I’m Taiwanese American, but way more American than Taiwanese. I was born and raised in Minnesota, which is about as middle America as you can get. I grew up in an extremely white suburb at a time when the motto for immigrants was the dreaded melting pot–as in, you damn well better melt into the bigger culture if you know what’s good for you. It wasn’t about mutual melting or blending or anything as warm-hearted as that. No, it was about not sticking out or seeming weird.
I didn’t love it when it moved from a melting pot to a tossed salad, though the latter was better than the former. At least the immigrants were allowed to bring something about themselves and their heritage into the equation. Still, with the tossed salad metaphor, there was the feeling that the immigrant was still the other and didn’t fit into society.
Honestly, I don’t think there’s a nice metaphor to explain the immigrant experience or to explain how they should exist in American society. I’m against labels in general, and not in a ‘no labels’ way (because that’s just pretentious twaddle), but in a ‘life is too complicated for pithy sayings’ way. Still.
Being a second-generation Taiwanese American (my parents immigrated over fifty years ago) is an interesting experience. For the most part, I don’t think about it. It’s just a part of me, but it’s not at the surface. I am much more American than Taiwanese. I value the individual more than the family (but that’s because of my very dysfunctional family. I’ll get to that in a minute); I reject that boys are more important than girls.
My whole life I was treated like I was lesser than my brother simply because of my outward gender. Several months ago, my brother said that our parents treated us differently based on our gender, and it was oddly gratifying to me. My parents would deny it until they were blue in the face in part because they both stridently uphold the patriarchy, so hearing my brother say it bluntly nearly made me cry.
My brother asked me a month ago or so if our family was dysfunctional or just Taiwanese. I told him that we were definitely Taiwanese, but also dysfunctional. The two were not mutually-exclusive, just like someone could be a minority AND an asshole.
I talk about my recent medical trauma often and I’ll mention it once again. People are amazed that I didn’t have to do rehab. I was exhausted once I left the hospital, yes, but I didn’t have much physical damage at all. The worst part of my medical trauma? Being smacked in the face with the family dysfunction. My parents moved back to Taiwan decades ago. We had an uneasy alliance in which we talked once a month or so for half an hour (my mom and I. My father and I talked for five minutes, maybe). We emailed sometimes if my mother needed something or wanted to share out-of-focus pictures.
Our relationship was totally superficial, which was exactly how I liked it. Then, they came here while I was in the hospital, and all hell broke loose. We all knew. Well, three of the four of us knew that my father would not handle the situation well at all. He cannot tolerate not being the center of attention, but we all underestimated how much he could not handle it.
The second day I was home from the hospital, he was pestering me about Googling something for him. I literally could not read anything on the internet because the fonts were all blurry. My father said, “You can’t look up just one thing?” as if it was the quantity that mattered. I. Could. Not. Read. Anything. As he stalked away, I heard him knock something over in the dining room. It was a bottle of my meds, which then spilled all over the floor. Did he pick up the pills? He did not. I had to go do it.
On the same day, my mother nagged me to show him a Taiji stretch/warmup for the back. It’s one my own teacher suggested for me when I was having incredible back problems. I did it three times in a row (on each side) once a day, and my back pain disappeared in a year. It’s a gentle exercise because it’s Taiji, but remember that I had just had walking non-COVID-related pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke. When I tried to demur, my mother guilted me into doing it. Two days after I left the hospital!
That’s the moment I knew that she valued my father more than she did me, I mean, I knew it in the back of my mind for all my life, but it was never as clear as it was in that moment. She had so bought into the toxicity of her marriage, she was willing to put her BACK FROM THE DEAD daughter’s health in jeopardy to placate her husband.
That was the moment that any respect I had for her completely disappeared. She made her priorities crystal clear, and I was not at the top of that list. To make matters worse, she kept saying she shouldn’t talk to me about her problems with my father, apologize for doing so, then would not even wait a day before bringing it up again. At some point, I finally told her to stop saying she shouldn’t talk to me about it and to stop apologizing because we both knew she wouldn’t stop.
None of this is due to being Taiwanese. Well, there is a bit of Taiwanese culture that emphasizes heavily that a woman’s worth is only in what she does for her husband. That’s not just a Taiwanese thing, though. American patriarchy pushes this as well, but that’s not the point of this post.
Sometime into the last stay, my mother sent an email to my brother and me, guilting us for being bad children. She brought up Taiwanese culture, saying we needed to respect our elders more. And by elders, she meant my father. She said according to Taiwanese culture, we were supposed to respect and love him more. I mean…you really can’t make someone love/respect someone else. You can try, but those are feelings. They are not quantifiable or something you can force.
I exploded and said to her that I talked to him whenever he wanted about his obsession with squirrels (he can literally talk about them for half an hour) or listen to him tell the same excruciatingly boring story about driving to Yellowstone three times in a few hours.
I asked why he wasn’t expected to treat me with respect. Her response? Because of his pathology. I was the ‘normal’ one according to her, so I was supposed to put up with his bullshit. She’s a psychologist. She should know better than this, but she’s so steeped in toxicity, she can’t fathom anything that isn’t grotesque. I used to think that once my father died, she could be free. I no longer believe that because she’s bought into the toxicity, embraces it, endorses it, and promotes it wholeheartedly.
And let’s say it was Taiwanese culture to be self-abnegating to promote ‘family’. Which, actually, is not far from the truth. I was born and raised in Minnesota. I don’t speak Taiwanese. I have been there three times? Maybe four or five. Most of those times were when I was young. I do not care much for it for many reasons. It’s unreasonable for my parents to expect me to be traditionally Taiwanese.
In addition, they are very old-fashioned, even for a more traditional culture. Taiwan is changing, but they are not changing with it. Their values are the same as they’ve been for fifty-plus years, which is not a good thing. Most people change, expand, and grow as they get older. My parents seem to have been dipped in resin and placed on the mantle upon hardening, remaining forever the same.
They’re old. They are not going to change. It’s sad, but that’s just the way it is. I have to make my peace with it, for my own sanity.