Angela Lin 0:18
Today is a special episode. So we like to do once a season we want to make sure that we shine a spotlight on the listener community or the broader you know, Asian American POC community you and let you guys submit stories from your own experiences and give you the spotlight to tell your story and share that with our community. So as a reminder, this is a reflections episode where we reflect on other people’s experiences. So I’ll read you their stories and then we will kind of pepper in our color commentary as we always do.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Jesse Lin 1:41
So the first submission is from a listener named Jessica. And it starts like this. Hello, hello, hope your week is off to a great start really digging your podcasts thus far and loving hearing everyone’s stories of how they navigated the in between and their relationships with their parents. I’m sending a story about my childhood growing up, mainly tying it to your podcast themes of mental health and filial piety. It’s a little bit messy and all over the place. But here we go. I guess to preface everything I basically was raised single handedly by my dad, my parents are divorced and my sister went to live with my mom to another country. And growing up I remember wanting to be the perfect daughter so that when I visited my mom and sister or met my friend’s parents, I was representing how great of a parent my dad was. I grew up predominantly in an Asian suburb where other kids my age were also first generation Asian Americans. So a lot of us were taught to keep up appearances of a healthy successful family. In my young mind, being perfect met not being a burden in any capacity. And although I will never was conscious of it, then I came to realize that a lot of it equated to me bottling my emotions and learning to not bother others for emotional support, including my dad. This was my way of helping and silently expressing thanks for the sacrifices he’s made coming to America and trying to provide a better life for me. Let’s talk a bit about my dad. My dad’s pretty in line with the description your typical Asian father, he believed in the American dream, rarely showed his emotions and wasn’t the best at holding conversations that went beyond the topics of school and money. I remember whenever I missed my mom and sister and cried in front of him, he told me something along the lines of “Don’t cry, you have to be strong. It’s not good to cry.” My dad had grown up poor and to get to where he is today his mindset was, what else can I do? Crying will not change my situation. I have to be strong to help the rest of my family. No one else can help me but me. Looking back, I think that because he didn’t have anyone to rely on when he was younger. He was basically supporting his family back in China as the eldest son, him telling me to essentially suck it up was the only thing he knew how to do. In many ways, my childhood mirrors a lot of the themes Asian Americans face growing up, keeping up appearances of being a model family, the communication barrier between generations, especially language and culture, and especially the hustle to make it in America as well. And especially for young men learning to hold back your emotions. But one thing I wanted to bring up and highlight through my story is that as I grew older and pushed myself to have important conversations with my dad about mental health, and emotional well being, E.G. confronting my true feelings about how the divorce impacted me, and how lonely I felt growing up, I noticed that over the years, my dad’s mindset has gradually changed as well. He is more understanding about letting emotions out and often tells me to make sure that I am physically, emotionally and mentally healthy on our phone calls. In part I think this has to do with how mental health has become less of a taboo topic in both United States as well as in parts of Asia. But I also think this mindset shift comes from my dad experiencing the empty nest syndrome and allowing himself to be more expressive which seems to be familiar to what my other Asian American friends have experienced when talking to their parents about mental health and young adult worries. excited for your next episode, keep it up, Jessica.
Angela Lin 5:11
There’s so much to unpack. Oh, God, um, well, can we talk about the like, since she ended on this softening up of this, like hard exterior parents when you grow up, I can totally vibe with that because my dad, well, both my parents, like, I feel like the way that Asian parents raised you is like, very strict. And also very, like, what Jessica was saying, like, no emotion, like, stuck it up, you know, keep a hard exterior, keep up appearances kind of thing. And so I always was kind of scared of my parents growing up, honestly, because they didn’t show that kind of affection. And then now that I’m an adult, and we like don’t live near each other, and they like, don’t have much else to do. They’re retired, you know, so they’re just, like, worried about me all the time. And then when we do talk, it is much softer. And it’s like, how are you? Like, are you sure you’re okay? That kind of stuff. And it’s just like a, they’re like different parents when they’re older.
Jesse Lin 6:11
Yeah, I think part of it is just like, when you’re getting older, you get a little bit softer around a lot of things. And personally, like, the way that I see it is that I feel like our parents came to this country to have a good time of it. And they quickly found that it was not going to be like quick, easy, good money times. And I feel like that that can really harden a lot of people to be like, oh no like to impart to my children. Like it’s, you know, it’s a lot of work. It’s really hard. And I think there’s a little bit of an overcorrection because obviously, it’s very hard for them because they just immigrated here. But for us, we were born here. So it’s a much smoother process. And at the end of the day, I think all my parents really needed to soften up was to understand that, like, I could take care of myself, I could have a successful successful career. I could have like a loving partner and the like, once they realized that I could find these things for myself and like I was independent enough to seek these things for myself. They really like let the foot off the pedal really, because I think they were really just pushing so hard to make sure that I could set myself up with all these things. feeling like they themselves didn’t quite get all that you know,
Angela Lin 7:24
Even your dad, your dad has softened?
Jesse Lin 7:26
You know, you know, let’s say soften is a relative term. It’s like less less judgmental, like definitely more like conversational. There’s there’s still some like advice giving where I’m like this is not merited, but..
Angela Lin 7:45
A few fewer prickles then
Jesse Lin 7:49
Less prickly
Angela Lin 7:51
Oh, Daddy Lin. Another thing she said that really stuck with me is like, she felt the responsibility to like, play her part in keeping up appearances for her dad. And one thing she didn’t explicitly say, but I could I inferred a little bit is like, because she’s talking about keeping up appearances, aka saving face, right? And like, divorce is pretty taboo in traditional Asian culture, right? So I feel like, even though she didn’t say it, I could imagine she probably felt this like, already, she and her dad were at a disadvantage in terms of like, the social circles, because they probably were like, you know, quote, unquote, tainted already because they were not like, nuclear, typical nuclear family. But then she had to, like, keep everything else as like normal and like, excellent as possible, so that there weren’t further points against her and her dad.
Jesse Lin 8:55
Yeah, I definitely feel that way as well. I mean, divorce is hard no matter what. And I feel like, even now, it’s like a pretty, I don’t want to say it’s a taboo subject, but there’s like a lot of negative connotations associated with it, as opposed to just like, you know, we don’t vibe together anymore. And we don’t want to spend our life together anymore, which is what it means to me. And I remember like, I had friends who, whose parents were divorced, and if they were treated a little differently in conversations, because there was always like, either kind of like, unwanted sympathy or like, kind of like, oh, like what happened? Like there’s a lot of speculation around the personal life. And I think that that can be very intrusive and additional pressure as well. Yeah.
Angela Lin 9:39
Yeah. All right. Well, great story. Jessica. Thanks for writing in appreciate you sharing an intimate I’m sure your memory from your past. So hopefully it helps other people as well.
Jesse Lin 9:53
Thank you.
Angela Lin 9:54
All right. Okay, so moving on to story number two. This one is from DJ and it’s titled, “Immigration Story: Midwest Edition”. When I tell people that I’m from Ohio, the first thing they ask is either why or how. before I was born, my mom was selected to participate in an AFS program. I’m going to pretend like I know what that is. For exchange teachers. She taught English at her school in Xinjiang and was placed in the small town of I don’t even know how to pronounce this and this is English, Berea, Ohio, for her exchange her go. After her semester in the US, she went back to China where I was born. A few years later, my parents told me that they like many immigrant parents here plan to immigrate to the US to provide better opportunities for me. The Chinese educational system was crushing and grueling, squashing many opportunities for children to develop a well rounded interests and skills beyond rote memorization of equations, facts, poetry, etc. Since my mom already had a taste of the quote unquote, American Dream during her exchange program, they decided to pursue that dream full time. When I was about five years old, my mom again set off on her own for the US back to Ohio, the only US that she knew – very different US then we know – at the time, the journey to close to three days of travel. First a bus or train from Altay to Urumqi, second a flight from Urumqi to Beijing, and third flight from Beijing to a large East Coast City, fourth a flight from that city to the final destination in Cleveland, Ohio. Wow. All right. She was able to secure a job at a local university and soon began making plans to bring my dad and I over. Oh shit. She did this herself. I was like imagining that this was like with the fam for like, all together. All right, good job mom. I’ll skip the logistics here. But it took over 10 months of visa applications, written testimonials from coworkers, friends, etc. And many dollars spent on immigration lawyers for my dad and I to finally receive the necessary paperwork to come visit her in the US. 10 months is a lifetime for a five year old. There’s so much that I can share about my first impressions after getting off the plane in Cleveland and seeing my mom again, but I guess I’ll stick to my first year in elementary school. My first day of first grade was a blur but I remember that I was wearing a qi-pao house style stylized outfit so cute, right? Yeah, my mom packed me dumplings and a thermos for lunch and my teachers name was Mrs. Sepper. That sounds like a first grade teacher’s name. In my first few weeks at school, I would take home many many notes from Mrs. Sepper – topics ranging from DJ did not hear lunch today to a student was staring a DJ so she started yelling at him and running after him. There was even an episode where I kicked it boys square between the legs for tauntingly calling me Chinese girl while pointing and laughing. I think there was a note home about that too, maybe even a visit to the principal. But to be honest, I don’t think I was that fazed given that I had no idea what anyone was saying. So from my point of view, it was just a bunch of foreign looking adults gesticulating wildly and trying to communicate with me in their jibberish language. Retrospectively, both my mom and I are quite pleased that I stood up for myself instead of withdrawing in fear or shame for being different. Apparently, I was very much not a model minority at a young age. You go girl
Jesse Lin 14:05
Four for you Glenn Coco.
Angela Lin 14:06
Yes. All right. I did not doubt that I was the first Asian person that they’ve ever interacted with in real life. Yeah, Ohio.
Jesse Lin 14:15
Berea, Ohio,
Angela Lin 14:17
Wherever that is, yeah. I was as interesting to them as an alien I suppose. For me, they were strange little kids and school was a strange place where we played way more than we learned. I mean, how can these six year old still not know their times tables or how to tie their own shoes. Also, why are the teachers praising that child’s artwork of what is supposed to be a horse looks like a huge blob of nothing. I think growing up as a virtually the only Asian within a 30 mile radius has given me a different perspective from the coastal Asian communities. Rarely did my family and I have the opportunity to celebrate our culture with a like minded community has been hard. For my dad it was particularly lonely and isolating since he was a doctor in China and needed to be relicensed in the US to practice coming from a base of zero English to passing highly technical medical certification tests in a second language. He remains a huge inspiration to me, also, my mom, her tenacity and sheer guts to leave everything she’s ever known to strike out in a foreign country with no community around to support her. I have no words. For many years, we lived on a single income as my dad learned the language to pass his certifications. Wow. But my parents never once made me feel like we lacked anything. In contrast, my childhood was full of joy and a wealth of love and happiness. This is kind of everywhere. And there’s a lot more that I don’t really know how to write down but hope this is helpful, DJ.
Jesse Lin 15:53
Wow. Well, first of all, just like super huge hats off to DJs parents for doing that. I mean, like all of our parents did this, but like to be the first person to come over to bring other people over. I know that that’s like a really, really full of pressure and difficult situation so really hats off to your two DJs. Parents. I also want to point out that like, it is very difficult to bring your family here and immigrate here, even back then when there was a large wave of immigration like, so I think that a lot of people aren’t thinking about actually, you know, when you hear about immigration stories, how difficult it is to actually become naturalized as a citizen of the US, even if you have the right skills to make it here. Apparently, obviously, your parents did, because they came over re-learned their skills, and now they’re in their professions.
Angela Lin 16:49
Yeah, there are so many things in this one. It’s like, well, first of all, like you said, I’m so like, impressed with her parents, but very much her mom because like all of our parents did it. But a lot of them did it together like they came over together. Or it was like our dads and I’m not saying it’s like easier for men, obviously, it’s always gonna be lonely, no matter what if you’re like the one person coming over to a foreign country, but like, it’s very rare for a woman to be the one who has to like lead her family to a foreign place like you go, Mrs. DJ’s mom. And the other thing is like Jesus Christ, her dad relearning a medical degree in a language he didn’t know until he arrived, like that is so insane. Because actually, I remember when I lived in New York, you know, like all the taxi drivers and now there’s Uber drivers that were as well. So like, they also have their stories, but I remember I’ve been in many taxis, where like it would be someone who immigrated to the US and they would tell me stories about how they were like, doctors and like lawyers, really insane professions, you know, from their home countries, and they’re like, now I drive a taxi because my degree is invalid here. And it’s like too hard for me to really learn that whole thing right now and make a living, you know, and it’s just like, it’s so sad. So it’s, I’m very like, in awe of her dad and also in awe of her mom once again for like having enough drive to be able to financially support their family while her dad was taking the like unpaid time he needed to relearn that profession. Hmm, pretty crazy.
Jesse Lin 18:34
Yeah. And I just want to close I think that we’re like the most awesome people ever. Because like, look like where people brought from the both of best worlds, right? We have as DJ mentioned, there’s the escape from the more traditional educational system which is rote memorization, equations, facts, poetry. Girl, we got that, you know we do.
Angela Lin 18:54
That’s true.
Jesse Lin 18:55
We also went to school here, we did. extracurriculars, we did music, we did all these other things. So I support us because I think we’re like the best of both worlds, including all of our listeners. Yeah.
Angela Lin 19:08
Holla.
Jesse Lin 19:09
So our last story comes from Annie. And here we go. In terms of heritage, immediate representation, I recently read an amazing article from Eater about how this now normalized and commodified phenomenon of the global pantry and specifically about how ethnic foods become trendy when presented in a palatable Western lens. The article referenced is called Alison Roman bon appetit and the global pantry problem. This article articulated a lot of my feelings on the topic because I’m particularly interested in the important role of food in Asian cultures as a ceremony and celebration of our heritage and how its intimately tied to identity for a lot of us. It spurred me to do a minor in food systems in college. Interesting. Seeing more diverse food representation nowadays is great, but there’s a part of me that’s definitely salty about getting taunted by my peers and elementary school for bringing the stinky food or the wigglies squishy mash of noodles while other kids had uncrustables. I’ve been grappling with this concept of how cultural things can only be spotlighted in the right way that’s approachable when it’s from a white person preaching to a white audience. Like maybe it’s too intimidating coming from the actual source. And another aspect is how certain items like matcha or tumeric, or goji berries get picked out of their respective cultures and labeled as cool. I also felt some type of way when I was drinking kombucha for months before realizing it actually comes from ancient China. I felt so bamboozled that I had been a consumer for all that time without knowing. So I asked my family their thoughts on it, and my grandmother said, they brew it in buckets, and drank it as kids. But it wasn’t at all revered. It was pretty commonplace in our experience, they didn’t believe me that it had become so mainstream in the US and cost so much, until I pointed out the entire refrigerated shelf dedicated to “booch” at Whole Foods to true. And I think I wanted to really feel proud and connected to my culture when I brew at home now, but I know that in actuality, I only ever got into it because of its rise in the Western world, that it’s been decoupled from its roots, I don’t think that I really would have found out about it otherwise. And it’s sad that I’ve never seen branding from the big “booch” companies tying back to its original origins. And in terms of representation, just thinking on who popularizes and profits from so many, quote, unquote, authentic restaurants and gets praised for bringing new cuisines to light. The last thing is that I just don’t necessarily see a solution to it. At the end of the day, I still feel appreciative that people are more interested in and open now to global cuisines. And I think that’s progress. But as a starting point, I’d like to see those in positions of power with the platform do better. Educate themselves on cultural context and if they’re profiting off of the commodification of other cultures, they should have responsibility to support and uplift the communities along the way. And I want to be able to access resources to support and uplift fellow POC who are chefs or bloggers are running small businesses. Sorry, this is becoming just a rant. So I hope that was comprehensible at least. But I wouldn’t be offended if it doesn’t make the cut lol – but you made it.
Angela Lin 20:50
As someone we’ve talked about this a lot, but like as someone who didn’t want to own her identity, her like Asian identity until older now I’m like, trying to reconnect with it. And a lot a big part, like I’ve talked about is through food and like learning how to cook a lot of like traditional Chinese and Taiwanese dishes. And I don’t know how to feel about like, my favorite cookbook that I use right now is written by a white woman. And she but she trained and has lived in China for over 20 years. So she was like, probably more Chinese than I am. You know, I mean, so like, there’s a part of me that’s like, oh, I’m connecting with my roots. And then the other part of me is like, yeah, but I’m only able to connect with it because this white woman has written this book that I can read and like, easily emulate as opposed to like, if I had asked my mom back in the day, she would have pointed me to like, Chinese recipes in Chinese. And I’d be like, I don’t know what this is you I mean, so there’s like, yeah, I feel that gratitude and a little bit of like, he unease that it has to be through this like Western lens.
Jesse Lin 23:30
Yeah, it’s more approachable that its westernized. But I mean, like, in a sense, there’s no way around it because like, we would never be able to read a Chinese cookbook. And when you said that I was like, I remember that just triggered like a memory from like, forever ago, or my mom, I think was cooking from a Chinese cookbook. And it was like, you know, if you go to like one of those rinky dink Chinese takeout places in New York or wherever, and they have those like, neon backlit pictures of that food. It was like that in a cookbook. And it’s just yeah, so I’m like, as authentic as that probably was, it was not accessible for us. Yeah. And so there definitely is this kind of like tension of like, people who may not be people of color, taking a shine to something becoming like an expert at it, and then making it more accessible to everyone, including people of color who may not be super connected to their roots.
Angela Lin 24:28
Yeah, and, you know, I am like caveating the shit out of everything but like, I do agree with that. Like, I think there’s a lot of benefit to people like Fuchsia something as the one who wrote the cookbook that I that I follow and I’m very grateful to her for giving me access to my culture, even though she is not Chinese. But then there’s the other half of it were like to what Annie saying, like people profiting off these like very deeply rooted cultural food items or like traditional cuisines or whatever that like, they don’t even really know where it came from. One of the things she mentioned that like really did bother me when it first became popular was like goji berries thing, because I don’t know if you remember when we were kids, goji berries is in every single Chinese medicinal soup. Oh yeah. And yeah, I would dread my mom dropping that shit and Well, it wasn’t the goji berries specifically It was like, it would be mixed with like a bunch of other medicinal properties, right? And be like bitter and always when I’m like sick or like she’s trying to like, make me taller or like whatever, right? And so like when goji berries came out, and we’re like, here’s this new superfood, like add it to your smoothies. I was like, are you fucking kidding? Like, you don’t even know that this like has like, Chinese medicine has been around for 1000s of years. And yeah, goji berries is a staple. And I’m like, you don’t even know where this came from. And you’re just adding it to your like superfood smoothie. And that that did bother me when that kind of thing came out.
Jesse Lin 26:00
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s really hard. I feel like the opposite can be done as well. And I actually saw it recently I got targeted with a hard seltzer ad called I think was called lunar seltzer. And it is basically like a White Claw. But it just has Asian flavors. And the whole shtick was like Asian flavors for Asian people. And I was like snap. It’s like reverse happening we’re taking white people stuff, and we’re slapping some Asian flavors on it. And we’re saying it’s for asian people.
Angela Lin 26:31
That’s true, man. I guess that’s true, because Asians gotta hustle, man. And we like find a way to profit on whatever we can figure out how to profit on. And I do remember talking with my dad about like, how does he feel about you know, Chinese Americans? You know, like, the Chinese rip off thing is like Panda Express and whatever. And he is like, I wish I had come up with that. While he’s also at the same time as like, there’s this is trash and not actual Chinese food. Yeah, I guess there’s a level of respect. You have to give people who figure out how to, like commoditize monetize off this stuff?
Jesse Lin 27:11
Yeah, I mean, the last thing I’ll say is that I think it’s really great when you have people like Fuchsia, or whoever you mentioned in the cookbook, who are like really preserving the heritage in a way for more people, especially. And I want to piggyback off the thing with your dad said, because your dad was these like traditions, who cares about traditions if you can make a buck basically. And so it’s like, there, there’s like stuff like that, where it’s like nice that someone actually came back and like cared enough about the heritage of it to try and like preserve it. And then obviously, there’s the other side where it’s like, kind of not great when someone just picked something out of some out of a culture where it’s been a thing for a really long time and doesn’t bother to explain where it came from. And they simply like, proposed it. Like, I’ve always like, this is my idea.
Angela Lin 28:00
Cool. Well, we really enjoyed listening to your stories, this is a good variety, and you guys have such rich experiences. So I’m going to go out of order of our usual stick. But I’ve gotta use this inspiration to remind all of you to just always write us in we were just banking these stories for the next episode. And, and we love to hear from you. So if you have something that you want to share about your experience growing up in this country, or a different country, or whatever you want to tell us, write us in telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com.
Jesse Lin 28:36
Awesome. So for our Fortune Cookie segment, we wanted to take a moment also to reflect and think about basically what the process of making this podcast has meant to us, like things we’ve learned or things we really enjoyed. So I will start off by saying, I really love the episodes where we have guests, because I feel like every time we have a guest, I always learned something new. And even if it’s just an interesting thing about the guests, I feel like that’s such a rewarding thing to tap into someone else’s perspective, like DJ’s story. I know she’s not a guest right now. But I’m like just an Asian person in the 90s in Ohio, like my brain is like does not understand like, this perspective. Just having these like flashes of insights into different things is like so interesting, because I don’t pretend that I’m really an expert at anything. And I always love talking to people and finding out like, new things about them new things about the world like new things about this like crazy situation that we’re living in. So I think that that’s like probably the most rewarding thing.
Angela Lin 29:52
Yeah, I definitely will just double down on that. Like, I think you and I have learned a lot of things with this podcast, some technical things like how to edit and GarageBand just like all these things, but definitely the most rewarding is connecting with and like finding this community. I don’t think I really expected to have the community that we have, like I kind of expected, like, five of our friends to listen to this and like, but as a favor to us, and like no one would actually be listening. And we’re just doing it for fun, but I really love hearing from people but also, like you said, I think when we have guests on and, and even just you and me, like when we talk, we get so deep, I feel like on these topics that like you learn so much about yourself, the other person, and it’s just making me it’s forcing me to have a moment every week to like be in be in the present moment. And, like, appreciate someone else’s story because I feel like in our day to day lives, it’s all just about like, cranking out work like okay, now I’m tired, like turn on the Netflix, like it’s all like distractions, and you’re just like surface level on a lot of things. And when, even if it’s just you and me talking, like I feel like our friendship has developed so much more, even though I’ve known you since we were five, like, because we’re having such real discussions. And then to your point, when we bring on a guest, it’s like, you’re putting your entire attention on this person for the hour or whatever that we have with them and like really digging into like, what is that special experience that you had? And what can I derive from that and like, a lot of times, it makes me feel, you know, a strong kinship with them and like it makes me feel closer to my Asian and Asian American identity than like I ever had before this so I did not expect that that like doing this podcast would make me feel like so much more connected with the community to you to my identity like all this stuff.
Jesse Lin 32:05
Oh, yeah, warm and fuzzies.
Angela Lin 32:08
Building off the warm and fuzzies, please come back next week because we do intend to keep doing this for as long as you listen to us.