EP 112: Unlocking Secrets: From Taboo Topics to Emotional Resilience — A Journey Through Asian American Identity [Memoir Excerpts]
In this episode, Judy Tsuei shares excerpts from her book, 'How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps, a Modern Asian American Guide.' She discusses the importance of articulating emotions and navigating them in relationships.
Judy also reflects on her own experience of not knowing what she's feeling and the impact of family dynamics on emotional expression. She emphasizes the possibility of creating a beautiful life despite trauma. The episode includes snippets from various chapters of her book, covering topics such as body image, rebellion, and the impact of parental behavior on self-esteem.
Episode Highlights
00:00Introduction to the Book
01:15The Importance of Articulating Emotions
03:02Learning to Not Know What You're Feeling
04:27The Impact of Family Dynamics on Emotional Expression
05:26Creating a Beautiful Life Despite Trauma
06:55Chapter: Start Watching Porn, Masturbate, Get Your Pelvic Floor Massaged
07:53Chapter: Why Do You Have to Wear a Skirt?
08:52Chapter: The Car Incident
09:51Chapter: The Selfishness of Parents
10:51Chapter: Rebellion and Shame
11:50Chapter: The Mustache and Body Image
13:16Chapter: Learning About Sex
14:13Chapter: Divorce and Betrayal
15:41Chapter: Fear of Pregnancy
16:36Chapter: Rebellion and Shame (Part 2)
Transcript:
Judy Tsuei (00:02.606)
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today.
Judy Tsuei (00:21.39)
Welcome to episode 112 of the Fuck Saving Face podcast. So if you've been following the show for a while, you will know that in this season, I started to share excerpts of the book that I'm working on, How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps, a Modern Asian American Guide. Now, these are totally works in progress. They're not all going to be included in the memoir, but it's a way for me to keep myself accountable so that I am working on this book that a lot of people have asked me about.
I get emails from listeners all around the world sharing how grateful they are that they feel that they're not alone, that they feel that they're seen when they hear these stories. And most surprising to me, I always think that I'm speaking to fellow Asian American women. But what I'm realizing is that not only are there women of all different backgrounds who are following, but there are also men who are sharing, you know, while I may not have gone through the exact experience that you've gone through.
I definitely have experienced the emotion that you're referencing. And if you want to be a better communicator, storyteller, person in a relationship, the ability to articulate the things that you're feeling is huge. What also happened for me recently is I've been in a relationship for the last three and a half years. And while we have the healthiest relationship out of any relationship I've ever had, we are always still growing and learning.
And so recently we got into this TIF, I guess you could say, I call it Scratchy Bits. And it was a conversation around being healthy, around food. I have a history of having an eating disorder. I had it for, you know, let's say more than 20 years in different iterations. And so...
I've been doing this elimination diet. I told my therapist about it, the person who's running the elimination diet to help me understand what my body is intolerant of so that I can be in optimal health. I also knew my history with an eating disorder. But you know, it's kind of a little bit tricky when I go through these phases because even though my purpose and my goal is for optimal health, anytime that involves food, restrictions, you know, dietary things, there could always be that nuance that brings me back to
Judy Tsuei (02:33.198)
the binging and purging days, the obsessive compulsive days, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So as we were in this space and I've done the elimination diet, quote unquote, imperfectly, even though the founder of the company would say that I've done quite well, it triggered this moment between me and my partner. And, you know, for whatever reason, we both were activated. And so I went upstairs and I realized that, wow, I have never in my life,
been allowed to not know what I'm feeling. I've never been allowed to not have the answer right away. My parents were so uncomfortable with conflict, which is not the conflict with each other because they had so much of that, or even the conflict with us. They didn't want us to have any sort of opinions, thoughts, antagonistic attitudes, any sort of disagreement with them. And so there was very much a...
hierarchy of keeping us in line and keeping us in control. And so at a very young age, we had to learn how to navigate our own emotions, which is a lot to ask a young person to do. Now as a mother with a nine year old watching how, you know, every now and again, she could blow up over nothing. And she will tell me, I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know what I'm feeling. I'm having all these emotions. And I work with her through them. Sometimes I say that that's totally okay. Sometimes we work on trying to figure out what it is.
But I was never allowed that. So when I had this scratchy moment with my partner and I went upstairs, I realized, wow, I don't know why I'm having this necessarily. I can, you know, maybe pull upon threads and figure something out. But I also don't have to know. I don't have to know right now. I can just allow myself to be in the emotion, knowing that it will pass and knowing that I have such a strong foundation with my partner that even in the midst of this
highly uncomfortable situation that we will come to some sort of even greater strengthening of our relationship, that we will come through with some sort of learning, some better ways to communicate, some ways that we know where the other person's vulnerabilities are or their wounds or things like that. And so I had no doubt we were going to get there. And so I didn't have to rush it. But when you're coming from a family where that foundation is not solid,
Judy Tsuei (04:57.518)
then you often do feel like you need to rush it. You need to hurry up and make things okay because otherwise the pain is too great. It's too severe. And to have to hold onto that when you're a young person is so, so difficult. So all of this is to say that my sharing this story is so that you will feel less alone in what it is that you're going through, whether it looks like this or it looks different, but the core emotion is similar or the same. And that,
you can see how even though you've experienced deep trauma, tragedies, pain, unresolved issues, you know, not getting the resolutions that you want, that you can still come through and create a life that's very beautiful, that is so fulfilling, that is filled with love, that is filled with joy, that everything that you want that's aligned to the core values of what's important to you is there for you for the taking.
So today I'm sharing different snippets of stories. And as always, I am so honored if you would share this with someone in your life, if you would email me and let me know what you think of this, if it's helped you in any way, or if you would leave a review that helps other people to find it and ideally create more of that support that's low barrier to entry. These are things that I wish I had.
to know that I was not alone growing up. These are things that I feel like in my most desperate moments, I wish I knew that someone had either, you know, the wisdom or the insights to share with me had gotten through to the other side, could hold my faith when I couldn't hold it on my own. And also I have a cold. So that's probably why I sound a little bit wonky. I like the term wonky donkey. I use that with my daughter. But here are just the elements. It's actually,
And it's going to be under step five. Well, at least that's where it is in my book right now. Step five, as I scroll through this document, is about start watching porn, masturbate, get your pelvic floor massaged. And this is all about moving from shame to shameless. There's no shame in desire or pleasure. There's no shame in owning your body and feeling good about who you are as a woman, as...
Judy Tsuei (07:23.694)
a girl discovering yourself as someone who deserves to feel pleasure, to feel joy, to feel sensuality, to feel connection. So here we go. Why do you have to wear a skirt? I opened the fridge to pull out the white paper bag lunches I had packed for myself and my three younger siblings. I was in 10th grade at Beverly Hills High School. My sister was in 7th grade at Palms Junior High School, the same place where we go on Saturdays to attend Westside Chinese School, Zongwen Xueshao.
or as it was actually more accurately called, Xi Qu Zong En Xue Xiao. My brothers were in third grade and first grade at Brentwood Elementary School. I had never been to their school, but I remembered how my mother said that one morning she drove to drop my brothers off and passed a parade of cop cars only to find in the news a short while later that O .J. Simpson's ex -wife had been murdered. From that point on, I only thought of murder. My mother asked as she walked back and forth through the kitchen, aiming to get my three younger siblings ready for school.
Who do you think is looking at you?" My grandmother, my father's mother, crossed paths with my mother every time they intersected the kitchen. While we were supposed to call her nai nai for the proper delineation of Chinese genealogy, the word also means breasts and milk, so my mother preferred that we call her po po. Besides, it's what most of my cousins called her too, so it just made it easier. Niaotze shi rio ma? My grandmother calmly asked, holding a box of honey nut cheerios in her hand. I nodded my head yes. She always pronounced cereal like that.
She ambled over to pour the milk into the bowl, her walk slightly off center in her seventh decade. She'd already mixed the Carnation hot chocolate mix with boiling water from the Zajirushi machine on the counter. A lump of powder remained in the middle of the cup, so I grabbed my spoon out of the cereal bowl to mix it. I sat down at the table and started spooning O's in my mouth. Chuan Yi Fu, are you all dressed? My mother moved around my younger siblings urgently. My mother grabbed the minivan keys. That was my cue. I put my spoon down.
She had to drop off four children at three different schools within the span of 45 minutes. Today, I was the first. I'll be home in 20 minutes. Hurry, eat your breakfast. I place my almost empty bowl into the sink, then lean towards my grandmother. Bye, grandma. Normally, we didn't leave any food uneaten. The lightning god will come for even one fleck of rice. The lightning god will strike you down.
Judy Tsuei (09:51.598)
but circles of Cheerios were different from flecks of rice. I reached out for my backpack, then followed my mother out the door. One morning, my mother, completely frustrated at the inability to wrangle all of us out the door in time, began to drive the car down the street of our house. I was still getting dressed. Then I saw her burst through the door. Something's wrong with a car! She shouted at me and Mandarin. Figure it out! I'll run with your brothers towards the bus. I threw on a t -shirt and shorts, then found the silver Toyota stalled in the middle of the street. The driver door was left open.
I turned the keys in the ignition. The engine wouldn't start. She was right. Then I looked down. The gear shift was in D. I put it back into park, restarted the car. It worked without a problem. What had she been doing that she had turned the car off in the middle of driving? I wondered. I was 15 and didn't have a driver's permit yet, but there was no one else around and they seemed like an emergency. So I drove the car down the rest of the block, then turn right. I could see my brothers running ahead of my mother. My mother, never athletic, scrambling to keep up.
I pulled up beside her, mama. I shouted through the open window. I felt proud that I had figured it out. She didn't say anything. She didn't thank me. She told my brothers, hurry, get in. She said to me, hurry and go home. I ran back home to finish getting ready for school. When my mother drove anywhere, I was always in the passenger seat. None of my younger siblings were allowed to have shotgun. This was my seat as the eldest. It was the one privilege I held over their heads. I also got car sick.
I was in this seat when my mother made a left on the 10 freeway going east toward the aquarium store, unfocused, tired. 妳不懂事! She was yelling at me. I was looking at my reflection in the side mirror, taking my index finger and covering the area between the bottom of my nose and the top of my lip where my prominent mustache was. I would be so pretty without this mustache, I thought, but my parents wouldn't let me do anything about it. 妳那麼自私! She kept on.
My three younger siblings were in the back. You're so selfish. We waited on Overland on the on -ramp. I wasn't paying attention. The light hadn't changed. She began to turn left. The car hit us full force in the front right bumper. A few seconds later, the driver would have hit me. Sometimes when I was really mad at my mom, I would get into the minivan after my siblings had filled in and sit at the very back bench, the furthest I could get from her at the front windshield. My mother would then get into the car.
Judy Tsuei (12:19.662)
Look in the rearview mirror. Get back up here. She would yell, you're going to sit right here. She wouldn't let me sit in the back. She wouldn't let me get away. Seizai kani, my mother asked again as I closed the passenger door of the new Honda Odyssey. No one wants to look at you. I looked straight ahead. It took nine minutes to get to school. I just had to make it through nine minutes. That was one element, one part of a chapter.
And now I'm gonna share with you snippets of a couple of other chapters. They're under this subhead called Extra Stories for now. When I was 17, I lived in the dorms at UC Berkeley. I'd been rejected from UCLA. The University of Caucasians lost among Asians and it was a godsend because had I gone to the university 10 minutes up the street from where my parents lived, I absolutely would have killed myself.
I stood in the bathroom stall on the third floor of Chaney Hall. My future roommate, a tall and lanky Korean American girl named Joanne, stood on the other side of the door. Okay, do you have the tampon in your hands? She asked. Yes, I asked, confused my voice rising at the end of the word. So this is how you stick it in. And she coached me through step by step as I used a tampon for the first time. Before that moment, I thought penetration meant that you were a slut, penetration of any kind.
Penetration by a Piece of Cotton. In the big room, my father, upset at my mother for staying out past 9 p .m. on one of her rare nights away with her teacher friends from Chinese school, sat in his leather recliner and asked me, the eldest of four, gangly, in elementary school, what would you think if I divorced your mother? I was excited that we were getting this one -on -one time. My father was never home, and if he was, there was my mother, my siblings to contend with. I sat at the foot of his chair.
Everything I was looking forward to getting stuck inside my body. I did not have a good answer. When my parents disciplined us with the rolling pin, they say, When they hit, if we pull our palm away, they will hit more. If we try to look away, turn away, or unfathomably walk away, they will get angrier and there will be more hitting. We are never allowed to close the door. We are never allowed to find safety. So,
Judy Tsuei (14:42.734)
We keep our palms open, waiting. He did not waste time in finding a new partner. After I moved out of our shared apartment in Taiwan, when we were living abroad while he was teaching, he sent me a WhatsApp message. It was a selfie of him and the new woman he was dating. They were holding big glasses of wine. They were smiling. When we were together, he didn't really drink. You sent this to the wrong person. I texted back. I had already seen his phone when we were still living together.
how he was getting notifications from dating apps. Oh, you must have been texting me. And I just replied accidentally, he wrote back. I had been nowhere near my phone for the last 30 minutes. I was livid. When I told friends about it, they said, you know, he did that on purpose, right? What? That hadn't even occurred to me. In junior high, I sat in front of the giant wood frame TV in the corner of the big room. My grandmother was home and she was in her room with the Chinese news playing on the rectangular red radio she had.
on virtually every waking hour. The sound of Mandarin must have been so soothing for her in this country of English, cereal, hot chocolate, and the hoagie cheese stick sandwiches my parents sold at the sandwich shop they owned on Pico Boulevard, just a 10 minute walk from her house. I sat there and placed my forearm over my belly, sure that I was pregnant. I was 12. I didn't know a single thing about sex except for the porn that my father watched. And I was convinced I was pregnant.
because I had heard from a friend who heard from a friend that if there was semen from someone ejaculating onto a toilet and a woman sat on it by accident, then she could get pregnant. I think I wasn't paying attention. I think there was something on the toilet. I think that my mother will be furious with me. I hadn't even gotten my period yet. They told me I was always the rebellious one. I was always the one making mistakes. I was selfish. And in a way, I wanted my presence there in that room to prove them that they were wrong.
that you can't just leave porn around the house and you can't just make me be the parent when I still needed parents too. They said my presence was wrong. Well, we some a sin me, my mother asked the universe in her bouts of anger. Why did I ever give birth to you? Now I wanted my presence to prove that they were wrong, that they were as wrong as they had made me feel for catching me masturbating and telling me I was bad. They were bad for having sex. They were the ones who were terrible.
Judy Tsuei (17:02.51)
Maybe this was my form of active rebellion masked by innocence when I couldn't find any other ways to point the fingers of shame back at them. 你回去你, the 房间, go back to your room to sleep. No. So those are some elements of chapters of my book. I will say that I've definitely shifted my mindset in owning my business and my business has taken off because of it. It's a new...
uncomfortable growth period for me. And this is also the way it feels for getting my book out there. I had been hesitant to share the title of the book, share chapters of it on my podcast, share it on TikTok or anywhere else. And so I ask that, you know, if you are interested in hearing more, you want to be one of my advanced readers copy team. I'm working.
on both getting an agent and going through a traditional publishing house as well as exploring self -publishing. And so thankfully I have someone who is offering a lot of insights to me about self -publishing. If I do go down that route, I'm looking for advanced readers who would be willing to, you know, get all these stories in front of them before anybody else can read them and be part of my team to champion this book on if you find it.
valuable in any way and you know, like you think these stories might be helpful for anybody. When I originally started this podcast, I started it because I heard that there were young people who were going through the same things that I went through in my family of origin. And for some reason, I thought when I grew up that that tiger parenting would stop. But apparently I was wrong and it's still happening and it's happening rampantly. And I never want anybody to feel as alone as I did, as desperate, as hopeless.
which is why this podcast exists. It's why I'm working on this book. And so if you want to support in any way, if it speaks to you sharing this, writing your review, I know it's a pain in the ass on iTunes. You can do it on Spotify too. And you know, becoming part of my advanced reader copy team, my ARC arc team, or just sending me a message, Judy at wildheartedwords .com and telling me.
Judy Tsuei (19:22.478)
what you thought and if it helped in any way, all of that makes such a big difference. So thank you so much for tuning in. Next week I have an incredible interview coming up and I just appreciate you being here. Thank you. Oh, and one other thing, if you wanted to get a copy of a sample chapter that you can read on the screen on your phone, you can go to wildcardedwords .com forward slash book and you will be able to download a sample chapter there. I laid it out, add a little pretty cover.
And you can see the sample chapter, a snippet of it that I sent in my book proposal. Thank you so much.
Judy Tsuei (20:01.454)
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wildheartedwords .com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.
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Keywords: F*ck Saving Face podcast, mental health, emotional health, Asian Americans, voices of color, taboo topics, memoir, How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps, Asian American Guide, relationship, communication, storytelling, eating disorder, elimination diet, optimal health, Asian American women, emotional navigation, family dynamics, conflict resolution, relationship strengthening, trauma, tragedies, unresolved issues, personal growth, resilience, fulfillment, joy, love, shame, desire, pleasure, body ownership, sensuality, connection, shameless living, family dynamics, immigrant experience, cultural clash, parental pressure, generational trauma, self-discovery, adolescence, sexual education, parental influence, rebellion, identity formation, traditional publishing, self-publishing, book promotion, advanced readers copy, ARC team, iTunes review, Spotify review, podcast support, community engagement, newsletter signup
