Today, I invited Carol T. Luna to Bookish Brews to chat with us a bit about her experience living at the intersection of multiple cultures and how that has informed her life. Carol wrote a beautiful piece for us about the experience of push and pull in a society that wants to categorize you into a box. I deeply relate to this piece and I’m so honored that she’s sharing it with us here today. Before we get into the piece, Carol T. Luna just came out with a brand new book, The Left-Hand Man! Here’s a glimpse at the book:
Bookish Brews Snapshot
The Left-Hand Man by Carol T. Luna
Two months after the Spades’ raid, Ao and the Legionnaires learn of an alliance between Harena and Talus, two of the most powerful nations in the world. Their goal: to prepare for the next Hundred Year War. The Spades’ response: regicide.
🦄 YA Fantasy 🔎 Mystery/Thriller 🌱 Character Growth 🤔 Thought Provoking
- Genre: Mystery, Speculative Fiction, Thriller, Young Adult
A Question For Identity
“They attack another Asian in the subway,” my mom says. I’ve arrived home during the height of the COVID pandemic. It’s the umpteenth time, and for the umpteenth time, we discuss the details: someone was pushed off the Times Square platform. A thirty-five-year-old woman was stabbed dozens of times in her own Chinatown apartment. She chides me to take an Uber home from work as I make my tea but before I can argue back, my brother and dad return and my mom repeats the story in English, Cantonese, and Portuguese.
My family, Chinese by blood, was raised in what were Portuguese colonies. My mother came from Macau, an island across the bay from Hong Kong. My father’s family pursued financial opportunities in Mozambique. Both then moved to Brazil, where my parents met, and eventually emigrated to New York. “We are a family of ABC’s,” my dad often jokes. “African born Chinese and American born Chinese.”
Growing up, the mesh of cultures was an easy show-and-tell topic. It was fun to see my mom bond with my first-grade teacher in her native tongue. We celebrated birthdays at Portuguese restaurants with barbecued chicken and stewed bacalao. We ate not congee, but boiled egg sandwiches seasoned with soy sauce for breakfast. On Lunar New Year, Columbian empanadas sat beside white radish cakes and yellow cupcakes. As my extended family gathered, Chinese, Portuguese, and English took their respective turns in conversation. Over time, the mélange of languages, walls initially erected to separate the adults from their children, became a membrane where words and meaning passed via osmosis, an advantage I abused in high school Spanish.
But as I grew older, the same differences began to surface, like rocks in low tide. As an introverted child, bullies found me an easy target. I had few friends and lacked the relatable home life of the strict, traditionalist households comedians like Jimmy O. Yang knew. Adults shamed me for being unable to speak Chinese. It might have been why my dad signed me up for weekly Chinese School, where lesson plans were all taught in my so-called native tongue. I barely passed, my grades buoyed by the weekly oral essays I memorized and recited but never understood, and after years of enduring 65 after 65, I finally crumbled and bought a Chinese-English dictionary—only to realize I lacked the basic comprehension to even use it. Quietly, my dad finally allowed me to drop out, sensing the futility of my continuing. It only took six years.
By then, I had cast off the illusion that I could ever become the perfect Chinese-American daughter. I would always speak with an American accent, branding me as a foreigner the moment I’d land in Beijing. But while I had given up on my heritage, those around me never did. At work, I became the resident expert on my blood’s culture. My bosses acknowledged my intelligence or skills, sometimes with a well-meaning off-color joke. People avoided sitting next to me on the subways during the height of the COVID pandemic, which angered me. They judged me because I looked like the average Chinese woman. But I wasn’t one of them. Those from mainland China thought I was American. At home, Americans thought I was Chinese. My social identity was a constant push-and-pull but really, I just never belonged.
It’s the constant disconnect, combined with frustration with my own inability to express my abstract thoughts and feelings, that turned me to writing. Books, not people, were what I turned to for connection, guidance, and knowledge. The authors never cared who I was as a reader; only caring that I was a reader at all. I sought refuge in fantasy and science-fiction when real life was troubled, which made it easy to put the real world on a pedestal. Armed with a fledgling’s knowledge, I circled my fishbowl of reality, trying to understand the many swimming schools from every conceivable angle. Writing became my method of processing and communing with my life—and still is.
Years later, I’d come to see my outside looking in as a mixed blessing. The distance helps me separate myself from the bias that comes with immersion in cultural norms. I can put myself easily in other people’s shoes. My personal experience allows me to understand and perceive concepts, combine them, and create something new. It’s the stuff of my own stories. A mélange of different cultures and different people I use to dissect and expand on the big questions of life on a pretend stage.
These days, my inner child tries to indulge in experience beside the people I’ve always observed. I’ve learned even if I can’t connect with others, sometimes, connection happens by proximity. I joined a team of dragon boaters, flailing on the murky green waters on hot summer days. I practice small talk with my peers at work and schmooze easily with my husband’s gaming circle. I care deeply for the friends I’ve retained from my schooling years. It doesn’t matter to me how much of an Asian, American, or Brazilian I am. I know what I am. I’m a product of nature and nurture. I’m the poster child of the American Dream. I am Chinese, American, a New Yorker. I may always have trouble relating and communicating with others but while my roots spread wide, with a little help, I too, can attain deep human connection: the thing that makes life worth living.
