My father’s story. Country roads, take me home / To the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mama / Take me home, country roads This is one of my dad’s favorite songs. Not that unusual, except when you realize my Dad was born in Taiwan in the 1950’s and emigrated…

In Fall 2017, I’d finally decided I was going to leave my stable, secure & comfortable job at a Fortune 50 corporation — without a plan for what next. I’d been feeling this way for several years (even with interesting, career-growing projects throughout!), feeling a desire for more autonomy, faster…

My dad came to America with $500 & a suitcase, and he lost $200 of it when he left his suitcase unattended on a Greyhound bus. And somehow, he managed to raise 3 daughters in suburban Long Island, NY, sending us to weekly music lessons and paying for three expensive…

“Liminal” adjective TECHNICAL relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. 2. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. Liminal comes from the word limen, meaning “threshold”. …

After tackling each of the relationships in my nuclear family, it’s fitting that my final essay for AAPI Month is about my relationship with myself, and my hard-won journey to respect and value myself. Growing up, my mother used to occasionally call me “Xiǎo ādāi”, which I thought was a…

Growing up, when people asked if we argued or fought, we’d collectively look at each other, smile — pause to think — then shake our heads: “No, we just don’t really argue.” And it was true. That was then; this is now. This year felt like the unraveling of our…

Growing up, I would’ve said my most contentious relationship was with my mother — and that my even-tempered, patient, and understanding dad was the easier parent. But in adulthood, it’s switched: the few times I’ve completely lost my sh*t (ie: yelled at the top of my lungs) have been with…

In second grade, I wrote an essay about my mother and won a school-wide contest. I can’t remember the full essay, but it was mostly about how historically, in Chinese culture, to be born a woman was to be second class — and to be a second child even worse…