“Where are you really from?” A personal essay on being South East Asian
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Written by Ronnie Chang @snicketfence
Even growing up as an Asian immigrant in a Los Angeles suburb filled to bursting with immigrant communities, I have always had issues with talking about the diaspora. Ethnically speaking, I am fully Chinese, but neither I nor my parents have ever set foot in mainland China. Their parents fled the Cultural Revolution to Myanmar, then to Taiwan, where I was born, then to the States. I speak Chinese Mandarin and Burmese at home, eat foods of both cultures, and celebrate a mixture of their holidays. Then again, my family consider me rather too Americanised for their tastes.
So, then, what country do you think I’m from? It’s a common question. It’s a question where every answer I give feels like a lie.
Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko was the first time I read something that understood the complexities of ESEA heritage. The book follows multiple generations of an immigrant family, starting with a young woman in rural South Korea who migrates to Japan during the colonisation. Many immigrants of ESEA heritage can pinpoint the specific political moments that set off their individual diaspora stories. Pachinko is a book that does not shy away from the deeply political nature of ESEA migration. When Korea splits in two, the characters in Japan are compelled to declare allegiance to the North or South while still only remembering the unified Korea they left behind. The children born in Japan and their children afterwards all have individual relationships to their heritage, whether they consider themselves Korean, Japanese, neither, or both. While I have no ties to either Japan or Korea, the way these characters grappled with their heritage and immigrant identities deeply resonated with my own experiences.
I could not exist as I am without the web of bloody political histories shaping the countries that I trace my ancestry through. Their ghosts have always haunted me and they always will. The Chinese Cultural Revolution. The Burmese military junta. The White Terror in Taiwan. Learning about these events felt like finally putting a name to something that had always been with me, even before I knew what it was. Funny enough, that wasn’t the first (and likely won’t be the last) time that happened.
My queer awakening was a very slow process that kicked off with a seemingly unexplainable interest in queer ESEA books. Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, but it was his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous that captured my attention. The gay protagonist’s complex relationship with his mother, a woman traumatised by her experiences in the Vietnam war, hit close to home. Sure, he loved her. She was an immigrant mother working ungodly hours at jobs that paid far too little just to make sure her little boy could live a life that would, hopefully, be better than hers. Yet, at the same time, there is a constant tension between that love and the protagonist’s queerness. Besides that, Vuong’s training as a poet makes the book a uniquely interesting read, slipping between the trappings of prose and poetry with ease.
The other book I took an interest in around roughly the same time and for roughly the same reasons was Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties. Afterparties is a short story collection spanning a cast of Cambodian and Cambodian American characters. While tackling many serious subjects from the Khmer Rouge to queerness, So’s writing keeps a distinctly comedic bent even in its darkest moments. It’s a brand of humour I particularly enjoy. I quite like my ESEA heritage. While it certainly has given me a particular kind of emotional baggage, it is one I find deeply funny. When a character tells their dad, “You gotta stop using the genocide to win arguments,” I can’t help grinning at the line because it’s a moment I’ve experienced firsthand. Afterparties explores many difficult aspects of Cambodian immigrant culture but it does it all with a smile. So celebrates the absurd elements of his heritage (I implore any interested readers to look up the real-life Cambodian Donut King) without ever minimising the difficulties that come with it.
Now that I’ve made yet another migratory jump, having been in the UK for the past year, I find the ESEA experience here shaped by the UK’s own increasingly fraught relationship with migration. (Not that I suppose an American is one to talk.)
Cecile Pin’s debut novel Wandering Souls released in 2023. The novel follows a Vietnamese family fleeing the country by boat before eventually being relocated to the UK as refugees. The real-life concept of Vietnamese boat people juxtaposed against the longstanding ‘refugee crisis’ of Middle Eastern refugees draws lines between ESEA heritage and diaspora communities at large. These political parallels are made more apparent by the main characters’ struggles with living in the UK under the peak of Thatcher’s government. Pin has been vocal about the lack of recognition for the Southeast Asian Diaspora in the UK, an issue that highlights the importance of celebrating ESEA heritage. If people were more aware of these diverse cultural histories, perhaps they would find themselves more understanding of migrant diaspora communities as a whole.
Another 2023 debut of note comes from Nicola Dinan’s Bellies. Bellies follows a gay couple who break up after one of them comes out as a trans woman. The messy way the two fall in and out of each others’ lives for years to come is told through a narrative structure frequently compared to Sally Rooney’s Normal People. In fact, an adaptation of Bellies is currently in progress under the same production company that adapted Rooney’s own landmark novel. Dinan, herself a trans British-Malaysian writer, compellingly writes from the alternating perspectives of both the Malaysian trans woman and her spurned love interest. For anyone looking for a piece of queer ESEA fiction, Bellies is a must-read.
I find my own relationship with my ESEA heritage increasingly settling into a state of balanced disharmony. It is something that I feel is inherently political and has informed much of the beliefs I hold today. It is something fun and enjoyable that I love to teach others about. It has given me a lot of pain, growing up. It has given me a lot of joy. I take pride in all of that.
Happy ESEA Heritage Month!