Living In Between, a guest post by Kara H. L. Chen

The first hint that things were different in my household were, of course, the shoes. I am Taiwanese and wearing shoes indoors is akin to smearing food all over your face—it’s just not done. But I am also American; I was born in Missouri and grew up in Ohio, so I’m quite familiar with the American tendency towards wearing footwear indoors. I’d like to think that I was properly nonchalant the first time I saw my non-Taiwanese friends wear their sneakers outside and then into the house without pause, the same way my friends gamely nudged their sneakers off in our foyer. But even this small thing was still a divide, a reminder that I was not quite like the others around me.

Other differences began to emerge over the years. Turns out that not everyone keeps dried squid snacks in their freezers. Or unidentified plastic bags of Chinese herbs in their vegetable crispers. Other, non-Taiwanese families also – apparently!– used their dishwashers and ovens as appliances and not as glorified dishracks. They didn’t spend their weekends at other Taiwanese people’s houses, playing video games with the other kids while their parents happily ate potluck  and sang karaoke upstairs.

My mom and dad, well-intentioned and always loving, tried to teach me the values that would have helped them to succeed when they were my age in Taiwan: work hard. Go to an Ivy League university. Get a job in a stable field (i.e. medicine, engineering or law). Prioritize security and stability. For they grew up in a time of deep turmoil in Taiwan, and had suffered in a way that I had the privilege not to experience.

But since I grew up in the space between the Taiwanese and the American, I saw how other households operated. How some of my non-Taiwanese friends did not live under the cloud of pressure and were not subject to the third eye of community gossip, tracking every decision and achievement and failure. They had parents who let them hang out without a curfew, understood pop culture references, and let them take whatever extracurriculars they wanted, simply because they were fun. My friends were living in a completely different way than I was, and yet they seemed equally as happy and content.

This disconnect was deeply confusing to me, and, as I careened through my teenage years, my parents and I seemingly argued about everything: what was important and why, whether the Ivy League was the end all and be all, whether what the community thought was more important than what I wanted. I did not know then that there was more dividing my parents and I than language; we literally had different worldviews and value systems. They prioritized safety, security and community standing. I was all about self-actualization and independence, in a life defined on my own terms.

My parents had spent their whole lives in a place where the sky was blue, and that’s what they taught their children. But one day their child came home, singing in another language, telling them that the air above was pink, pink, pink.

I wrote ASKING FOR A FRIEND because I wanted to explore this tension between generations.

In my novel, Juliana Zhao is the character who has always done everything “right.” She’s at the top of her class, President of the Student Business Association, and wholly focused on getting into Yale (where her late father went to school) and winning the Asian Americans in Business competition (which her father started before he passed). She fully believes in the guidance that her Taiwanese mother has given to her, but has also subconsciously absorbed the judgments of the Taiwanese community that she has grown up in.

When Juliana’s partner dumps her days before the competition is to begin, she has no choice but to partner with her childhood frenemy, Garrett Tsai. Garrett’s family is on the fringes of the community, and he is not respected since he has openly decided to pursue a career in the arts, which is outside of their narrow definition of success. Juliana and Garrett had spent a summer together at a Taiwanese cultural camp, where they became close before Garrett abruptly terminated their friendship.

Juliana and Garrett are two characters whose views of each other are heavily influenced by the values that their parents have taught them. Throughout the course of the book, they must learn to deeply examine and unpack these judgments before they can truly see each other and form a genuine relationship.

Their journey, to me, is a microcosm of the teenage years in general, which are ones of independence and separation, a time when people begin to actively question what their parents teach them. Asian Americans, living with the values of both cultures, can sometimes feel as if we don’t fully belong in one world or the other. But we are also uniquely positioned to see the best and worst of both cultures. We can compare what resonates with us and what does not and choose our own personal combinations of beliefs. We can forge ahead, even if the path is new and rocky.

Nowadays, I still keep my shoes off in the house, and so do my kids. But we use our dishwasher daily and keep our evenings mostly for movie nights, not karaoke. We speak English at home, but they have Chinese lessons with grandma over Skype. They are slowly beginning to navigate their own identities as third generation Asian Americans, observing not only the worldviews of their parents, but also their grandparents on both sides of the family. They are creating their own baskets of beliefs, tossing in different things here and there as they get older.

Someday soon they will read my book. It is my hope that they—and other readers—will find some comfort and guidance in those pages, and be inspired to take the steps to create their very own happy and fulfilling life. Whatever that may be.

Meet the author

Kara H.L. Chen is a Taiwanese American writer who received her MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College. She is the author of LOVE & RESISTANCE (Quill Tree/HarperCollins, 2023) and ASKING FOR A FRIEND (Quill Tree/HarperCollins, 7/23/24).

Links:

Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok: @hl_kara
Website: karahlchen.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/hl_kara

Substack: https://substack.com/@karahlchen?utm_source=profile-page

About Asking for a Friend

This charming YA rom-com follows a strong-willed, ambitious teen as she teams up with her childhood frenemy to start a dating-advice column, perfect for fans of Emma Lord and Gloria Chao.

Juliana Zhao is absolutely certain of a few things:

1. She is the world’s foremost expert on love.

2. She is going to win the nationally renowned Asian Americans in Business Competition.

When Juliana is unceremoniously dropped by her partner and she’s forced to pair with her nonconformist and annoying frenemy, Garrett Tsai, everything seems less clear. Their joint dating advice column must be good enough to win and secure bragging rights within her small Taiwanese American community, where her family’s reputation has been in the pits since her older sister was disowned a few years prior.

Juliana always thought prestige mattered above all else. But as she argues with Garrett over how to best solve everyone else’s love problems and faces failure for the first time, she starts to see fractures in this privileged, sheltered worldview.

With the competition heating up, Juliana must reckon with the sacrifices she’s made to be a perfect daughter—and whether winning is something she even wants anymore.

ISBN-13: 9780063237889
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 07/23/2024
Age Range: 14 – 17 Years

Filed under: Guest Post