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Hands Constructed 手工

When my grandfather died, my family found rolls of his writings hidden away in his bedroom. Everyone was shocked because my grandfather had been a day laborer in construction work. Uneducated, with hands schooled for labor, no one knew about his secret life as a writer. I don’t believe my family saved any of his scrolls. They thought they were just lonely words of a sad old man. So they tossed them into a fire so his sad life could be burned.

In the late 1970s, my father’s typewriter was kept safely hidden in the oven of our dank basement apartment in the Bronx. My father had left Hong Kong as a young adult with a sixth grade education. Like his father, my father’s hands labored when he first came to the States. Dishwashing, cooking, picking fruit. Until one day, they were used for mixing chemical formulas and typing scientific reports. My father typed out his dissertation on that typewriter and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry. This machine was the most expensive thing my father owned after his car.

Today, inside my piano bench are a handful of musical scores to some of my favorite pieces I played as a young musician. Songs that date back to my childhood-Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All, J.S. Bach’s Air on a G String, Tchaikovsky’s Seasons and the lyrics to songs from Les Miserables. Like a well-kept music box you take out and crank whenever you want a reminder of time past, I still play these pieces from time to time to remember myself at age 9, 11, 14 when my hands were used to create music and beauty that I hadn’t yet even realized. That these hands, passed down to me, were those of a builder-writer, a worker- scientist, becoming a poet-pianist.

HANDS CONSTRUCTED performed in Dohee Lee’s ARA Ritual I: Waterways, CounterPulse, SF CA 2016.

The Heart of the Matter, A Response to Tiger Mom

 

My initial reaction to "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" was anger. After several days, the emotion turned to disheartened. And as I write this response, I open up the possibility for the activist, the psychologist, and the healer in me to be heard.

As an activist, the first thing that came to my mind was how the model minority myth was being elevated yet again. In my perspective, the article minimized, yet again, our humanity and tried to "Orientalize" us. I could hear that inquisitive, wholesome American voice again saying, "What are those Chinese people doing over there that makes them so successful?" It reminded me back in the day when Asian kids would win the Westinghouse science prize and everyone, including my parents, marveled at the genius of young Asian Americans. I was angry.-Angry that the decades of work by many brothers and sisters who work extremely hard to debunk the model minority myth, was set back again. The full humanity of Asian Americans, including the struggles and problems faced in our community, was again dismissed.

The psychologist in me wanted to respond by sharing how strict, authoritarian parenting impacts children’s psyche. It may appear to be effective in terms of outputting a certain level of "success", but we must also examine what side-effects are associated with that level of output. Psychologists including myself, who work with Asian American young people, often hear of the difficulties Asian American students experience in trying to live up to their parents' impossible standards, their desire to please their parents and select a profession that their parents approve of, the struggle of creating their own identity and exploring other possibilities, and often, their depression for not being able to please themselves nor their parents in the end. -Others have already commented on the high suicide rates among Asian American teens and young adults.

But alas, the healer in me hoped that if anything, this article would open up discussion for us to talk about parenting children in a way that helps them to blossom and become their highest potential. I think this is the real question. Regardless of culture or background, we parents want our children to be happy and successful. Sometimes however, we get side-tracked about what it is that really helps our children to be successful and revert to doing the only thing we know how to do, whether or not that works. Let's start talking as parents about what helps our children become their full potential. Let's be willing to put aside our egos and talk about our struggles and heal our own wounds so that we do not have to repeat the same mistakes from our past. Let's re-evaluate what "success" means and find that well-being encompasses physical, emotional, financial, personal and relational well-being.

So, if I were to write a book about parenting, I would have a heart-to-heart with parents and children. I would ask parents to talk about what their aspirations are for themselves and their children, what are the fears that keep them up at night, and what do they struggle with inside themselves. I would talk with children, young and adult about what they enjoy most about their parents, what it is that they want to learn most from them, and what they wish they could say but don’t.

The human element is that we are all healing and struggling along together in this life. Why write more books that divide and separate us from ourselves and each other. Let's find a way to come together and connect.

HEART OF THE MATTER published in Asianweek.com, Jan 27, 2011.

Fulfilling a Dream in Theater

As an immigrant kid, words associated with performance, music, and the arts were “you can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t.” I still have a vivid sixth-grade memory of my mom making me cut one of my three music classes in order to focus more on academics.

Over the years, the performing arts became that extra special yummy dessert I treated myself to once in a blue moon. The kind you save up for months on calories just so you can fully enjoy the few moments of full richness and taste. The arts would only be a guest at my kitchen table.

And then last summer I was given the incredible opportunity to be part of A.C.T.’s Back to the Source educator institute. I broke the rules handed to me by the pragmatic, restrained values of my Chinese culture. I indulged in a full week of voice, physical play, improvisation, and song. I was told, “Yes, and wilder, go farther, be bolder!”

No one had ever given me permission to be myself and more. In pushing myself to be wilder, go farther, be bolder, I found that little girl inside who said, “Yes! This is home.”

The day after our ensemble’s final performance, I talked to my mom in China. She could hear the excitement in my voice as I told her about writing a song and performing it onstage at The Geary Theater. She laughed and said, “Did you know my first love was dance and acting?” She proceeded to tell me for the first time ever about her secret passion that had been extinguished because of the limitations of circumstance: a girl with polio living in poverty during the era of Communist China.

I listened with amazement as her story unfolded to the present with my week at A.C.T. Despite all these challenges, life had not given up on my mom. The dream she had as a child had buried itself deep inside my soul and grew in a soil rich with opportunity until it could lift its head above the ground.

At the start of the summer, I thought my fearless summer was defying my family and not asking others for permission. Instead I learned being fearless meant fully embracing myself and answering a call that was speaking to me from before I was born, a call from a dream given to my mom that would not give itself to fear.

Published Jan 12, 2016 in Inside ACT – Insights on creating dynamic productions, training theater artists, and engaging our community at American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco's premier nonprofit theater company.