have many options. And to be fair back in like, old time, Taiwan there probably weren’t that many options. I saw the like, really poor living quarters that they were living in. I could see it from that and but I could also see it as just like he was the only man of the family, right? It was like him and his mom, so I could see him running through his head, like, I’m the man here I’m supposed to provide. And the only logical way that I can see doing that is to take advantage of this opportunity that’s been given to me to go to America because like, if anyone’s going to do something big here and help us change the course of our future it’s me and that’s my responsibility, you know, regardless of if that makes me happy or not.

Jesse Lin 9:48
Yeah, well, it’s not spoken like clearly in the movie. I definitely have that sense as well. Like after there was that like small incident at the factory with his mom, I think he really like I don’t know if like woke up or have like a Come to Jesus moment. But he had that moment where he was like, okay, like I have to, I have to take charge and I have to like, Get her out of here.

Angela Lin 10:07
I think tied to duty that he had to fulfill one of the biggest duties he fulfilled in the movie was marrying someone that he had no feelings for. I thought it was really interesting that they showed this because I do feel like in our parents generation, and before that the idea of marriage was not necessarily based on love. Like it was a lot to do with how appropriately matched you guys were and thereby what expectations your parents had for you for the type of person you would marry at, like what social status and like, what kind of future prospects would you guys have together? They know in Chinese, there’s that idiom. Who, right like your your two front doors or whatever match like that. That’s like literally So there is always there was always a sense of obligation and expectation tied marriage that it was not just for like romance and whatnot. That was really interesting to me because I really do feel like a lot of elements were in play probably for like my parents deciding to get married, and I’m sure they had affection for each other. But like, I doubt that was like the only reason they got married.

Jesse Lin 11:25
I think we tend to forget that marriage for Love is like a relatively new thing. And for the most part across the world, and even now, a lot of if not most marriages are done for some kind of like economically beneficial reason that improves the livelihood of both parties or somehow improves the livelihood of at least one party and I think it’s also really interesting because I’ve never asked necessarily my parents like how they met like if they did fall in love, I know for sure that they grew up in the same local Township. So they must have like known each other in passing and But I haven’t really asked that story. But the movie I think there’s some really good scenes in it where they describe this this like matching of unknown people. Like when the main character’s wife meets her new Mandarin speaking friend in New York, and she’s, she’s like complaining, she’s like, you know, I don’t have anything in common with this man that I just married and play was like, Well, once you’ve been married with him enough years, that’s your commonality, like you grow together, and that becomes what ties you together. And I think that’s true for even relationships born out of love, like it takes like time and nurturing and making decisions where you prioritize the other person so that you can grow that kind of love. That being said, it is very, very different from like, our current situation and how we approach like relationships and stuff. It’s weird because like, my parents didn’t really talk to me about relationships and stuff even back before they knew I was gay, like they never really asked about like girls or anything. And it’s just like one of those things that was just not discussed.

Angela Lin 13:00
We’re gonna have to break this out into a separate episode. I think there’s a lot more to be said around the topic of like love and relationships and marriage and all that stuff. Well, so we’re talking about this overarching theme of sacrifice. One of the most poignant scenes of the movie for me was when he and his new wife move into their dingy new New York apartment with just one suitcase each in their hand and realizing they had just moved their entire lives and everyone they knew were left behind and they’re now just alone in this like New World, but they don’t know anything. Oh, no, the language. That scene was really, really powerful for me because it helps me imagine what it might have been like for my parents when they moved here. I remember when I was growing up, my mom would drop me off at Montessori where I did preschool. And then across the The street she went to what she called adult school where they taught English. Yeah, English classes while I was doing preschool. And like I always took that for granted, but it must have been so scary and intimidating as like a grown adult who has like lived a whole life ready to move somewhere that you don’t know anything or how to communicate with anyone and just like put yourself in a situation where you have to thrive. It’s gave me like a new respect for them for sure.

Jesse Lin 14:30
Definitely. And I do want to talk about kind of the flip side though, because in the movie, a lot of things are given up to pursue this life in the new world. But I also feel like in a sense that nobody’s like actually asked of him to do this. And in fact, at that there’s a point where you have a conversation with his mom and he’s like, I’m ready to bring you over everything SAT. She’s like, Who told you I wanted to come? I’m personally I’m very happy here like I’m used to my life here. I’m not going to come So he’s kind of taken this burden on himself without even making certain This is what the other person wanted. So there’s also the flip side of that, where you’re so mired in the selfishness of this is a big sacrifice that you made, but then you’re kind of like expect the world to give back to you, or the people around you to give you some kind of deference for the kind of trials that you’re going through. And that’s not necessarily fair as well for all other people in his life.

Angela Lin 15:29
You seem to have a lot of passion around this, is this hitting close to home?

Jesse Lin 15:34
I do feel like I had a lot of pressure on my parents growing up in the sense that they’re like, You’re our only child and you know, you can only count on you and we didn’t have all the advantages that you did growing up and I’m grateful for all that but you never know how the wheel turns like if they hadn’t left and I was born there like would things have been so much worse, like would they have been better like we Don’t really know. And it feels weird saying this because I wasn’t around when they made the decision. But it’s not like I made the decision. Like, we must go for my future because I will be more successful here, even though that’s more than likely true based off of salaries at work and all that over there. But it’s still one of those things where they’re like, we paid this fair basically, for you to make it here. And that pressure becomes shifted onto me, even though it’s not something that I necessarily asked or demanded or wanted.

Angela Lin 16:31
Yeah, oh my god, that rings so true to me, because in another world of our lives, like love lives when I was growing up, and like my parents had put a lot of pressure on me because they really wanted me to end up with a Taiwanese boy who could speak Mandarin, which is like, okay, probability is quite low there and like the debate that we would always have was they put that kind of expectation on me like, will only accept This kind of a person, and my brother and I would fight back and he was kind of like, why did you guys bring her here though? Like, why? If you really wanted her to, like, live this kind of life, he should have just left us in Taiwan because everyone there is when he’s in speaks Mandarin like you’re asking for something that’s like, way harder to accomplish here where like he’s meeting all different kinds of people and like, all these invisible expectations and pressure put on me because like you’re saying, of the sacrifice that they made without us requesting they make that sacrifice because we weren’t around to have asked them to do that.

Jesse Lin 17:38
Yeah, why is it Do you think that they want somebody who has those characteristics

Angela Lin 17:44
I mean, I i understand it now because after having lived in Japan for the two and a half months or whatever, and not speaking any Japanese, I can very much understand now and empathize with my mom where she was really pushing like, I just really want to be able to have like real conversations with your husband, and like his family and whatever. And it’s difficult to do that when we don’t have like the common tongue. So

Jesse Lin 18:11
yeah, I can definitely see how like the language barrier could be like a huge issue. You also see it play out in the movie where you know the main character his wife is like so she can’t speak English. She’s so bored because she’s left at home every day that she goes to the laundromat to people watch just as she’s as she said, it’s just the only moments of the day where she can actually go meet new people and she is obviously the only person that she ends up being able to speak to there is some other Chinese lady who somehow magically speaks Mandarin and became a friend.

Angela Lin 18:41
So I thought it was interesting that they used three different languages in the movies so they didn’t Taiwanese quite a bit which was like such a throwback because the only person who really spoke it all the time was my grandma who passed away when I was in middle school, so I haven’t really like heard it consistently. Since then. time in my life but I thought it was really interesting when they were contrast in like the main character’s mom speaking only Taiwanese against him like he started in Taiwanese as a kid and then as he grew up, he like shed that in essence, right and try to like blend in with everyone else and started speaking Mandarin. And you could always kind of feel that the mother was like a bit on the outside of society because she only spoke Taiwanese, it was kind of implied that like everyone else’s speaking Mandarin and I could just feel that she was like choosing and also not choosing to like stand apart from the rest and I felt I felt some sadness there. Yeah,

Jesse Lin 19:39
as you said, though, that she did make a choice. There’s like a lot of pride in that that she’s like, I speak Taiwanese. And that’s the only thing that I speak in like you mentioned your You said your your grandparents only spoke Taiwanese. And it was the same for my, my grandma, my dad’s side as well. She only spoke to me in Taiwanese.

Angela Lin 19:56
at a certain age you’re like I’m too old for this. I don’t care like I’m not I’m gonna I’m not going to learn a whole lot of people can understand me, which props to my dad because I think I told you this but like after I asked him more about his life, I’m like, at what point did you learn Mandarin and Taiwanese because he he’s haka, so he and his family and grew up speaking haka, Kojak was a totally different dialect that I do not speak at all. And he was like, yeah, and elementary school, basically, they sort of like forcing us to speak Mandarin across the board so that you could like, integrate better with everyone else. And then he didn’t learn Taiwanese until he was like in college or graduating from college and was living in Taipei and just necessity.

Jesse Lin 20:42
Has he ever spoken it to you? I’m just curious. Ke Jia Hua [Hakkanese].

Angela Lin 20:45
Ah, well, he doesn’t really speak to me, but he he and his family, like his side of the family all speak the Ke Jia Hua to each other. So like when they’re together, I’m like, What the hell is happening?

Jesse Lin 20:56
I’m really curious. I wanna I want to hear what that sounds I don’t think it’s super different.

Angela Lin 21:01
Like the only words I know are uncle, because I don’t call I don’t call my uncles on my dad’s side in Mandarin. I call them ah ba, which is which means uncle. Yeah. Yeah, that’s all I know. Pretty shameful.

Angela Lin 21:22
Okay, let’s talk about some other big themes. I think one thing that we both gravitated towards was that they very successfully showed our immigrant parents showing love in like really untraditional or on Western ways because I think there were a lot of moments in the movie where various parents of various characters were showing love to their sons or daughters or whatever, but like, it wasn’t in by saying I love you or by hugging them or anything like that. Is there like a scene in the movie that really stood out to you? Where were they successfully showed that as being like a really correct reflection of the way that we’ve, we’ve received love from our parents do.

Jesse Lin 22:08
For me, it’s the scene where the daughter in the movie Angela fucked up for lack of a better term during her piano recital. And it’s like so real because I’ve literally have done that where I was at a dinner table and I was like, I just forgot this part. I’m just gonna keep going. And after the recital, she’s like crying in the car, like she’s already probably really disappointed herself. And the main character is just like parading her. I don’t want to say it’s a kind of love to me. It’s more like he’s trying to teach her like a cautionary tale, in a sense, like, he’s trying to be like, this is my experience. Crying is useless, and like, kind of transmit that to her. But you can see it’s quite difficult because, you know, a child does not necessarily cannot necessarily take that perspective and understand that like, Oh, you know, he’s cautioning me, and definitely the same resonated hopefully With every single Asian American who watched it because at some point, your own expectation or self is crushed, even your parents are like, Alright, let me just like run you over a couple times on top of that.

Angela Lin 23:10
I do, I do feel like the concept of giving a hard lesson, I do think is a way that immigrant parents try to show love. And it’s very traditional, but like, it’s their way. It’s a way that they see to help you get past a hard time because they’re not dwelling on the like, sad emotions that you’re feeling the time they’re thinking about, like, what can I give you in those moments so that you can surpass it and like, do better in the future. Asians are not brought up to like, know how to emotionally support other people.

Jesse Lin 23:46
I do understand what you’re saying. Actually, it reminds me of this time, my dad and I got into like this huge argument about academics. I’m like, how I wasn’t doing as good as he wanted, like, I got stopped I was like crying. I was like, I don’t understand why you guys continue to put me under so much pressure, like I’m trying to do the best that I can. And you know, it’s never enough. And I think at the end of it, he’s like, look like, I’m just telling you this because you only have yourself and you’re the only person that you can count on because mom and myself, we can’t do anything for you like this is this is the extent of how we can help you. You have to be exceptional because there was no one else to fall back on. In retrospect, looking back on that moment, I was like, Okay, I understand. I understand what he’s trying to tell me here. And it was very true. But at the moment in time, it seemed just like undue pressure to put on somebody.

Angela Lin 24:38
I feel like it’s super interesting you brought that up that your dad said that because he probably wouldn’t have that kind of mentality if he did not move to a brand new country where he felt super alone and learn that lesson himself. Overall, I feel like the movie and covered a ton of different topics and themes that like really hammered home for me Just based on like the experiences that I’ve had or that I imagine my parents had when they moved here. So I think it’s a super important movie to have come out and to, like, start telling these untold stories, immigrant stories that just like haven’t seen enough of

Jesse Lin 25:17
I agree. And I think it’s a really nice piece, like a really comfortable way to approach talking to your parents about the subject of how they grew up if it is uncomfortable for you.

Angela Lin 25:27
Yeah, actually, that’s a great point. Both of our parents took us up on a movie, and it’s super approachable for them, assuming your parents are Chinese speaking people, but like, half of the movie or more is in Chinese. So like, it’s a lower barrier for them to like overcome to get them to watch a movie. And it’s an interesting way for you to have parallel conversations with them about their experiences, if that’s something that you haven’t had the chance to talk about.

Jesse Lin 26:02
Welcome to our closing fortune cookie segment. As always, if you liked this week’s episode, or you watch the movie by our Yang Tiger tail, please do write us. Let us know what you thought about our thoughts about the movie. And also if you watched movie if you had any thoughts about as well or any scenes that you really connected with, let us know. Email us at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that’s y-o-u-r-e

Angela Lin 26:30
Let us know because then we’ll share it on a future episode. That’s really what we love to be doing moving forward. Well, okay, so are something fun to close this week we wanted to share our favorite scenes from the movie Tiger tail and why my favorite scene is definitely when the main character as his old self is sad and alone in his house and he discovers his own flame on Facebook and rekindles with her over Facebook Messenger, it was just the funniest fucking scene because it was such a boomer move, like to find someone who could reconnect via Facebook that’s like, we don’t do that anymore. But also that he was just like, not totally fabricating what he was doing every day. But he basically was doing the same shit every day like gardening, like reading a book, like logging back on Facebook to see what she wrote, and trying to like paint himself as a more interesting person. It was just so funny. I loved it.

Jesse Lin 27:37
It’s a very old Asian man thing to do. All of our parents are on Facebook, and they’re always tagging like themselves and other friends and like random things like puppies and flowers and yeah.

Angela Lin 27:50
What about you?

Jesse Lin 27:51
Yeah, so my favorite scene in the movie has a lot of dramatic tension because I love drama when it doesn’t involve me. So basically is when the main character and his wife break up. He like comes back home. She’s like sitting on the couch. And he immediately like critiques or for something about like, the shrubs being cut the wrong way. And she was like, well, you’re never home. So how do I know how you want your frickin shrubs cut? And then she just proceeds to eat this arrayed him by telling him that she’s leaving, because she’s like, I’ve had it like, I’ve only stayed for the kids say, You treat me like the help. Like, she basically has like, I don’t know, 30 years of pent up anger and she’s just let him have it. And then I think there was that moment where she’s like, you’re just such an emotionally damaged person. I can’t be with you and I hope I never see you again. And then she leaves and I was like, snap, snap, snap, snap. I was just waiting for her to be like goodbye. I’m not gonna deal with this anymore. So that was my favorite. Same because she like it’s mostly about him, but you see some character development from her. And at the end, I think you actually see that she’s like a professor or something. So she’s done really well for herself. So like, she kind of moved on and did her own thing. So I’m like,

Angela Lin 29:13
She got a new husband

Jesse Lin 29:15
she got a new husband like, she’s got a whole new life. So I’m like, I will support this strong, independent woman to do her thing. Bringing the most drama to the movie. Love it.

Angela Lin 29:27
Well, okay, well, gonna keep plugging ourselves. If you love this podcast, we would really, really appreciate it if you continue to support us by liking us following us on our various accounts, and subscribing. So subscribing is really important on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you’re listening to us. That’s really how we are gonna make sure we continue giving you the newest episodes.

Jesse Lin 29:55
Like, subscribe.

Angela Lin 29:57
Yes, yes, yes. And as always, we aim to come out with a new episode or weekly so come back to us next week for a brand new episode. Until then…

All 30:09
Zai jian bitches!

Episode 4 – The Born Identity: Return to the Motherland

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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 0:11
Hi, I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:13
And I’m Angela Lin. And welcome to but where are you really from?

Jesse Lin 0:17
Yes, we’re back with another exciting episode. And I think this week we want to do something fun and introduce you guys to where in Asia we’re actually really from. Our parents immigrated from a small country called Taiwan on a map. It’s like maybe 85 to 100 miles off the southeast coast of China and it’s south of Japan and Korea. It’s this, you know, pretty small island, the population the amount of people who live there, it’s like 23 million people for reference Japan, which has 126 million people. And most of the people in Taiwan actually live in a major metropolitan scenarios. So about half the population live in the Taipei and New Taipei City area. But for such a small country, it’s actually really, really diverse. There are tons of different languages spoken there. Mandarin Taiwanese, Hopkin haka. And they’re also 16 officially recognized indigenous groups, each with their own dialect and language and culture. Also, some fun facts or interesting facts about the country is that they recently re elected the first female president, and they are the first country in Asia to legally allow for same sex marriage. Yes, yes.

Angela Lin 1:40
very different than in Western culture. From a religion standpoint, there is a slight majority is the rism. That’s leaving religion that’s practice. Around a third of the population, followed by Taoism, which Jesse and I were actually both raised on or our families are all Taoist, it’s a sect of Buddhism, you can probably say Buddhism, little small verses like Christianity in Western culture. Obviously, it’s like a majority for a lot of different countries, but it’s really only less than 4% in Taiwan, and just for some grounding, so you know, kind of who came before the Taiwanese way, way, way long ago, the Dutch I think were the first to like, set their sights on Taiwan. But that was like centuries ago, that Japanese also took over Taiwan for a bit and Taiwanese people actually have a really interesting and like very positive relationship with Japanese people. There’s a lot of similarities between our two cultures. So that’s a pretty friendly relationship. And then, of course, most recently, it’s the Chinese relationship there where Taiwan was actually founded by people who were Chinese and fled from China to kind of start their own world. On the ideologies that they have.

Jesse Lin 3:01
So now you guys know a little bit more about Taiwan and where our families came from. So this week, we’re taking you back to the motherland of our parents, Taiwan. So I think we’ll kick it off and just say this discuss our roots, like how much of your family is still there?

Angela Lin 3:23
The majority of my family is actually still there. It’s a very few of us actually emigrated to immigrated. I don’t know which one it is, uh, when you leave the country, whatever.

Jesse Lin 3:41
Immigrated

Angela Lin 3:43
there’s the one with the E and then there’s the one with the I. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know which it is, s okay. Anyways, very few of us actually moved to America. So, like I mentioned, maybe in our first episode that my parents are both one of like 1 million Children and from their sides like my dad’s side, only he actually moved to moved out of Taiwan. And on my mom’s side only to like her and one other moved. So when I go back, it’s like everyone’s there because it’s most of my extended family is still out there. How about you?

Jesse Lin 4:23
I have kind of like a mixed experience actually, because most of my dad’s family is in California at this point. I think he only has one brother. I have only basically one on gore who still lives in Taiwan on my dad’s side. Um, but definitely when I go back, the family connection I really have is with my mom’s side of family because almost her entire family is still there. Like she has four sisters and a brother and they all still live in various parts of Taiwan. So when I go back my my family connection is with that larger group of family restaurants Nicholson calm I made myself a commitment about two to three years ago basically to try to visit Taiwan at least every two years, just because my grandparents are getting older, my answer getting older and I feel like I’m lacking some kind of like familial connection there.

Angela Lin 5:18
That’s so interesting. And I am really proud of you that you’re making that kind of commitment. I feel like I should be better about that. Because the last time I went back was three or four years ago. And that was the first time in eight years that I had been back so it’d been like a huge gap and I went back for my cousin’s wedding. So um, but I definitely like feel some guilt for not going back as frequently especially because my parents are retired, so they spend like half the year in Taiwan so I could easily go back.

Jesse Lin 5:50
As I get older. There’s definitely this more like feeling of searching for some more familiar routes and that more familiar connection

Angela Lin 6:00
You’re also an only child so that’s

Jesse Lin 6:02
probably yeah I know lonely inside forever

Jesse Lin 6:09
so tell us what you usually do when you go back to visit family there because it is quite some time you know between visits.

Angela Lin 6:17
What do you usually do, I mean we we eat a lot like my and uncle’s are all really good at cooking so like they’ll cook but also we’ll have to hit up all the hotspots like you know the night markets are generally are the best food is that so and i they always cater to like what you want to do at least one I wonder though, what do you want to do? I’m like, Yeah, all the things so I’m like, I need stinky tofu I need yan shu ji [salty crispy chicken].

Jesse Lin 6:45
Yeah, crispy chicken. Any like boba tea.

Angela Lin 6:51
I don’t crave boba.

Jesse Lin 6:54
I love boba.

Angela Lin 6:57
Okay, that like sweet dou hua, yeah that basically we hit up all the foods and then Taiwan has all these like fun little like coastal towns that also have mostly like really good food and like cute things to do there so I think they just try to like, show me around and because I’m not there that much but it’s a lot of eating. How about you?

Jesse Lin 7:22
I would say it’s about the same and they’re also very, very open to building the schedule around what you want to do, which is really funny because usually I have like no idea what I want to do and I’m just like, show me whatever, but definitely a lot of eating our way across the country. And also the last time I was there, though, I was there for a longer period of time and it was the second time I had been in for years. So I was like keeping to that pattern that I wanted to. So we were able to do like some other stuff that I would say is less touristy. So we went to this tours of have one of those like small night markets that you talked about with just all ceramics like literally. It’s mostly like plates and bowls and like,

Angela Lin 8:08
Where?

Jesse Lin 8:10
But yeah, yeah, super fun. super cheap. It’s underrated people don’t think about it a lot. Yeah.

Jesse Lin 8:16
Yeah. I mean, so we’re talking about like, our recent experiences like how do you feel? How do you feel like traveling to Taiwan has changed for you from like, really small to like now,

Angela Lin 8:27
it’s completely different. I mean, when I went every three years like I said, when I was a kid, it was always summer vacation. And so it’s been like, two three months. They’re like the whole break there and I live at my grandma’s house. And and it kind of I looking back on it. I feel really like guilty thinking about it this way, but it almost felt like a prison because I was like, because I was stuck there all summer. And I understood everyone like what my mom raised me speaking Chinese. So I can I can Communicate just fine with everyone, but it was like, you know, I grew up Americans I went there and I was like, What is this like country bumpkin even though I was in Taipei, right? Like compared to, to the US, it just kind of fell a little bit more country the way that they, they run things and and I was a kid so I couldn’t like go out by myself. So I was like in the house and like beholden to whatever the adults were doing. And also, I’m highly allergic to mosquitoes, so I just like hated it because it’s mosquito season and all the time in Taiwan. So I didn’t like it that much when I was a kid, which like, makes me really sad to think about it now. But um, yeah, thinking about that versus now when I go back. Totally different because I think you mentioned this and part of like, why you are making that commitment to go back every two years. I think there’s the like, seeking out the familial connection, but also, I think as we grow older, like The reason we’re starting this podcast, right, like, we want to get back to our roots, like you said, and like, appreciate our culture more. And so when I go back I like I’m seeing it almost with fresh eyes because I have a greater openness to like receiving what’s around me and like understanding the culture behind what I’m doing there. So it’s totally different. How about you?

Jesse Lin 10:27
Yeah, I agree to a certain extent, although I will say I always had it just was, I think, as you mentioned, it just wasn’t as much fun as I wanted it to be like, you know, I think I have a few cousins that are like my age are a little bit younger. So whenever I would go back like we would just have so much fun just hanging out with each other. But I think the main problem is that we, I would typically go back like as during my childhood in during the summers and it’s not always a good time for us. The locals because they still have to go to school and they start to go to work. So you don’t necessarily see everyone that you want to during that time that you’re there. I also feel like I kind of had like an opposite experience, in a sense because I now live in a city. I love living in a city but I think when I was a kid, I was probably like, I’m not really interested in being this like big, noisy, gross, hot place like Taipei, I really enjoyed being my country, bumpkin self and in the countryside. But now as you mentioned, as I’ve gotten older, like interests have shifted a little bit, I still really enjoy going back to the countryside and enjoying that nature aspect of it because I’m a tourist. But also like I really am also looking to seek out activities like in the big cities, going out, seeing what the nightlife looks like, and like things that you wouldn’t have any interest in as like Ted, really. So I think that there’s a whole world of activity To use and things to find, explore and really connect with her that I just, I haven’t yet.

Angela Lin 12:06
Alright, so we’ve talked about a lot of the fun stuff that we’ve done both as kids and also now as adults seeing things with different eyes. But something I think that’s very relevant for this podcast because it is all about identity is talking about how we think about our identity when we are back in the motherland. Does that perspective for you like, who you are, how you think about yourself change when you are in Taiwan versus here in the US?

Jesse Lin 12:37
I feel like in the US, there isn’t a heritage for me to be a part of. So I don’t belong in that sense. And in Taiwan, there is a heritage for me to be a part of, but I haven’t been a part of it. So I can’t lay claim to any of that either. So you’re always left feeling kind of like the other and I do have to agree with you that life is pretty pretty great. I mean, my Mandarin is definitely not as good as yours. I’m definitely missing probably like a lot more vocabulary words than you are. So it’s definitely always a challenge to go back and try to communicate the things that you want to say to your family members. Yeah.

Angela Lin 13:19
Yeah. Yeah, I definitely echo that, um, not so much that not fitting in here. I think I feel that mostly when I am surrounded by a lot of like, non when I’m around a lot of white people. I mean, I’m not a very PC. I just anyways, it’s a that’s the only time when I like don’t feel like I totally belong, because it’s so obvious that you’re different from everyone else. But otherwise, I feel like very grounded in America and like, I’m American, but when I’m in Taiwan, I naturally feel like I don’t belong because I am really dark. So Like Jesse and I both grew up in Southern California and it’s like you tan and like you’re out in the sun and whatever but versus in Asia for women, right? Like you the ideal form of beauty is to be like as white as pale as possible. That’s what beauty looks like. So even from like the get go I I stand up because I’m super dark.

Angela Lin 14:21
Like I distinctly remember this was in America, but it was when I was I my mom introduced me to like an auntie that I hadn’t seen in a really long time that I also didn’t remember, but she remembered me from when I was kid. It’s just like, oh, wow, you’re so pretty. If you weren’t so dark, and I was like, um, but anyways, so like, just from like an appearance standpoint, I stand out. But also I just Yeah, I don’t feel like I really fit in. I do feel like a big part of that is the community slash like conformity of a country versus like, again, we talked about this all the time, but versus the individualism of the US because when I do go back, like you can very easily see the trends that are happening in Taiwan I think it’s very common for Asian countries in general that when there’s a trend that’s happening like everyone adopts it so when I go back I can’t help but feel like oh this like sea of women all have the same hair. They’re all wearing like the same clothes. And so like naturally stand out from from that perspective too and like wearing whatever I want to wear and whatnot.

Angela Lin 15:30
But anyways, on the topic of language, even though I can speak Chinese and like with the same accent as everyone else there, I still don’t want to like the total vocabulary that you know, you would need to like fully express what you’re thinking and your opinion on stuff. So I do feel that have like a disconnect because I can’t say everything I want to say. So. Yeah, that’s a big part of it, as well and like, I feel like even for my family Normally, they’re super welcoming, and they want to like treat me well. And honestly, I feel like a celebrity when I’m there because I’m like, oh my god. Yeah, we’re just like, really nice, but um, it just, it doesn’t feel like I’m part of them. Because I’m already like, apart because I’m this like, special guest. That’s not. Yeah, yeah.

Jesse Lin 16:25
Yeah, I, I think I definitely agree with that. And also for me, I mean, I’m a big ruminator. As you know, I ruminate on many, many things longer than I should. But for me, when I go back, I always think about what my life would have been like if my parents didn’t leave, right. Because you have, you can see, you can see what it would be like because it’s the life that your family members have there. So there’s always for me a little bit of like melancholy going back because I’m like, Man Like this social safety net and a sense this group of people that are so welcoming to me now, I didn’t really have that growing up necessarily because the family that was with us in California growing up is much smaller. And the feeling of connection is not quite the same. Even for those family members who are close together in California, Hmm,

Angela Lin 17:26
yeah, I have ruminated on the like what if scenario before but I think it’s more contextualized with like, where I am now versus where my cousins are at now. And like, this is very poignant. When I went back three or four years ago, I like hung out again with a cousin who’s only like two years older than me, and we’re just catching up on life like what do you do all the time? Oh, at the time, I was in business school, so I had no job yet, but I was like telling him about the types of company So I was trying to get jobs that and then we were talking about his job and like he and many of his classmates, former classmates are all like engineers. We’re just like, would make big money here, right? And it’s like a very coveted position. And he’s like, yeah, we make like $30,000 a year like US dollars of like, What the actual fuck, right? And it’s just like, the same schools translated to the US would Garner us so much more value than in Taiwan. And it’s not just Taiwan. It’s a lot of other countries, even outside of, you know, Asia, but like, I just, I really felt the privilege. Like, the only thing that’s different here is that my parents happened to be able to get me up, you know, have me outside of the country versus you, your parents stayed here. And there is again, like a sense of guilt because we just like neither of us controls how our parents decided like what to do with their lives and then therefore our own fates. And this is just like, how the cards played out.

Jesse Lin 19:06
yeah. And it’s it’s super jarring, right? It’s super jarring because when you think about your your sense of self, you’re like, I constructed this, I built this. But then when you start looking into your roots, you start to see like how many pieces of yourself are, in a sense, like pre determined, like you didn’t really built it like it what it became, from your background, your identity from where your parents came from.

Angela Lin 19:33
Yeah. And speaking of like, you know, things that were not built by us that were given to us and also came from our parents, right, like, I’m just going to continue eating. I’m going to continue double downing on my sense of guilt, everything here, but like my parents both talked about, they both grew up super poor, and like to the point where they were like, Yeah, when we were kids, we walked Like one or two miles a day to school and we’re barefoot because we couldn’t afford shoes and like, we had so many brothers and sisters that like you weren’t special and like you just eat Oh, you were trying to like survive. And so comparing that with like, our, you know, you and I grew up like, upper middle class at best, right? But like that compared to actual poverty is just like, night and day

Jesse Lin 20:27
A world of difference.

Angela Lin 20:28
And like, puts everything into perspective, like every fight I’ve ever had with my parents. And so I’m like, Do I have any right to have had any fights? Because they’ve like, sacrificed so much to give me something infinitely better than they had as they were kids and it just again, I feel so fucking guilty every time I think about that difference and what they had to do to get us here.

Jesse Lin 20:53
Yeah, yeah, definitely the same way. Think back from with my parents to like they grew up with Super poor in the countryside. And actually, it’s really, you know, my parents, my mom told me the where they used to live is the same place where they live now, but there’s actually a big house now. And there’s an annex. So my mom’s side of the family makes tea. And that annex is basically where all the tea is, like dried and stuff in need. It’s not that big. It’s probably like the size of like a shotgun house. And she was like, when we grew up, this is where we lived in the annex. There was no house at that time. So it’s all these things, I think, definitely put some context to the privileges that we’ve had growing up with. But I also think that I feel like I’ve inherited what my parents wanted in terms of a better life into my sense of identity now, like they took a huge risk moving into a completely different country where they didn’t speak the language and didn’t know if they would have jobs. Didn’t know necessarily where they would be living in like a year from now. And they made it work. And I feel like part of that ethic and that desire to take risks and move on to something greater and better for yourself. That’s definitely something that I think that I’ve inherited as part of my identity.

Angela Lin 22:30
We are now in our fortune cookie closing section because who doesn’t like to close with a sweet treat? As always, we would love to invite all of you to send in your personal stories about today’s topic about going back to the motherland what you love about it, what you hate about it, how you feel about your identity while you’re there. And we said this in the last episode, we but we definitely really want to start sharing other people’s perspectives on the show. Well in future episodes, so please write into us at, telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. And again, that your is y o u r e, we’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.

Jesse Lin 23:13
So we want to introduce some Taiwanese culture and some fun things that we really enjoyed as kids that were exported out of Taiwan, in a sense. So I think for me, I definitely had a huge mini gay crush on this girl group called S.H.E. I thought their music was so great. And it’s so funny because they’re like this very local Taiwanese group. They’re like, super prolific. I think they’re still they were still making music as of like, a few years ago. So they’re still together and going strong.

Angela Lin 23:50
They’re like the Pussycat Dolls of Taiwan? Because they’re back, the Pussycat Dolls are back.

Jesse Lin 23:56
Yeah, well, I will say yes. Except I don’t think Any of the groups are so sexualized. Yes, that’s true. It’s not a concern. Yeah, for sure. And then also cartoons great cartoons, one of my favorites and I’m sure one of your favorites too was shouting down. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s I think it’s dora Doraemon,

Angela Lin 24:18
Doraemon

Jesse Lin 24:19
Doraemon.

Angela Lin 24:21
He’s Japanese, though. That’s an import.

Jesse Lin 24:24
But I feel like that’s part of my, I watched that. I mean, I watched it exclusively while I was in Taiwan.

Angela Lin 24:31
And it was in Mandarin. It counts. Yeah, fine.

Jesse Lin 24:34
Yeah. What about you? You went through a huge asian embrace phase

Angela Lin 24:40
Yeah. We already talked about this. So like my, my loves of my life for Meteor Garden, the series which actually Netflix did a remake of it, which I tbh couldn’t get into. I was like, really excited when I saw it pop up on my Netflix and I was like, This is terrible. I’m not But I was a really hit series back when I was in middle school. And from that series spun off the boy band F4 my favorite guy from that band was this guy whose name was Vaness so like Vanessa without the A. he’s an ABC American Born Chinese y’all and obviously I liked him because outside of finding him attractive I was like I feel you because you’re also an ABC. there was all this behind the scenes stuff where he’s like, apparently couldn’t read any of the scripts because it’s

Jesse Lin 25:40
like, oh my god

Angela Lin 25:41
like ours wouldn’t be good enough right to like read scripts, like people had to like, you know, read it to him, he had to memorize and then he’d just like say things. there were all these like, you know outtakes that they would play at the end of every episode and he would say like, random shit. That didn’t make sense because Chinese is like, not as well. Maybe this is first length. But like he’s not saying it all the time and yeah, right. So I was like, uh, I think there’s a series called like Firefly that I was also obsessed with. I think the theme song from that show was sung by this guy that I also then was obsessed with as a singer called the engineer, JJ Lin. For anyone who knows who he is, but basically if I go back to Taiwan, and you put on one of his hit songs, I think even though I haven’t heard it in 15 years Yeah, yeah, this my life

Jesse Lin 26:38
yeah. Oh, man, when you said that that just from an either you’re gonna say Jay Chow. Everyone was so were you not into him? I was so into

Angela Lin 26:46
how are you into him? I feel like was too old for me. Like my brother liked him because he was closer to me stage but I was like, that guy’s old when I was my brother was…

Jesse Lin 26:57
He’s hot. because he’s got really nice abs.

Jesse Lin 27:01
Yeah Wow. Such a throwback. I love it. Okay guys, well if you really enjoyed this episode as we enjoyed making it please like follow subscribe send us dm send us sweet messages send us sweet feedback. And as always check out next week’s episode which will be coming next week,

Angela Lin 27:19
as we like to always close

All 27:23
Zai jian, bitches!

Episode 3 – Mental Health: Let It In, Baobei (Part 2 of 2)

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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Angela Lin 0:09
Hello, I’m Angela Lin.

Jesse Lin 0:11
And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to the where you really from.

Angela Lin 0:15
For those of you who listen to last week’s episode that was the first part of our two part episode around mental health. And just to recap for those who may have forgotten or weren’t able to listen to last week’s episode, that first part was really talking about the influences that are Asian upbringings that Asian culture has had on the way that we were first introduced to mental health and the reasons why our parents, for example, aren’t as open to talking to a therapist. Some of those key things that we talked about were the concept of saving face, not bringing shame from sharing your private maps. with the outside world, not fully understanding how to process your emotions in a healthy way, kind of general lack of trust in the realm of psychology because it is more Western versus in eastern based study.

Jesse Lin 1:18
So now that we’ve kind of laid all that out on the table, we want to share with you this week, our own personal experiences with therapy, what led us to finding the care that we needed, and also how we feel about the care that we received. So we’re talking about the particular barriers that we’ve faced in terms of how mental health has been presented to us as an Asian American growing up what made you decide to reach out?

Angela Lin 1:52
Yeah, I think two things well, first is that in general, I feel like at you know, growing Especially like we just mentioned watching our parents like hold in a lot of emotion and then like have random outbursts because they couldn’t hold in that emotion and process it well, over time. I think I just first reflecting then on me as like a grown adult, realizing that there’s a lot of shit going on with like, uncertainty around my career like, Am I really going down the path that I really want to take my life going on with my love life, friendships, my student debt that was like, overbearing at the time. They were just like a lot of issues that I was dealing with. And I was starting to see it’s like bubbling up building on top of each other. And that compounded with the fact that my inner circle was starting to be more vocal about how normalize they were seeing therapy that like a lot of my close friends started telling me that they were going to see a therapist and it sounded super normal and super helpful. There. That really made me feel like Why haven’t I explored that before? Because if someone who is a professional can help me start processing a lot of these things that are I know our issues, and it’s something that I can pursue, then then why wouldn’t I do that? So that’s kind of my entry point into that, how about on your end?

Jesse Lin 3:23
Yeah, I would have to say my first experience with a mental health provider was in college after I’d gone through some like traumatic health stuff. And part of kind of going through that process was that a provider recommended me to see kind of a short term therapist to deal with that. And I found the experience was really helpful in the sense that it helped me organize how I was, how I was feeling what I was thinking, and put them into, into ways that I could process and understand and also take action again. So like, I’m feeling This particular way, how can I process this? And what can I do to, you know, maybe avoid it moving forward or to better manage how I feel about it. And then again, very recently, this year, I had just gone through kind of a rough breakup. And I could tell that I wasn’t doing so hot. Like, I didn’t feel like myself a lot of times, I wasn’t super interested in any other things that I was doing. And so at that point, I was like, I need to, I need to go talk to someone I need to see if the situation is okay. The same way you would go to a doctor if you have a cold or if you have a pain somewhere that’s lasted a while. So I restarted the process there.

Angela Lin 4:40
That’s great.

Jesse Lin 4:41
Yeah, I was gonna say something that you you mentioned earlier is really interesting about how you were looking at your parents and seeing that outbursts, because they can operate in that manner because they have the feeling or understanding that they have this collective to fall back upon in a sense They have their family or their extended family or cousins or whatever they feel like share a part of their emotional burden. But for us, we don’t necessarily have that because we don’t subscribe to that concept of collectivism. Like we’re very, like, we were born in the US very individualistic. And that’s how our mindset and orientation is. So I also feel like part of the reason why we, as Asian Americans tend to have a larger problem processing emotions than our parents are appear to is that we don’t necessarily have this feeling of safety of a group that we can fall back on your on hard times, whether it’s emotional or whatever. So we have to kind of manage it ourselves in isolation.

Angela Lin 5:44
Hmm. Do you feel like though that our parents even bother relying on a group to process or like let out those emotions onto because when I think on my parents, I don’t feel like they have outbursts because they feel Like, no matter how they act like people, you know, the family will will accept it and just deal with it. I think it’s just because they have no idea how to like, talk about it in a healthy way. And it’s almost childish because they like from an emotional standpoint, they are more adolescent because they haven’t had this education and like talking it out and processing, why they’re feeling that way, why they’re acting that why where it’s coming from, where it was influenced by. So they just, they just have outbursts. I, from my perspective, I’m not seeing it from the like, communal standpoint, it’s more just like a lack of practice in and working it through.

Jesse Lin 6:47
Yeah, I agree with you there. I think that like people of our parents generation are not good at processing their emotions, but I think something that my parents have told me time and time again, is that like, your family will always be your family. And they won’t be your family no matter what. So I think that they have this feeling that like, you know, let me stifle let me do this, let me do this outburst like whatever, but my family is still there for me. And that’s just how it is. That’s the way it is. Versus for us. We know that’s not the case. Like, if you blow up at someone, they’re gonna be like, we’ll back it up, like, you’re a good friend, but like, you cannot come at me that way. And so we’ve learned to manage our emotions, so that we can more truthfully address it to the person that we’re talking to.

Angela Lin 7:35
Okay, so getting back to our personal experience. So you talked about the big part of the benefits that you’ve seen are being able to have some sort of like framework to organize your thoughts and emotions and process them in a healthy way Are there other like big lessons or big gifts that your past therapists have have given you that you feel like you You wouldn’t have been able to have in your life if you didn’t open yourself up to taking care of your mental health.

Jesse Lin 8:17
Yeah, so definitely Well, I will say one of the actionable takeaways I have from the initial therapists that I saw in college was that therapy is not just like sitting there and talking and discussing your emotions, there’s also an active part of dealing with your feelings that can be very helpful. So he would basically give me like homework assignments each week of things to actually go physically do so if I was feeling like oh, you know, I’m feeling really shy and not seen and I don’t know how to socialize with people you like go to a coffee shop and talk to one person and that’s your homework assignment. That’s awesome. So was it was really nice because we were able to talk through some of the insecurities and then He would give me something to do to try to like, bolster that. Other things that I think that have been very helpful in terms of having a therapist. For me really, it’s just, it’s really just to have someone to bounce my own reflections off of because I feel like given enough time, I’m pretty good at kind of sorting out like, what I’m feeling, why I’m feeling or what I should do with that. But you know, after you talk to yourself in your head after a few times, you’re like, I’m definitely crazy. So that’s when I went to see a therapist. I was like, can you please confirm that I’m not crazy and like, I am like thinking about my emotions and processing them in the right way. It’s always good, I think to have someone with a professional background, to basically examine your analysis of yourself to make sure if it makes sense because sometimes, it’s like grading your own homework, right? You might be like, Oh, this is great. But then someone else look, I’d be like, no, this is like, fallacious like, is this incorrect? So So for me, that’s what they’re this role plays. But it is really important that the person is not just anybody because I could talk to anybody really for that I could talk to you for that I can talk to a bunch of other friends or that I feel like a therapist for me. I would love ideally, to have some contextual knowledge of my background and my identity. So have some understanding of what it means to grow up as a minority or person of color, and also have some understanding of what it means to grow up as an LGBT individual. You know, we’re all human, we can all pick up on things regardless of how we identify, but I think there are specific nuances and really deeply ingrained insecurities that a person cannot understand if they don’t have these identities

Angela Lin 10:49
So for you, the ideal therapist is someone who has some of those shared experiences as us so that they know firsthand why What kind of emotions and suffering you probably went through during different phases of your life so that they can better treat you and give you advice?

Jesse Lin 11:12
Oh 100%

Angela Lin 11:14
Got it. Yeah, I man I mean I can’t say this enough but I said this in the first episode I do feel like you know, being being the societal default sexuality just like makes me so privileged because it’s not something that that crosses my mind when I think about like having the right therapist we talked about this a little bit but for me the the main woman that I was seeing I connected with really well pretty right off the bat and like surface level we have nothing in common like she’s definitely not an Asian or other like, racial minority the way that we would describe it, she hasn’t gone through a lot of the same stuff I went through she like

Angela Lin 12:00
She studied both like Western psychiatry as well as like shamanism. So she had this other like totally spiritual realm that was very kind of like foreign for me when I first met her and yeah, we still clicked really well. I think a big part of that is back to your point of like, just having someone who is a professional and like a third person perspective, to analyze what you’re going through and like the way you responded, and for me, it wasn’t so much what she called me out on my bullshit what she did, but like for me, it was when I felt like I was going crazy or like acting crazy towards other people especially like when I get in a fight with Ramon, for example, and we talk about it like, I can’t help but then go into spirals thinking like, I’m, I’m insane and I’m like acting crazy. And having someone who is not invested in whatever you were talking about, like the actual fight You had an instrumental listening to you based on like an objective perspective of these are the facts. This is why you acted like it felts the first time she validated me and my emotions, I just felt this like warmth that I didn’t expect to feel, which is like, she was like, Yeah, what I like is that instead of focusing on the details of what I say of like, we thought about like XYZ, she focuses on the emotional impact of the actions that we each took. So she would analyze the situation and be like, yeah, of course, someone who just bare their soul out in this way and then got rejected or whatever she says, right, but she puts it in like the most black and white way of like, of course, if you were, you had this kind of emotional attack on you. It’s valid for you to have felt this way to respond this way. That kind of like validation from someone who’s not invested in it. Your personal problems and like the actual issues you’re talking about. It just feels so good because, you know, they’re not saying it just to make you feel good. Like you said before if it was just to talk to someone, you could just talk to your friends like I could talk to you right? I think that’s when I like first had some breakthroughs with her. The biggest takeaway I had was like, This is not the same as talking to your friends because you could claim that like venting to your friends complaining to your friends about whatever bullshit just happened to you is the same as therapy but it’s not because most friends are are going to just say whatever is going to make you feel good, right? Because they’re invested in you feeling good, not invested in like you growing as a person and like recognizing your faults and overcoming them. So when you you know, if you’re like your ex boyfriend, did some bullshit to you like the way I would respond or just like well, he’s an And like, you know, just taking your side, because that’s my response, I’m just trying to defend you and like protect you. Versus like a therapist doesn’t have that same level of investment because that’s not their relationship with you. So they would break it down into like, the facts and the objective actions that were taken. And I think that is like the most valuable piece that I’ve taken. I also think for me, I like that. When I explain certain situations to her, she will take a step back and it’s like, it feels really cliches like, hydrous when she first starts talking about it, but then like, I guess there’s a reason why everyone says this kind of stuff, but she’ll be like, Okay, is there something happened in your child that like, then made you stir it out? Right? Yeah. So like, I’ll I’ll talk about like, getting super angry because I don’t feel appreciated or something to that effect, and she’ll be like, Is there a time from when you were child Felt like you didn’t feel appreciated by certain people in your life and like, do you feel like there might be some carryover impact from that and then she makes it go real deep, but then, you know, someone highlighting that kind of stuff does make you more self aware of where these emotions are coming from. And I do feel like the another one of the like, biggest takeaways from me from therapy is just recognizing where your emotions are coming from that like, a lot of times when you’re expressing sadness or anger or frustration at someone else, it’s not because that person actually did something that’s like so terrible, it’s that it’s triggering you because you had like a past trauma that’s tied to that same emotion and you’re like layering on that past trauma onto that that instance that just happened.

Jesse Lin 16:52
Have you run into any problems and the process of getting treatment or just something you didn’t appreciate a little about it?

Angela Lin 17:02
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, this woman was referred to me. So I kind of just like went into that relationship because like, I trusted the referral. But it was tough dealing with her from like an access standpoint because she doesn’t fall within my insurance. So I had to pay her out of pocket for every session and that runs a lot of money. It’s, you know, therapists, a lot of money over time. And like, definitely, they’re doing great work for you. But like Jesus, it costs an arm and a leg. And especially if you won’t go with a frequency to like, make any progress, right? Like, if I had all the money in the world, I would go every week, but I couldn’t afford to do that. And then like, personally for me, just because like I was following her kind of like how some people follow their favorite hair stylists, like they’ll move, depending on you know, wherever they go. She He started in an office that was in Oakland. So it was more accessible to me still a little bit of a stretch because I’m in the city. But then she like moved far because she she saw her her own home office. So like good for her, but also became super, super difficult for me to retire. And it’s just like the thought of switching to a different therapist having to restart that relationship research all the history of like, explaining my background and stuff is so daunting that I haven’t.

Jesse Lin 18:33
It’s an investment It really is. And I want to just say I really, really mirrored the problem that you’re having, like the process of finding a therapist that was covered under my insurance was like so upsetting because I was I knew there was something wrong and I knew I had to go see someone. But the way that everything was made it like impossible for me to find someone that was affordable, which in and of itself is extremely frustrating. And then outside of that, for me, my experience with therapy has generally been good. But I’ve also found that after therapy, I feel like I’m over analyzing some of the ways that I feel like I’m thinking about how should I feel about how I felt. And it’s like Inception like you’re like too many layers in and you’re like over complicating it just because you’re overthinking everything that’s just come out of a session where you’re literally thinking about your emotions. So I found that that’s like one drawback because it can cause me to like, ruminate on a particular situation when I should just kind of like, process it and then like just package it away because it’s, it’s done.

Angela Lin 19:57
Alright, so we just talked about how it can be really hard sometimes to find any provider, especially when insurance is an issue. And also just trying to find someone that you can actually connect with. So we wanted to end this episode with some resources that might be able to help you in that search. First and foremost, I think what’s worked well, at least for me, and I’m sure a lot of people is opening up to your friends in terms of letting them know that you’re looking for a therapist, because not again, not everyone has gone to therapists, but I think it’s much wider net than you think. And once you start putting it out into the ether that you are open to talking to someone I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that probably more friends and you think are also seeing therapists and have good ones that they’d love to recommend to you. So just put it out there and I think you might get some good bites and obviously you trust your friends. So They should be good referrals. And second thing from my side is, obviously, this is not going to apply for everyone. But something that a lot of my friends and I have discovered is, for a lot of companies as part of your health insurance benefits, it’s kind of hidden in the fine print, I would recommend that you go back and look at like the details of what’s included under your health insurance, because a couple of the companies that I’ve worked for And that my friends have worked for, have kind of buried in there that you have maybe three, three free sessions with a counselor, there are free hours, sometimes included in those. So I would just encourage you to double check if that’s already included, and it’s just something you didn’t know was already at your disposal.

Jesse Lin 21:49
And if you’re more particular about the provider you’re looking for there’s a really great website called Psychology Today where you can find a ton of different providers listed on there. They’re listed by insurance. So listen by expertise, they’re even listed by the specific issues that they deal with. So there are some people who deal only in adult issues, LGBT issues, women’s issues. So it’s a great resource to do some independent research if you’re looking for a very specific kind of provider. And for those of you who maybe don’t have insurance or can’t really afford to go see a therapist right now, there are some local and regional resources for you. For the two of us since we live in New York and San Francisco. I thought I would just mention that in New York City, there’s resource called New York City Well, you can text call web chat, for some short term counseling and help. And also in San Francisco, the Department of Public Health also runs a pretty solid program for sliding scale access to mental health care as well.

Angela Lin 22:51
Awesome. I’m sure there are a ton of other resources that we didn’t get to plug but we just wanted to make sure that we handed off a few good stuff starting points for you guys if you are new to thinking about mental health and want to jump into taking care of yourself. Alright, so I think that wraps what we wanted to cover today. But I think something that we really want to explore moving forward with all of our episodes is hearing more from you guys and being able to share more experiences than just our two experiences. So we’d love to hear what your experience has been like dealing with navigating the mental health landscape trying to find a provider trying to overcome stigmas that you might have been raised on anything else tied to the topics that we’ve been talking about within this two part. Topic around mental health. We’d love to hear from you. So Email us at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. Again, the you’re is y o u r e. We’d love to hear from you and share your experience on a follow up episode.

Jesse Lin 23:58
And if you don’t want to send an email you can also like follow and subscribe us, send us a DM. Let us know how you’re thinking feeling about the episode. And as always, there will be new releases next week. So look forward to sharing things with you guys next week.

Angela Lin 24:14
And with that…

All 24:17
Zai jian, bitches!

Episode 2 – Mental Health: Let It Out, Baobei (Part 1 of 2)

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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Angela Lin 0:09
I’m Angela Lin.

Jesse Lin 0:00
And I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:10
And welcome to, but where are you really from? Obviously, we are all still stuck in quarantine Trump announced that the whole country is to shelter in place until the end of April now at least. And so we have to try to stay sane. Let’s talk about how we’ve been trying to stay socially connected with people in this totally in your house environment.

Jesse Lin 0:43
Yeah, honestly, there have been like a lot of really cool things and different ways people are staying connected. I did a zoom workout the other day with some of my friends, which is a lot of fun. Yeah. So generally just basically using the tools we already have to try to keep as connected We can’t without actually seeing each other person and I think people are taking that to really interesting streams and like cool things like people doing like online raves

Angela Lin 1:09
Have you done it or you just um you just heard of it?

Jesse Lin 1:12
the raves thing so I will plug is called club quarantine. I have not done it yet, but I really want to do it

Angela Lin 1:18
how does webcam raving work? Like do you actually share your video? Or is it just that they are like DJing live and then you’re dancing off camera like by yourself.

Jesse Lin 1:30
So I think with the zoom, the people who are like the headliner DJ basically like can mute everybody and they just play their own music, but you can see the people who want to be seen and they’re just kind of like partying in their own apartments. But some of the people are like dressed to the nines, like I’m following the stories like people are, like super, super dressed up just partying in their own homes, and it’s their only chance to dress up. That’s true. You want to take yourself out somewhere nice.

Angela Lin 1:58
I honestly think the most Fun social like virtual thing I’m doing right now is when you me and Karen do Mario Kart and we we do we do the Mario Kart online where Jesse totally smokes us because Karen and I are like equally average Mario Kart and Jesse is like, so far ahead of us that we never see his character in the game after we take. But yeah, we do that and then FaceTime each other so that we can hear each other like personalities.

Jesse Lin 2:29
Yeah, it’s fun.

Angela Lin 2:31
It’s cool that people are trying we’re all trying right to stay connected to not feel so alone during this time. I definitely talk to people more especially via video than I would otherwise even though like I should have been doing this all along. Even without

Jesse Lin 2:49
it’s so funny now though, because the quarantine is now like socially acceptable to just did anyone and be like hey, what’s up girl like how you doing? But before people like Why are you calling me like why are we meeting up and realize where Haven’t seen you in forever. But now people are like, whatever. That’s cool. It’s cool though. It’s good that people are looking out for each other and making the best of the situation right now.

Angela Lin 3:21
Our main topic today is something that’s pretty near and dear to us. It’s definitely played a big role, I think in both of our lives. So we’re going to talk about mental health and the importance of therapy in our lives. Given the the background of our podcasts and the way that we’re trying to bring our perspective on each of these episodes, it would be helpful for us to first start with the influences that our Asian upbringing has had on the way that we look at mental health and how we like it. first started to think about it before having our own personal experiences with it. So let’s talk about how, in general, talking about your mental health talking about going to therapy is something that’s totally taboo for Asians.

Jesse Lin 4:16
Yes, it definitely is. It’s 100%, something that I never talked about to any of my family members when I was growing up. So much so that honestly, I probably didn’t even know what like a talk therapist or psychologist was until maybe middle school or high school when you started to actually study those topics, but like those particular fields of medicine were like not really a thing. Like it just didn’t really exist for me and my family, either. How about you?

Angela Lin 4:48
Yeah, same. What’s interesting is that my brother actually studied psychology as major in college. And what’s interesting is, I feel like My parents were more chill with him having that major as like a, like an educational standpoint, but when we would have big serious issues within our family and my brother would bring up like, we should probably see a therapist, like as a family and start working through a lot of this stuff. That’s when it all started coming out like, like, there was so much rage. I feel like behind my parents when they were arguing with him about like, that is not something that we do like that is that is shameful to ask for help. And like it’s not something that you should be sharing with the outside world, because those are private matters and like not to be given out to some some external person. That’s, that’s the perspective that they gave me early on.

Jesse Lin 5:53
I have to totally agree with that. For sure. Your personal thoughts and your feelings. I also echo what you what you were experiencing as well. Because with my family and my parents, we never really discussed serious topics outside of my family and really the raw emotional topics we only discussed like between, you know, myself, my mom and my dad. And it’s funny that you you brought that up, because sometimes they can be very, very brutal. In fact, I remember a lot of the times when we would be having really just emotionally hurtful conversations for between me and my dad, he would say, like you You shouldn’t be upset, no one will ever be as honest with you than a family member will be. And that kind of like brutal level of honesty, I feel like it’s kind of all of the pent up emotion like coming out to those few people who are only deemed acceptable to talk to about those those particular emotions.

Angela Lin 6:54
Let’s dig into why that is. My hypothesis is that it has a lot Do with the Chinese but I think it is broader Asian mentality of like saving face of, you know, you want to present a certain carefully curated sense of self to the outside world that’s like respectable and reflects well on the family. Versus like, internally, you might be going through a lot of turmoil and like other bullshit and drama, but that’s, that’s private. And that’s not to be shared outside because otherwise you’ll be causing your family to suffer from the shame of like you showing those deep dark secrets to the outside world. That’s where I think largely stems from but what do you think?

Jesse Lin 7:47
I agree with that in in the sense that and what we already talked about in our initial episode is there’s a sense of collectivism versus individualism and the feeling that your emotions Doesn’t really belong just to you, it belongs to all those people who are in your collective and your family. And so I think sometimes our family members, especially those who immigrated to the US tend to downplay their individual emotions and kind of read to how everyone else is feeling about a particular subject and then just kind of subjugate themselves to that particular emotion, even if it’s not necessarily congruent to what they’re feeling.

Angela Lin 8:28
Is there like a specific time that’s coming to mind when you say that?

Jesse Lin 8:32
I mean, I can definitely think of like many, many family situations, just like regarding kind of end of life care with my grandparents like, it’s like one of those topics that you would imagine that would people would be very, very passionate about and very, very upset about too, because you know, you’re making decisions for somebody at the very, very end of their life, but a lot of the actual communication between my parents and my uncles was not necessarily emotional, like it was very, very dry. But as part of the family member, you can see like kind of behind the scenes negotiations and the frustrations and the sadness. It’s like everyone was going through something everyone was feeling something. But I think everyone was keeping it in for the sake of the family and for the sake of making the right decision on this on like the end of life care.

Angela Lin 9:26
You have to watch the farewell, at least a third of the movie is like kind of related to to that topic that you’re talking about. It is largely about the like joint decision of how to proceed with a very sick elderly family member. But there they talk a lot about kind of like the acceptable range of emotion to be showing during that time to that, like, simultaneously shows that you care and that you’re suffering, but not so much that you’re bringing down everyone else and like kind of making herself a burden in that situation by being so emotional. So I really think I already told you many times, I really think you should watch that movie.

Jesse Lin 10:10
Well, surprise. I did watch it this week, so I can comment on it. I thought it was a pretty good movie. And I definitely see a lot of what happened there playing out in my own family. And what’s really great to see is, you know, a lot of the time you don’t really see the emotional toll that people have, especially when they’re trying to like hold it in and save face, but I thought one of the most ridiculous and also poignant moments of the movie was when awkwafina his uncle was up on the stage to give a speech for his son’s wedding which I’m still not sure if it was like legit or a sham. But he just started like, bawling kind of a little bit uncomfortable. And it was so interesting because like the way that camera work was going, you could tell was trying to like, paint the picture whether or not He was being too emotional to be happy for the wedding. Yes. Or if he was like just the right amount of emotional. It’s I think it’s a great thing because it really does show that keeping in individual emotions, even even for the best of your family and for greater collective has has a significant toll on you personally.

Angela Lin 11:21
Yes, I agree. I also feel like beyond the concept of saving face there is, in general, there isn’t a set forum, like excepted forum for expressing emotion. So for example, like when my dad gets really angry about something or sad about something, his natural default is to just, he’ll just kind of turn really silent, and because he doesn’t know how to really express what he’s feeling. One and I also think too, we talked about this Little bit last time about like the expectations that the society has on like your role in it. I think he sees his role as like the head of the family, the man of the family who’s supposed to be protecting everyone. The strongest person in the family like should not be showing vulnerability and expressing that he’s going through some shit. So instead, he just chooses to shut it off. And of course, kids growing up you mirror what your your parents teach you is acceptable. So I feel like that was a big barrier, at least for me, I’m sure for you as well, like, overcoming what you thought was a normal way to process your emotions and finding your own path for for how to process it in a healthy way. Yeah.

Jesse Lin 12:51
I mean, I definitely. I definitely feel that because withdrawal I feel like it’s one of those big things that I picked up from my parents. And I feel like you’re saying that as well, where you encounter a really emotionally frustrating situation. And you have some kind of like, extreme reaction to it, but then you immediately just kind of withdraw the emotions back into yourself and you stew on it. And I think this was a, you know, this is kind of a universal reaction to really emotional situations. But I think where we don’t necessarily and I think Asian Americans don’t necessarily do as well, it’s the processing of the emotions after you withdraw. So after you’ve like, retained the emotions, because we’ve never talked about it with parents because we don’t really have any resources. Because mental health is not like a legitimized, necessarily thing in Asian American community. You You don’t really you don’t know how to process it right? Like how do you go about dissecting the things that you’re feeling and making them acceptable to you that that learning is never you never receive that as you’re growing up? And I think That’s a huge problem.

Angela Lin 14:04
Okay, so we’ve identified saving face as a big issue of not knowing how to properly Express and process emotion as another big issue. We talked about this a little bit in our private conversations. But the other big piece from our perspective, right is that being proactive about taking care of your mental health and going to therapy is something that is just more Western of a concept, right? Like it. I’m sure there are therapists in in Asia and specifically, right Jesse and I, our families were from Taiwan, I’m sure there are some therapists there, but like it’s just not the norm. Maybe because it did not stem from Eastern culture. So it’s just not trusted.

Jesse Lin 14:59
Yeah. 100 percent. Like, I definitely feel like there’s some stigma and taboo about talking about it. And I think part of it is because it is a Western thing. It’s not developed the science as some of the older, let’s say medical fields are which could be quite old. And I also feel like the experiences that our parents probably had with mental health and mental health providers is that they’re here for you’re like, absolutely crazy people, like people who are like off the rocker, like require really, really advanced kinds of care. So that’s probably kind of the situation that they have in their mind when they think about a psychologist or a mental health provider, because that’s probably what they saw when they were growing up, which is quite different from here where, you know, most people I feel like have gone to a therapist at some point in their lives or have had the need and they’re more open about that meet.

Angela Lin 15:58
Yeah, I do think it starts more common in the United States by I also feel like it’s evolved a lot over time like speaking just from a personal perspective looking at like my network, right? Like if I look back at the last five to 10 years I feel like that’s when therapy has started breaking down the the walls and taboos even within Western culture like I think generally baseline Western cultures are more in favor of going to therapy than Eastern cultures by far but I do also think it is like a relatively more recent thing that even here people are like, Oh, it’s normal. Yeah, I’m going to therapy this week. As if it’s not a big deal. But something that I found super interesting as, uh did you ever watch all the no reservations episodes back in those days?

Jesse Lin 16:54
No, unfortunately,

Angela Lin 16:55
I was. I was obsessed.

Jesse Lin 16:57
It’s on my list my quarantine list

Angela Lin 16:59
do it. I mean, it’s it’s so fun basically Anthony Bourdain for for those who don’t know, no reservations, as I’m sure everyone, or many people do, but it’s a show with the late Anthony Bourdain, who was one of the most famous chefs and TV personalities in the US at the time but he had a show where he basically every episode went to a different country or a different city around the world and started introducing the culture first through the the food because that’s where his background was, but he always got super deep because he was also a journalist by by trade, so he got super deep and like how food then reflected on the values that culture and all that but he went to Buenos Aires one episode and he talked heavily that episode about mental health because in Argentina, actually, like incredibly normal to go to a therapist Like, every person, no matter if you’re rich or poor, everyone goes to a therapist as if it’s like your dentist or your doctor. It’s just like a normal part of your holistic, like, you know, health checklist.

Angela Lin 18:15
And so yeah, 100% like, that’s a whole other issue if we would like sort of going down the rabbit hole, like health insurance and access to care and all that bullshit, but I thought that was so fascinating and like he was very envious of that kind of society where number one, access was available to everyone. But number two, it was so normalized that there’s just zero taboo around it. I think it’s gonna take a long time for both us other Western cultures and on the full extreme, the Eastern cultures to get to that point where it’s like, no, you’re not even blinking. You know, no one bats an eye at someone when they say they’re going to therapy. If this week’s episode was interesting to you, then please tune in to next week. When we talk about how we decided to overcome the taboo that our Asian upbringings have had around the topic of mental health, and how we decided to proactively take care of our mental health through our personal experiences, and the benefits that we’ve both seen from doing that.

Angela Lin 20:01
We are now in our fortune cookie closing section because it’s always great to end on a sweet treat fortune cookie. What are we closing with today, Jesse?

Jesse Lin 20:14
Well, we’re gonna be talking about what we’re listening to this week. But before we tell you that let us know what you are thinking about our personal topic today.

Angela Lin 20:24
Please subscribe to us on Spotify, that’ll make sure that you automatically get pushed our latest episodes. And if you can, like and follow us on Instagram, we’re going to start posting some fun quotes and other content on there. So we’d love if you could follow us but it’s at @linfamilyreunion.

Jesse Lin 20:49
Awesome. So tell me what have you been listening to?

Angela Lin 20:53
My favorite murder which is not a small podcast, so probably a lot of you listening to this have heard of it. But I have always been super fascinated by like true crime and like serial killers and all that stuff and these women are just so…

Jesse Lin 21:09
not a serial killer.

Angela Lin 21:10
Um, you’re not?

Angela Lin 21:14
But no, these ladies are super fucking funny and you never would think that comedy and murder should go together like when I first heard when someone first told me to listen to that podcast I was a little offended with who told me the title of it my favorite murder I was like Who the fuck? Name this and then I started listening to it and it’s just so relatable because they also start on just like talking about their their normal lives so that you can get to know them as people and then every episode they basically take turns telling one murder in detail. And it is you know, murder and death is sad and like tragic that they’re not making fun of that by any means but they are Boats so funny that the way they talk about the murders is hilarious. So they’ll be like, and then this fucker went and had the gall to like do this. So then you’re just laughing along even though it’s like a really sad situation. So it fulfills two things that people love. It’s like this morbid curiosity with murder and like, you know, tragic things that happen and then also like a really humorous take on it. So I love that podcast and I’ve been catching up on their latest episodes because I’ve been letting them stack up. How about you?

Jesse Lin 22:32
That sounds great. Well, I’ve been listening to my neighbor’s screaming feature and my other neighbor vacuuming very loudly all week long, which has been like number one on my list. But no, in all seriousness, last Friday, I believe doula dropped her new album and obviously, all the gays are here for it. I’m here for it. I’ve been listening to it like non stop on repeat like all week long. It’s just really fun like it’s fun music to go out to which makes me kind of sacks I can’t go out but it’s fun to like just listen to at home and like, listen to it for workouts, listen to it and just dance by yourself. Do you think there will be featured in the next virtual rave? Do I think maybe probably Yeah. It’s super gay all the gays. I also wanted to plug Sam Sparrow came out with a new album, maybe like one month ago and I think it’s amazing. His voice is like so amazing, like buttery, smooth, like, like a chocolate bar. But a voice, like so delicious. So I love it. I like turn it on in the shower. Before I get in the shower. I’m like in the shower, just like singing like extremely off key. Yeah, these two albums are keeping me alive right now.

Angela Lin 23:50
That’s so fun. All right. Well, I think that’s all we have for you guys this week. We are planning to release episodes weekly. So remember, just about subscribe so that you get those new episodes automatically in your Spotify or wherever you are listening to us. So until next time

All 24:10
Zai jian, bitches!

Episode 1 – Welcome to Our Identity Crises

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Full Transcript (Note: First 40 min only, transcribed via AI; may contain errors)

Angela Lin 0:09
Hello.

Jesse Lin 0:10
Hi there, we should introduce the podcast.

Angela Lin 0:14
Okay, well, this podcast is all about cultural identity and specifically, the identity of being an Asian American kind of stuck in the middle of not quite that Asian and not quite American enough. And kind of all the different topics and the struggles that could be interesting to talk about through the lens of having grown up being caught in both worlds,

Jesse Lin 0:44
I think that’s 100% on point. And I think we wanted to share this with you guys to showcase how we’ve traversed this very particular and unique identity as we’ve grown up

Angela Lin 0:59
cool All right, well, now you know what that says. But you don’t know who we are yet so we can do a quick introduction. My name is Angela Lin. I live in San Francisco 29. I work in Marketing. I think that’s it.

Jesse Lin 1:16
I’m Jesse. I live in New York. My ages I will never tell any of you. And I also worked in advertising.

Angela Lin 1:27
And Jesse didn’t mention this, but his last name is also Lin. And just so you know. Yeah, we might as well be related. I wish we were but we are not. Our relationship is that we’ve been pretty much best friends since we were like five years old. Oh, blood runs deep here. Okay, and then last thing about this intersection, and dress they already kind of mentioned partially why we wanted to start this podcast. Obviously, we want to just share our perspective of everything we’ve gone through and how we see the world based on, you know, the upbringing we’ve had and the influences we’ve had with being Asian American. But I think for me at least, there are definitely selfish reasons I wanted to start this podcast to starting any podcast is something I’ve been really interested in for a while and, but didn’t really want to take the leap and dare to do it. But then, you know, the world where it’s at right now we’re in the middle of this crazy Coronavirus porn scene. And it just felt like now or never like, what else are you doing? You might as well right? That’s exactly right. And the other reasons you really wanted to start this podcast besides boredom and sharing your perspective.

Jesse Lin 2:50
Yeah, I think it’s something really interesting to think about in terms of your identity and usually on your day to day, you don’t get it enough time to do this kind of introspection. So as you mentioned, now that we have a time I think it’s a really great exercise to try to get to understand ourselves better.

Angela Lin 3:10
Cool. Okay, I think that wraps up intro. Awesome. So, I think the only thing anyone’s talking about nowadays is the fucking Coronavirus. Yeah. So naturally, I think a good place to start is how are you holding up?

Jesse Lin 3:28
That’s a really good question. I think my mental health is slipping slightly because you know, I haven’t seen like another person in about a week. Yeah, like in real life, which is pretty crazy. And actually like a lot of companies and stuff shut down like this week or last week but I have been working from home since Friday, March the 6h and it is now March the 23rd. So I have been home by myself for quite a while. works. Yeah, with my cat and wine.

Angela Lin 4:03
Wait, like when did I start? I might have started around then I yeah, I feel like just to add on to yours. I have no sense of time anymore. Yeah, like every day every week started just to blend in together. Like I swear to god last week, when the weekend rolls around. I was like, wasn’t yesterday the weekend? There’s no delineation between weekday and weekend anymore.

Jesse Lin 4:30
Yeah, precisely. And especially since we’re all like working from home now. There’s like no separation of like anything. It’s just one long, endless Groundhog Day. Yeah, it’s driving me crazy.

Angela Lin 4:41
I’m in my PJs is just all day, every day weekend or weekday, whatever our day is. So that definitely doesn’t help with having separation between work and life.

Jesse Lin 4:52
Yeah, I mean, I still like get ready. I don’t get dressed up nicely anymore, but I do my face. I do my hair. I have these rituals that I have to stick to otherwise, it’s just like complete chaos.

Angela Lin 5:05
Well, God bless you, I can’t myself to do that. I like I think I told you this already, but I put on makeup and like wore a real shirt for the only time very Corona bullshit a week ago. And that’s only because we had a meeting with like the president of our company that, like I will never have another meeting with him again. I’m like, I should probably wear makeup, I guess.

Jesse Lin 5:29
Yeah, we’re both situated in like hotspot areas in the US in terms of the virus. So it’s like, no living vicariously through one another. We’re both like, Oh, just chewing our way through every piece of Netflix content available.

Angela Lin 5:46
Seriously. We’ll get to that later. Yeah, it’s honestly it kind of sucks because it’s such a drag because there’s no other news that’s really happening that matters. So Whenever you just open up like any social media or news it’s only about Coronavirus bullshit. Yeah, yeah. But like, also I feel drug addicted because I’m like, I get depressed by it and yet I’m like seeking out more information about Yeah,

Jesse Lin 6:17
I mean, I’m like constantly on it just looking for the first signs of it’s over and you know back to normal everyday I’m just like Google News refresh refresh refresh, show me about like Coronavirus over by May or June news because that’s all I’m looking for right now.

Angela Lin 6:35
Dude, I mean, I hope you’re right. Cuz you know, I’m trying to get married in August.

Jesse Lin 6:42
Oh my god. Yeah. I’ve just like such a far that’s like, really far away. But still with all this stuff. It’s like not that far away.

Angela Lin 6:52
It’s super depressing. I mean, I think you, you got the email that we sent to all. But it’s like, even though super far away August because there’s no end in sight to this thing it also you don’t know if it’s really that far away because if the virus doesn’t go away to like July or early August or whatever like that’s definitely gonna bleed into it but also I feel like there’s more likely a scenario where a virus dies down and may or so but people are just still paranoid and then a bunch of my guests just still don’t come because they’re paranoid which is

Jesse Lin 7:29
Yeah, so for those of you who don’t know this pitches getting married, Yes, she’s having a bad see event in Spain which is going to be amazing. So hopefully the Coronavirus goes away so we can all have a frickin Fiesta.

Angela Lin 7:47
Thanks, Jesse. Well, just to curb that back, I’m not a rich bitch or anything as thing as small. Less than 80 people and also Spain sounds glamorous, but it is cheaper to do your way abroad than it is in America, and also my fiance’s Spanish. So this is not just some whimsical bullshit.

Jesse Lin 8:07
All true things doesn’t make it less fabulous.

Angela Lin 8:10
That’s true. Thank you. Well, what else? What else have you, you know, what’s, what else is new? How was Juniper? What’s going on?

Jesse Lin 8:20
Yeah, so my cat is like the only person that I talked to every day. He’s gone really, really moody over the last few days, because I don’t feed him until specific times of the day. And he doesn’t like that. And he’s very vocal in his protests. The other day, he was very upset at me, and swatted my head while I was doing a workout. And his claws got stuck in my hair, which is now tied up in a bun like when I do actually stop because otherwise it’s like all over my face. And his pot got stuck in my hair. And I thought, y’all just For me, like, I’m done, the cat’s gonna claw me to death like, goodbye. How’d you end up freeing yourself? Thankfully, I just grabbed his paw and pulled it out of my hair. And he was nice enough to let me do that. But yes, this this is like kind of the most exciting social interactions that I have on the daily. Other than that, I’m mostly just trying to like cook new things. Honestly, this is like the most healthiest I’ve eaten for like an extended period of time for a while, because I’m just at home and I have time and so I can like actually cook stuff now. So I’ve just been doing like lots of healthy salads and like, basic proteins and veggies and fruits and stuff like that, which I think is good for me at least so I can at least come out of quarantine looking hot and fresh and healthy

Angela Lin 9:52
You will you will. Yeah, I feel like all of my friends have been saying the same thing. Like people who don’t usually cook like Karen, who is our Other best friend, 1 million years, she never cooks and now she’s cooking. She and her husband are cooking all the time because you have to.

Jesse Lin 10:10
Well, it’s also fun, right? Like, it’s nothing to do like you just pull up a recipe on all recipes or whatever. And you’re just like, Alright, cool. I’m gonna do this pitch tonight. Like, I have no idea how to cook this, but I’m gonna try it like, you have nothing else to do. Really?

Angela Lin 10:24
Yeah. cookbook recommendation that is not specifically tied to quarantine time. But Ramon and I’ve been moving heavily into the Morimoto, everyday Japanese cookbook that we bought, like, I don’t know, maybe six months or even more ago, because, okay, well, for the rest of you, Ramon and I lived in Japan for two months, I was able to convince my job back in the day to let me do a short rotation in Asia. And so we had that really unique experience but when we came back from eating all That amazing legit food in Japan and came back to the US for like, Hmm, maybe we should use cooking ourselves. So we’ve been cooking probably probably cook like 90% of the recipes in there and it’s all real good. So I would recommend it

Jesse Lin 11:18
cool. So for all the people listening SF Where do you get all of your cooking materials from?

Angela Lin 11:23
Ah, you mean like the ingredients and stuff? Yes, Nijiya. It’s the mean Japanese supermarket in Japan town and it has everything. That sounds amazing. Yeah, we go holy, like every two weeks. Awesome. thematic topic for today is how you define your identity, which is the you know, backbone of this podcast, but which is why we felt like we should start here. So Jesse, how do you define your identity?

Jesse Lin 11:58
Wow, that’s like a really difficult Question from the bat. I would say if someone stopped me on the street and asked me how I identify, I would tell them that my parents are from Taiwan. But I was born in California, and that I’m also gay. And I think those are probably like the most salient points of identity for me. Like if someone were to just be like, how do you identify? But I think that’s really tricky, because it’s something that I’ve never really thought about a lot of outside of those kind of pretty umbrella. ideas or terms for identity. Yeah, so that’s how I think about it from like, the very, very high level. What about you?

Angela Lin 12:47
I think that makes sense. And a lot of the same stuff for me, although I think I have like a different order of operations in my head, and then probably a few other things that are I naturally associate with my identity that I’m not sure I’m like, happy about doing so. For sure, or pieces my identity I always think about is American. I’m like, very proudly American. And I think for me Taiwanese because I’m also Taiwanese come secondary. I like it’s obviously a big part of my identity. But because we were both born in America, it just feels like this is this is my home country. And Taiwan is like a big part of who I am because it’s part of the DNA of my family, but it comes secondary for me. And then because I feel like as like, being a privileged, you know, heterosexual person. my sexuality doesn’t really come into play for me when I think of identity because for better for worse in some I’m just like the default normal, right? So it doesn’t come into play for me. The other piece of identity that unfortunately I, I’ve always thought about since we graduated college is like, my work being a big part of how I identify myself, which is probably pretty evident given that even in our introduction, like the three things I said one of them was like, um, it has something that I’ve been trying to get away from, especially in the last year, I think, since who I am shouldn’t be defined by what my job is. And yet I think, for me, it is a big part of how I define myself which I’m not happy about.

Jesse Lin 14:48
Well I think you brought up two really interesting points. I mean, the first is like how we were different in prioritizing our our identities and I will say that Also, like if you ask me what my nationality is, obviously, I’m from the United States. But a lot of the times the question about identity and particularly your ethnic identity prompts you to say that you know, I’m Taiwanese or I’m Chinese or I’m whatever versus over why you know, where you were born. And it’s interesting that you say that because I think that’s one of the one of the interesting things about identity is that like, you just find it yourself. But also other people to find it for you whether you want that or not.

Angela Lin 15:35
Totally, and actually, to that point, and this is a perfect tie into the title of our podcast but so the point of like, you, you making your own identity but sometimes you having to, like, adjust the way you answer based on how other people provoke you’re right like

Jesse Lin 15:56
So much girl.

Angela Lin 15:58
I wasn’t So aware of being Asian until I studied abroad in college. And Funny enough, I started abroad in Spain. But there it was like, every day I just got called like ching ching. This way without any conversation without first Yeah, I’m just like across the street being yelled at. So just like constantly reminded me what I was. And I distinctly remember being in a club or something because I was, you know, 20 years old, but being in a club and some I know, some guy came up to me and in Spanish, he asked me like, Where are you from? And I said, I was from New York, because at the time I had been living in New York for like, six yea rs, whatever. And he was like, No, where are you really from? Fuck you, man. I told you it was New York.

Jesse Lin 16:55
Yeah, that’s like one of the most like offensive and annoying questions ever hear from somebody like after you’ve already told them like, where you are from.

Angela Lin 17:06
Now getting into our upbringing, right and how that also affects our identities. I mean, I’ve had so many arguments with my parents, especially my mom about like, my my identity in terms of being American first. I want to use second because that’s how I that’s how I see it because I grew up in America. And like one of the funniest and most bizarre arguments we had one time was I referred to Irvine which is where Jesse and I are both from Burbank. You But yeah, I refer to Irvine as my hometown. And my mom got like really pissed at me and she was like, your hometown is Taipei, Taiwan. And I was like, What are you doing? I’m you. I’m not from Taipei, and she was like, she was so mad and very serious. And she was like your hometown is wherever your mom grew up or like, was born or whatever I’ll tell you about. So I was like, so when I have kids, their hometown will be Irvine, California. And she’s like, Yeah.

Jesse Lin 18:24
Wow. I did not expect her to concede to that point. I would’ve expected her to be like, it’s Taipei, Taiwan.

Angela Lin 18:33
Forever. I mean, she probably argue with me on that point when the time actually comes.

Jesse Lin 18:41
I mean, like, it’s, it’s so interesting, because in a way, we have different identities and they’re almost like different lives. We lead, in a sense, like we have an identity that we embody and portray for our parents in terms of like how we are as age But then we have our own kind of identity. And how we portray ourselves to everybody else in the world like this is this is who I am, and how I define myself. Versus like how our parents see our lives and where they envision our lives to go.

Angela Lin 19:19
Do you ever feel like though sometimes you can’t get across what you want to say to your parents, like, all the time, I tried to keep to you know, that way that we’re supposed to talk to her most time but like, when I’m getting really pissed at something they’re saying, and I can’t express it fully in Chinese I get it just like makes me so mad. And I like say it anyway in English and I. I know they don’t really understand what I’m saying. I just

Jesse Lin 19:49
yeah, it’s really hard though. Because like, there are some things that there’s no way that they could understand in the same manner like there are things about their life experience that we could never understand.

Angela Lin 19:59
Yeah, it’s funny because as we grow up, I’m like starting to see parts of my parents and myself, I realized and maybe the last honestly, like two weeks, maybe because I’m with remote now that like, I have a person that I’m talking to all the time and is hearing all my stories over and over and over again. But I’ll be like, Oh, how we told you about that time? And he’d be like, yes, even told me like, at times, and I can’t help but think that that’s exactly what my dad like. He tells the same story, the same like five stories 1 million times as if you’ve never heard them. So I randomly just thought about that. But the story I was going to tell about him, which is like, to the point of like, you know, we were just raised so differently and like had such different lives is whenever he either feels like we’re being kind of spoiled brats or privileged Or specifically in the context of when we’re eating up. And we kind of like, give him shit for like grabbing all the crab legs on a plate a bit. Always. He’ll always tell the same story about like, how poor he was growing up because both my parents are one of like five children. So they had a ton of siblings that their parents had to provide for and always tells me the story about like, when they were out there poorest they couldn’t afford to have him have anything else for lunch except for half of a boiled egg. So he like tell them all the time to guilt us to be like so deserved, or like, or like you don’t know how good you got it. Which is totally fair and true, but also goes to like how it’s so hard to relate because we that’s a whole different kind of life, you know?

Jesse Lin 21:58
Yeah. And honestly, so thing like, have you ever talked to your parents about like identity specifically, and like how they identify? Because, you know, one of the things that I think is difficult to talk to our parents about, at least for me, is that they don’t question their identity. Right? Like, like what you’re saying, like your mom was saying, like, you know, your Taiwanese from Taipei, Taiwan. They don’t have any, you know, second second guesses about where they’re from, like, where their roots are. They’re very, very, very clear on that. Versus like, where we stand. It’s not so clear, right? We have some we have some ethnic roots based off of where our parents are from, but like, we are pretty firmly grounded in the United States. And what all that entails.

Angela Lin 22:51
Yeah, I’ve I’ve never had that real conversation with my parents except when we argued about the hometown that but yeah, I agree, I don’t think they have a question at all in their minds. And part of that, I think is because they, you know, they grew up in one country, which happens to be the exact same country as their ethnic origin. Right. So that’s not that questionable for them. But I also think it has to do with just like, in general Asian culture and like society, in terms of, there’s this kind of like, I don’t really want to say the word obedience, but like, there is some, some feeling of like, you know, the way you’re supposed to act, based on what that society has taught you is is the right way to act and in a country’s in particular, right, it’s like, you don’t question your place in society, like you know, if you’re the man that like you were supposed to, like provide for the family. If you’re the woman you were going to raise the child at Least back. Yeah, like, Aaron’s day, right? So I feel like there’s also part of that because whenever I have had like harder conversations with my parents about, like, their relationship or like, you know, more serious topics, the answer I get back a lot is like, well, there’s no way that’s not even possible. Yeah. You know, like there’s there’s no choice. Yeah, it is just they know where they’re supposed to be the way they’re supposed job. And there’s no way to go. Yeah.

Jesse Lin 24:31
100% like there’s this feeling of conformity versus individuality.

Angela Lin 24:39
That’s a way better word. Yeah. Yes.

Jesse Lin 24:43
Active listening. Okay. Yeah, but I find that so interesting because part of why they came to America and why we’re here is kind of a pursuit, of individuality of separation from that conformity. To find something different. And for me, I feel like I’ve always struggled with that like tension. Because they want you to my parents want me to conform in some aspects, but be very exceptional or individualistic and other aspects. And it causes a lot of like, personal drama, because you’re like, trying to be your own person. But at the same time, like your parents don’t want to be, don’t want you to be that person in specific aspects of it. But they’re fine with other aspects of it. So it’s very, very confusing way to construct your identity growing up because some things are acceptable, and some things are not. But you never know what they are because they don’t talk about identity and they don’t talk about how identity isn’t constructed for them because it’s always been this this static like, non changing thing.

Angela Lin 25:52
Yes. All I could think of when you were saying that was like they want the best of both worlds. Yeah, like We’re the ones that live in the junk worlds. They’re not the one you

Jesse Lin 26:03
You want your cake and eat it too.

Angela Lin 26:06
You know, I’ve always got a problem with that. Because I don’t like why the fuck do you have a cake? If you’re not gonna eat it? Maybe it’s

Jesse Lin 26:14
okay, it’s a Birthday Cake.

Angela Lin 26:22
But yes.

Jesse Lin 26:24
But like, so how do you feel like that’s shaped how you have approached your life like this kind of tension that you carry with you throughout like the different formative periods of your life? What do you feel like? How do you feel like that’s like affected you?

Angela Lin 26:38
I feel like it’s affected me in that especially when I was growing up. So like high school, right? Like when you first start understanding what your personality is, like, growing in yourself. Yeah, and the most awkward part of your life and I feel like I had to fight my parents tooth and nail on everything that I will Wanted especially as as I was getting closer to leaving for college, right so like in sophomore or junior years when you start really thinking about college and start like getting into applications and whatever. And for me, I wanted to go down or really like untraditional route for an Asian kid which is I wanted to pursue something in the music business. So like, not me playing the violin on stage, you know, being the next yo yo ma or whatever. But like me wanting to work at a record label and like help promote artists, which is totally unheard of. That’s not what I do today. You know, it was a part of my life at some point, but like to get there. I felt like I had to justify myself all the time to my parents of like, how does how can this dream still make sense within the expectations that you have for me of like, there’s this just constant Underlying guilt of I brought you I like went through all the struggle to bring you to this country so that you could succeed and have a better life than I does so you better not fuck this up and so to like go after this so like seemingly like flittering dream that’s not going to make any money How was I going to make that lake sustainable and and something that could still fulfill the having a better life than Joe did checkmark that they needed. I think that was like the biggest milestone that I first came across of like, how that their upbringing of me shaped the way that I had to like carry myself in life which was just like learning to fight for what I want and make what I want a reality more more than ever, which I guess in retrospect is like a really good thing that they say you forced me to learn, right, which I didn’t plan for. But

Jesse Lin 29:04
yeah, like it drove you in a way to be more persistent in what you wanted. Because of all that kind of pressure and doubt about whether or not what you were looking for looking to do would be successful.

Angela Lin 29:19
Yeah, how about you?

Jesse Lin 29:20
I definitely feel the same way. I think it was also, you know, like, I think my parents had a lot of academic expectations for me. And a lot of the times, it would be very difficult because, to be honest, like, there was nothing that I was particularly interested in, in high school. And then when it comes to the whole, like, acceptable success, like what your parents think is acceptable for you, I also had the same experience kind of going to college. side. No, I did follow Angela to New York to go to NYU, but I made this decision all by myself. So no shade there. Um, but yeah, like, you know, it’s so funny because I felt like I worked my ass off through high school like I did a bunch of AP classes, I did extracurriculars. I really was like pedal to the metal trying to get to the colleges that I want to get into. And one of the colleges I want to get into was near University and then kind of, at the end of the process, when I got the letter, I was like, so happy and excited. And part of that was kind of temporary, because like, I knew my parents weren’t as excited because they wanted me to stay close to home and go to a local university. And this is like one of those interesting tensions because for me, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard to get into local university, right, I could have kind of just used and made it. So it was one of those situations where it’s like, you’re aiming for like the highest highest highest level of success, but they kind of wanted me to Just kind of settle with what was what was there? What was the plan? And obviously like you, I came to the same conclusion. I was like, fuck it. I’m not gonna settle like I just worked my butt off to get to the school that I really wanted to go to. I’m gonna go there.

Angela Lin 31:16
Yeah, I think you and I are very similar which is like no surprise that we’ve had some similar milestones like yeah I’ve remained friends for so long but I I’m sure this is something that a lot of Asian American people have dealt with which is like finding your place amongst the heavy expectations that your your parents have set for you.

Jesse Lin 31:44
Yeah 100% I you know what? We’re like talking about high school and stuff like how do you feel like you have changed like how your identity has changed since like high school, college, where you’re at now

Angela Lin 31:57
girl tell me about it

Jesse Lin 32:01
I cannot. Tell me about the emo phase the bangs. Eyeliner everything.

Angela Lin 32:05
I don’t have to tell you, you lived through it with me. We have so many MySpace photos that I wish could be burned forever. You’re on the internet for life, unfortunately. Um, yeah. Okay, well high school high school in and of itself. I think I went through like three different phases of my ID coming into high school and Okay, backtracking even further middle school I was like, That was when I had I would say my like deepest Asian pride phase where I was like,

Jesse Lin 32:39
Oh my god, yes, I remember. You watched like Meteor Garden and you wrote stuff in Chinese.

Angela Lin 32:51
So I was like super Asian and middle school and then I was transitioning out of that into high school because of the four high schools and Irvine I went to the widest High School. So I think that definitely played into how I wanted to, like be perceived by people, which is like, Oh, I was just like super Asian all the time, but I’m at this really white school, I shook my turn, tone that down, right? Like when you’re 14, and you’re just like, you want everyone to like you, you’re not gonna be true to yourself, like, how do I adapt so that I can like, be as likable as possible? So that was like the beginning. And then when I started when I discovered music, and I thought I wanted to get into the music business for the first time, I was like, 15, which, you know, go me, but I was even, like, thinking about a career when I was 15. But

Jesse Lin 33:44
I did not even know that was like a career option when I was 15. So like

Angela Lin 33:51
tbh I didn’t either and felt that. I don’t know if you remember this or you did this as well, but our career counselors in high school gave us this like Thick ass book that was thicker than a phone book that was like every potential career you could have in your life and there was like one sentence dedicated to like music business and like yes this is it but anyways that’s when I went to my emo Phase I was like we’re all black which I don’t think is really indicative because if you live in New York all your wardrobes black anyway but we’re all black had like heavy eyeliner had really crazy hair with like 50,000 layers in it and went to all the barrel the band. Yes, that was a fun phase. And then I became I went totally opposite in senior year and went super preppy. Like, sorry, preppy is not I don’t know if it’s preppy, but I went like really deep on american apparel and was like trying to I remember that. go that route. Yeah. And then college was just a clusterfuck all round man. I don’t think that knew who I was at any point in college until maybe the last stretch of college.

Jesse Lin 35:07
I feel you like do I know who I am now? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Angela Lin 35:13
Even now?

Jesse Lin 35:14
It’s clearer. But it’s like a Monet it looks nice from far away. And then you get closer to like this just a bunch of weird colors like dotted together.

Angela Lin 35:26
That’s fair. That’s fair. I Yeah, I definitely don’t have all my shit together now either, but I feel like I’m way more secure in myself now. Then. I was growing up or even through like my early 20s God Damn, that was that was like, blurry.

Jesse Lin 35:50
We’re still in our 20s

Angela Lin 35:52
Okay, well, I’m sorry. What is it March. I’m four months away from being 30. So I’m sorry. Barely. But But early 20s Yeah, early 20s. Like you had no idea what you’re doing. Yeah.

Jesse Lin 36:11
For sure.

Angela Lin 36:13
Well, speaking of younger times, now that you have a better sense of self, if you could be in the same room as baby boy, Jesse, like, middle school freshman year, high school, Jessie, like, doesn’t know who the eff he is or what to think of. So, what advice would you give him about, like feeling? finding himself and feeling more secure and and who he is?

Jesse Lin 36:43
Yeah, I mean, like I just said, I still don’t really necessarily know who I am. But I think that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just gotten more comfortable with that unknown. And I think you can never really figure out who you are like, there’s always gonna be parts of you who are like, why did I do that? Or why they say that? Why do I think these things? So I think the advice that I would give to my younger self is just be more comfortable with the fact that there are going to be parts of you that you don’t understand and that you don’t need to necessarily conform to like, one shape, or group or weigh. There was like a lot of struggle, like I struggled a lot to try to like place myself. And I think my advice to my younger self would be don’t do that. Like, because you you don’t necessarily know like, where you feel one day versus the other. Like, just try to enjoy the the best parts of each identity, the best that you can

Jesse Lin 37:40
What about yourself?

Angela Lin 37:42
Yeah, it’s something I’ve been reflecting a lot on recently, too, because I’m like you’re saying I’m also still trying to figure out my life. But a big part, but a big part. That’s, like probably my biggest question mark is more like career piling on what’s going to bring me joy in the long term there. But as I was reflecting on that, one of the things that came up a lot was like how much I value? what other people think of me, which like I shouldn’t. Like, who cares? So I think my biggest piece of advice to myself back then it’s like, no one else knows who they are either. Yeah, like, stop too hard to impress them because, like, they’re not better than you. You know, I mean, like, everyone’s in their own little clusterfuck Yeah, we’re all that like, separate hairs. And you know, you’ll figure it out they’re figuring it out.

Jesse Lin 38:37
Yeah, it’s hard because you never see it right. Like everyone projects like the best version of themselves to the world. And so you’re like looking over there and be like, That bitch is doing so good right now. What the fuck? But yeah, like you said, in reality, everybody is going through probably some really serious struggles about like, who they are, how they feel what they’re doing.

Angela Lin 38:58
Mm hmm. Yeah. That reminds me because like, a really easy like default part of me that I fall back to, which I’m trying to curb now is like, being super judgmental of people because it’s so easy to be judgy right of people, but something that I have been trying to take more to her recently is like the saying of you know, like, you, no one knows what’s going on and in someone else’s life except that person, right. So like, have a little bit more empathy there. Right. So, so to that end, like whether that’s a real positive way of looking at someone’s life or a negative way, like, you have no idea what’s happening under the hood. So, so don’t make assumptions. Yeah, you know,

Jesse Lin 39:46
no, I agree. Although I reserve the right to be petty and judgmental.

Angela Lin 39:51
No, I didn’t say I’m not petty and judgmental. I said, I’m trying to be less. Okay. Thinking about your identity. What’s the biggest thing that’s shaped your sense of who you are. So not to be like a big stereotype,