Index:
00:40 – Living arrangements
5:40 – Gender and age as factors growing up
8:20 – Restaurant roles, kids helping out in restaurants
10:30 – Restaurant as physical, menial labor, customer service labor
11:15 – Satellite Child, change in lifestyle from China
16:00 – Strained relationship with parents
21:00 – How the first and second generation can communicate better, parenting, childhood isolation from community
25:00 – Neighborhood, customers, restaurant support networks, restaurant as good fallback occupation
29:15 – Education, social circle online, revenge against parents who were not present
32:00 – Parents from survival-based culture, giving themselves to meeting economic needs
34:30 – Post-retirement, taking care of grandchildren cycle
36:50 – Community and sense of belonging
39:15 – Pandemic and rise and AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) crimes, Chinese restaurant workers at risk
43:35 – Generational trauma, Turning Red, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Transcript:
*Note: As the interviewer and the transcriber, I edit all interview recordings to remove redundancy. This includes many pauses, um’s, like’s, and’s, so’s, and you know’s. There are specific portions of Person D’s interview that I choose to not edit because my opinion is that doing so would convey Person D’s unfiltered responses better. Interview contains content related to domestic abuse and racial biases.
Today is June 12th at 2:32 PM. My name is Jenny Cheng and today I will be interviewing Person D. Tell me a little about your upbringing and your family’s background.
Person D: I’ll say for the first four years, I was in China with my grandmother on my mother side. I live for her with her for those four years. So, I’ve never actually asked about this, but I assumed it was because I was too young to really fend for myself and my parents and my sisters were busy with their own work, with their own education, with their own projects. So, around the age of four or five years old, I finally moved back to America where I was born, and I started living with my aunt’s family in her apartment. We shared the place with some other folks, and I suppose that pretty common, to have an apartment where you would share it with several other families, legally or illegally. After a while, after like two or three years, we moved to Brooklyn, where my parents had their own Chinese restaurant. It was a fast-food takeout restaurant with delivery, which may or may not be common. Some restaurants have delivery, some do not. I would sleep in my mother my parent’s rooms for maybe one or two years and after that, I would have my own room. The living arrangement is, my parents in one room, me in my own room, and my sisters and their own separate room, which was a little bit bigger.
I think from when I was younger, I would usually be alone. My sisters will be at school and at work, and my parents will also be at work. I remember a lot of days where because there was an age gap between my sisters and I, I would be upstairs in the home alone. I’ll be reading and later on, when we finally got access to computers, I will be on my computer.
Is it common for a lot of your relatives or your cousins to also have a similar childhood? Is it common for a lot of your relatives to also send their newborn babies to China for their relatives, their grandparents, etc., to raise? if it is, why do you think it’s a common practice?
Person D: I do not know if it’s common. I do not know it’s common within our family. From I know, it is a common practice. I believe there is a term for it. I believe they called satellite babies, or some people may refer them as stranded children. They are kids who are raised by extended family. This can include grandmothers; it can include aunts. Sometimes, these are not directly related by blood, or rather these families have known each other for a very long time and there’s a trusting relationship.
As a Chinese American satellite child who was born here, where do you think your community is? Do you think your social network and friends that you make are within the Chinese American community, the Asian American community, or do you think it extends beyond that?
Person D: I think I would say publicly, my community would be Brooklyn but privately, I think make community would be Asian Americans sort of in a loose way. As in, if we saw each other in the streets, I think I would feel compelled to maybe help them with whatever they had trouble with. Not to say that I went through so for people of any other background. If I see another Asian American person on the streets, there’s like an unspoken connection. Specifically within the terms of my family, I would say it’s a Chinese Americans that are my main community. As an addendum, my background is, I did not have very much contact with the rest of my family which means the community that I formed was really more online. I think of them as probably the people who I’m the closest with overall, even [more than] with my family, really.
How do you think your upbringing influenced that?
Person D: The dynamic between me and my sisters, to clarify, my sisters are older than me and they’re both girls and I’m a boy who is younger than them. In our culture, because of the way things work, they were expected to work. I was sort of given a free pass because I was younger. I definitely did not work as much, I started working much later than they did in terms of age. I’ve always thought that caused a sort of rift between us, between my older sisters and I. I don’t think there is necessarily malice, but I think there’s definitely like a sense of opportunity loss because of the way they were born, the way I was born. A lot that has to do with gender and age. One thing I’ve sort of thought about in the last few years was how I feel like this has sort of… I think we’re Asian American, I think there’s a bond between us that’s sort of not really breakable. It’s a bond of sort we all agree with, that we all stick up for each other. However, there’s also an undercurrent of maybe jealousy. There’s a feeling that I have of like, we could have been closer, or we could have had a much better relationship. We’re all too young to understand the system that we grew up in, we all too young to understand that we’re born into this generational cycle, and we were too young to sort of take the steps to break the cycle.
Is it possible to describe at all what this cycle is?
Person D: I think an example of this cycle would be the expectations put upon us by the older generation. I think some people might call it generational trauma, where the expectations of our grandparents pass on to our parents, who pass down to us. Well, that might have worked back in China, in America there is a different culture here. I think because of that, you see this generational clash between… I think first generation will be our parents, right?
It depends on who you ask.
Person D: OK, so for the purpose of it, I’ll just say first generation as our parents, second generation as us. Because of that, I think there’s a clash between first-generation immigrants and second-generation immigrants, for the expectations of what the second generation will become, of what they must do to carry on a family legacy. There are many things that the first generation cares about that the second generation does not care about.
What are some expectations your parents have had for you? Or some expectations that they still have for you and your siblings?
Person D: They expect us to all get married and have children. They, I assume, expect us to help each other out. Well, that’s more in sense of being family, right? I expect they expect me, as the male, to take care of them in their old age. I think they would like for us to all have different careers than they had. There’s a thought of office jobs, as maybe a higher tier or more prestigious than physical work, physical labor which falls under the umbrella of the restaurant business.
You mentioned earlier that your sister worked more growing up than you did, and part of the reason is because there was this age gap. What type of work did your sisters do?
Person D: My sisters’ job at the restaurant encompasses all facets of restaurant, which would be taking orders at the front desk, taking calls at the front desk, and then placing those orders, sort of communicating them to the staff in the back, which would be my mother and my father. Sometimes, it would be them. It [responsibilities for the staff in the back] would involve cooking, it would involve restocking, it would involve cleaning, it would have involve making deliveries.
From your knowledge do a lot of kids whose parents worked in these To-go Chinese restaurants today also help their parents?
Person D: From my knowledge, yes, it’s a very common experience. I think Chinese restaurants are very common. They are very common method for first-generation immigrants to generate income. I did not have strong thoughts about these restaurants early on.
Do you know why your parents decide to work in To-go Chinese American restaurants?
Person D: One of the advantages of being Chinese American is that when you arrive overseas to America, you’ll have a support network of like-minded individuals who also came overseas to seek better opportunities for their children. Those people are likely to share the knowledge with you. Well, I cannot confirm this, I believe that the knowledge from these people who already came over to America and have made stable livings for themselves, that knowledge passed on is the knowledge of how to open their own Chinese restaurant. That’s probably one of the reasons why you might see some many restaurants have the same menu or very similar. Because this knowledge is passed on from one immigrant family to another.
My second question was about the prestige, for the lack of prestige in working in Chinese restaurants.
Person D: Physical labor, menial labor, and customer service are all looked down upon by our community. I think physical labor, menial labor, and customer service are all looked down upon by the Asian American community. I think menial labor, I think physical labor, and customer service are looked down upon by my family.
Do you know what your parent’s occupations were in China? After coming to the US do you know if they have worked any other jobs, both your dad and your mom?
Person D: I do not know what the occupations were, and I do believe they worked other jobs, but I do not know. That’s part of a larger thing where we never really communicated. They were busy with their work, and I was sort of left alone. Even now, I do not know very much about them.
As a satellite child yourself, do you recall missing China after moving to America? Do you have any contacts with relatives in China now? Is there any planning your family to move back to China?
Person D: There is no plan to move China. When I came over and I saw the apartment that we lived in, one thing I remember I thought to myself was, how the apartment looked much worse than the place we lived in in China. It was a 3-bedroom apartment, and it was very dirty compared to our apartment in China, which had two floors. It was very clean, it had lots of sunlight, it was very well-maintained. The apartment in America felt very shoddy. I personally do not miss the apartment in China I think because America was where my family was. I do not believe there are plans to visit China in the future. I believe for our family, plans to visit China will be tied to showing it to the next generation or children, maybe the third generation, as a means of going back to our roots. I think it’s a very common idea for the first generation to want to show the third generation where they came from, to show our family and to visit back as maybe tourists.
Can we talk a little food now? What was home food in China? In America, what would your family eat at home versus in the restaurant? How authentic then, do you think, are dishes that are served in To-go Chinese restaurants?
Person D: Back in China, I was very young. When I moved to America, I was four years old. I was mostly given food by my grandmother, who I don’t remember but I do know that we had a pantry full of snacks and maybe some junk food. I don’t remember what I was served exactly back in China. I assumed it was lots of rice and chicken, beef, pork. In America, I ate lots of fried chicken wings, French fries, and fried rice. A lot of what I would eat in America was either soda or greasy fried foods. I think possibly, although this might be changing now, it’s very common for the first generation to feed the second generation, me, let them eat whatever they want. Let them eat fried foods, like wings and fries and soda, without taking into account their health benefits. I think the food in these fast-food Chinese restaurants are not authentic to Chinese cuisine, but they are authentic to Chinese American cuisine, which I think is its own thing, which includes a blend of stuff like fried wings, and French fries, and onion rings. Stuff that you might see in fast food chains, and also some well-known Chinese cuisine, like General Tso Chicken or various fried rice or lo mein.
Why do you think a lot of the first generation, the generation got initially immigrated to America, why do you think there’s a lack of concern for the quality of food they feed their kids?
Person D: For my parents who mostly grew up in the countryside, I think food could sometimes be scarce. They were concerned about making sure that they were fed whatever they could. Also, as a side note, my parents, I believe didn’t have access to some of the junk food we have. My parents did not have access to some of the non-nutritional fried stuff we have. I think they were not given the option of these foods that were poor in nutritional value. I think coming over, their primary concern was that their children were fed at all times, so that their children were always sated. My parents were not very educated on things like nutritional value and their primary concern was always at their children were fed. It is not until the second generation, who has grown up in the information age, who has become savvy with technology and computers and have learned to do research and read articles, it was not until then that Chinese Americans, collectively, recognize the low nutritional value of the stuff we’re feeding our children.
Do you think your parent’s skillset, their education level, as well as that extended family or kinship network, affected the outlook and what they envisioned that American dream to be?
Person D: I was told my sisters remember my father as someone different back in China. My father will pick up my older sister from school every day and ask her how her day was. I’m told by my sisters that my father used to be a very kind man but that was not the person I knew him as. In America, my experiences with him were always negative. I only saw the side of him that was angry. I think there were occasionally kind moments, but they were the exception and maybe they were sometimes to make up for his tantrums or his fits of anger. I did not talk to my parents very much until I was an age where I could work in the restaurant and that was when my contact with him increased but we never talked about their past. That was something that they never passed on to me. My knowledge of them is very limited.
As a child, sometimes my father would physically and verbally assault us and that includes smashing furniture, smashing appliances. Sometimes he would go to gamble, but he was not a drinker, his addiction was smoking, which may have been way to ease some stress from… Uh, I think my current relationship with my father, who is now dead, of him is a sort of understanding of but he went through but an inability to forgive him and inability to move on from the things that he did to us. During his funeral, I was approached by many of my relatives who remembered him differently. They remembered him like my older sister did, as someone who was very kind, someone who was very understanding. At the funeral, I was approached by my father’s sister, who was crying, and she was shedding tears alongside my mother, and she asked me, “Your father is dead. Why aren’t you crying?” She asked me in a very accusing way, as if I was a monster for not shedding tears for this person who had hurt me my entire life.
It was a very elaborate ritual service which went on into the night, where members of his family were expected to perform ceremonial duties, such as lighting incense or bowing and praying. One thing I remember is how the priests we encountered did not seem to care much about the ceremony. They, what’s the word for it… What’s the word for not caring?
Aloof? It seemed sort of like a procedure that they just had to carry out?
Person D: I’ll just say uncaring for now. They were very uncaring about the funeral, they were very uncaring about the man who had just died, who was my father, who I had strong emotional ties with. I was very angry at those priests.
It was very disrespectful.
Person D: While I did not like my father, I felt like the priests were very disrespectful towards him. On the car ride from the ceremony to the funeral plot, my father’s sister and my mother were still crying. They share stories together. One story I heard from my mother, was of the stories was about how my father thought of himself as a failure, how he had failed my family, how he was not a good man. How he cried and thought of other things that we would never get to say to each other.
Do you have any idea why your father thought he might have failed the family? From what you know about him, what do you think his expectations for himself were? Where did he think he fall short?
Person D: I think he thought of himself as a failure because he beat his children and because he liked gambling and because he was always very close to off and did not have a relationship with us, much less a good relationship. One thing I think of is how is the communication between my parents and I. So, one different thing my sisters and I, is that my sisters are very full in Chinese. They can even speak Cantonese, but I’m much less fluent Chinese, to the point where I struggle to have conversations with them. This language barrier has led to a worse relationship between parents and I. I think there’s a lot I don’t know about them because we cannot communicate. I think one very important thing for first-generation immigrants and second-generation immigrants to come together on, is to establish a way for them to communicate each other. That second-generation immigrants should be taught Chinese more thoroughly in their home. I think first-generation immigrants should of course make an effort to learn some more English.
Do you want to talk about what your values and beliefs on family is?
Person D: I don’t blame my dad because I feel like he was powerless to stop the path he went down. I don’t blame my dad because I feel like he did not know how to break the cycle, how to stop doing what he was doing. I think because maybe his lack of education or maybe lack of big picture or maybe lack of people too talked to him, he could not really break the cycle or prevent himself from passing these troubles onto the next generation. Well, I can’t see myself forgiving him for what he did, I feel like it’s understandable in the sense that he was powerless, he didn’t have the knowledge or know how to stop the cycle of generational trauma.
How do you think the third generation in your family is going to be different? What will you do if you plan to have kids, or your sisters plans have kids? From your knowledge, what are you and your sisters, the second generation, what will they do differently from the first generation?
Person D: I’ve been looking after my older sister’s [daughters, his] nieces for a while now, since they were born. One thing I’ve always focused on is making sure that they grew up with critical thinking skills. I want them to understand this cycle they’re born into. In the future, I want them to understand what they are grandparents are, like what their parents are like, and the reasons why that happens. I want them to understand, to have this critical thinking [framework] about their parent’s relationship to their grandparents, and their relationships to their parents. I want to make sure they’re treated kindly, I want to make sure that someone is always there for them, to listen to what they have to say. I want to always be there for helping with homework. I think there are things that my older sister cannot do. Where my older sister might help them with their homework, and help them reach their answer, help them find the answer, I want them to grow up in a way where they feel empowered to reach the answer of themselves.
But one thing I’ve noticed in them is to sense of learned helplessness, where they are quick to give up or they’re quick to stop trying and that’s one of the big things I want to tackle. I want them to feel like when they work through problems, there’s something that they can accomplish. I want them to not have financial worries. I want them to be able to feel confident in hanging out friends. I think for my kids, I would want them to grow in the area where [other] kids lives because when I was growing up in Brooklyn, I did not feel like I could bring my friends over because we lived so far away. That I really isolated to me from the rest of my friends. Growing up in Brooklyn, we were the only Asian people in a mostly black and partly Hispanic neighborhood. My parents were very cautious of the black people in the area and because of that, they never allowed me to go outside into the parks. They isolated me in our home, and I feel like I never really got to interact with anyone outside of school. I think even now, I have biases towards black people because of what I learned my parents growing up. The way I was isolated early on in my life continues, I think, has affected me now, because I still prefer to be alone, mostly.
Why did your parents decide to move to a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn?
Person D: I think because it was a cheap property and they felt like for these types of Chinese American restaurants, their primary customers are people in those neighborhoods, black people and Hispanic people. That’s a big reason why fried chicken and French fries and onion rings and all these different foods are on the menu. They are not authentic to traditional Chinese cuisine, but they cater to the people in the area we want to serve. They care to people in the areas that we live in.
Is it common for workers in Chinese American To-go restaurants, or at least your parent and your families extended network, to open to go Chinese American restaurants in non-Chinese neighborhoods? Why not open Chinese restaurants for Chinese customers and serve Chinese cuisine?
Person D: I think the market for authentic Chinese cuisine would be harder for them to produce. I think they move the areas like Brooklyn, and more recently, there has been a migration towards Queens and Bronx, because those areas have cheap real estate and they’re predominately filled with black and Hispanic people. The knowledge we’ve gained from our extended family is how to open restaurants that serve food that caters to these areas. I think authentic Chinese cuisine would be much harder to learn and make. Whereas usually, when we open fast food takeout Chinese restaurants, we have support networks of people who know every in and out of this business.
With support networks and with extended family members who also operate very similar businesses catered towards a very similar groups of customers, would you say that these Chinese Americans To-go restaurants in New York City are stable businesses and stable sources of income?
Person D: I think they’re very stable source of income that can last into the next generation. I think there are very good fallback for the next generation if they have nothing in particular they want to aspire to.
What are your goals for your future? What type of jobs would you like to have? What do you envision for yourself?
Person D: I don’t have any specific career aspirations to go towards. I would like the ability to make a living, to support myself financially, and maybe, if possible, distance myself from my family.
This part will be talking about education. When I was in elementary school and in middle school, I always had pretty good grades and that allows me to get into a magnum school, Brooklyn Tech [High School]. I think that’s a good school, right?
Yeah, top 5 (public high schools in the city).
Person D: When I got into high school, and this relates back to what I want to do with my nieces, why I want to help them with their hardships, when I got to high school, I found myself lacking motivation, I found myself slacking off more. We were not expected to walk along with our classmates to next classroom and we were allowed to wonder wherever we wanted. While we were not supposed to skip class, we were able to, and no one could really stop us. One of the reasons why my grade starts to slip, it was an act of revenge against my parents, who word never present and never really talked to me. I think the lack of social interaction, the lack of familial interaction, pushed me to make friends over the Internet, where I spent a lot of my time. And that in turn caused my grades to fall. Today, I rationalize it more as an act of revenge against my parents, who were never really there for me. That caused the expectations that they had for me to crumble.
And you did that on purpose?
Person D: I think it was partly intentional for sure. I think some of it was a lack of caring, which spiraled into this time where I could not keep up with my peers because I haven’t been keeping up with the rest of the class in terms of homework or lectures.
Did you also find a safe place away from school, and then away from your parents, in this online community?
Person D: I think even then, even high school, I was still mostly lonely because I didn’t develop skills to interact with other people. I only had maybe 1 or 2 friends who I mostly hung out with in school.
Do you think your parent’s neglect stemmed from their careers? Maybe these long hours and Chinese Americans To-go restaurants? Or maybe, in addition, do you think there is also this difference in culture? Maybe in the Chinese environment that they were raised in, it was maybe normal for parents to leave children into their own accord and not provide the emotional support that we now know is really important to a child’s upbringing and their mental health?
Person D: I think parents came from a survival-based culture. I think my parents came from an environment where the primary concern was surviving. Just like with feeding us fast food, or fried stuff, or non-nutritional foods, they lacked the knowledge to understand that their children will need emotional support. I think that they did not have very much time to give, even if they wanted to.
Do you think that working in the restaurant business also exacerbated the situation? Prevented your parents from being there for you, more talking to you more, providing you with help and companionship?
Person D: I absolutely do think that being in the restaurant business prevented my parents from meeting any sort needs, emotional or nutritional.
It probably occupied like a lot of their time, probably all the time.
Person D: I think they didn’t really have the time to parent their children. But at the same time, I don’t really have a solution for that. I think I don’t really have a solution for that. I think in their eyes, owning their own restaurant with the quickest way to meet our economic needs. This idea that they would… that their primary goal was to give us the bare minimum while acquiring property. Us, the second generation, would handle their legacy from there. That they praised themselves to give over the rest of their lives, basically, to only working and there was no respite, there was no rest insight for them. They dedicated themselves to only solving our economic troubles. They dedicated themselves to solving our financial problems. They dedicated themselves to meeting our financial needs.
After retiring from the restaurant business, what are your parent’s retirement goals? Would they like to still live with they ran their restaurants, these predominantly black neighborhoods? If your family is no longer in the restaurant business, where do you think you would like to live? Where do you see your community?
Person D: I think post-retirement, my mother, who I consider to already be semi-retired, would like to spend the rest of her days hanging out with her friends, her community in Manhattan Chinatown. Their activities usually include go out for lunch, singing together. I think a lot of first-generation immigrants, their expectation is that when their children grow up and have their own children, the first-generation immigrants will take their own place in the cycle, where they take care of their grandchildren, which are the third-generation immigrants. I think that’s the explanation for a lot of first-generation immigrants, that after working they will go to taking care of their grandchildren. I think a very familiar cycle would be the idea of grandchildren, the third-generation immigrants being taken care of by their grandparents, the first-generation immigrants, like me. I was raised by my grandmother for the very early part of my life, and I think the expected outcome, I think, what’s normal would be for my mother to take care of my children.
This is something I want to touch upon with my nieces. I feel like my mother is incapable of raising them where they can self-actualize, where they can decide what they want to do in the future. I think my mother has this viewpoint that would restrict them, that would prevent them from being happy in life. That’s one of the things I want to pass on to them, this idea of self-determination.
It’s very different and there’s a huge generational gap.
Person D: My mom wanted us to survive but coming over, and growing up here in American culture, I think the primary gold life is to find happiness and fulfillment and self-determination.
Where would you like to live? Where do you see your community being?
Person D: I don’t have very many attachments to people in real life. I think my community would be, right now I’m 23 and not in a relationship, so I think my community will be whoever I am happiest. Regardless the physical location, I could live anywhere. My community would be where I find fulfillment and happiness rather than where other people are.
Do you think for your parent’s generation, community very much of evolves around where the Chinatowns are?
Person D: I think my parent’s community is where other Chinese people are, that they prefer to stick by their own.
From your answer it seems like where you belong isn’t really determined by where other Chinese Americans are in New York City. What do you think being American means to you?
Person D: Right now, at 23, I think the American is being given the opportunity to understand the systems and cycles I was born in and to bring out [overcome] them and to be able to self-actualization. I think being American has given me the opportunity to be less ignorant about the world I live. To be more conscious about the ways I affect people. I often think how if we live in China, I think it’ll be a much different person. I think I’ll be I’m more selfish person. I think I’ll be hard to get along with. I think being American and being exposed to different people and being giving up communities to find the truth myself, to become someone who I choose to be able to be. Speaking now, at this point in time, I would not choose to be any other version of myself. Even though those other versions may be more successful financially, or they maybe, they might have kids, or they might have a better relationship with their parents, I think the current version of me is someone who I’m happy to be. I think I attribute that to be to being American, to being born in America.
We talked a little earlier about discrimination, your parents not feeling very safe in the neighborhood where they ran their restaurant. How do you think the pandemic and the rise in APPI, which is Asian American Pacific Islander, hate crimes has affected your immediate family?
Person D: I don’t know anyone who my immediate family affected by the recent surge of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, I do feel like it’s brought more awareness to our issue, to issue that’s been plaguing us for a very long time, which is violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. I think statically, a lot of the hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are by black people. I think that’s been something that’s sort of been put on the back burner, or something that’s not in the public consciousness. I know I remember my family and some members of my indirect family have all been physically assaulted by people in the black community. The places we grew up in, we were the minorities. We were the very few, maybe four or five to 10 people in the sea of differently colored people, in the sea of black and Hispanic people.
I think since the pandemic there has been, I think there’s been higher awareness of these issues. I feel maybe vindicated that these are real issues that happen to a lot of Asian Americans, that this is a common issue, that it isn’t that this doesn’t happen anywhere else, but rather this is happening, and people aren’t talking about it.
Do you think ethnically Chinese restaurant employees are more at risk of hate crimes? How do you think these risks could be minimized?
Person D: I think that people who work in these Chinese American fast-food restaurants are absolutely at higher risk of physical violence. One of the things I believe in is I think public education is very important, a good funding for elementary school and middle schools in these low funded areas. I think a lot of the problems that Asian people and black people, the problems they have for each other is financial disparity, where because these Asian immigrants, their primary concern is only working and saving money at the cost of providing emotional needs to their children, there’s a disparity where Asians are seen as a model minority. The country views Asian people is as a model minority. There’s someone, those in power point to when [people are] in need financial assistance, talk about the ways they’re suffering they will point your agent American people as and say, “Well, look at them. They’re prospering. Why can’t you be like them?”
So [concerning?] my nieces, one thing I want to prevent is I don’t want them to grow up with racism inside them. I hear from my mother, their grandmother, and I hear from my sister, their mother, disparaging, or offhanded remarks about black people. I think the only way to solve this divide and violence is for future generations to become better educated, for them to mingle, for them to let go of hatred.
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
Person D: I think that’s one of the reasons why *beep* traveled so much and did many things that my parents thought of as frivolous and wasting money. It’s because she was on the cusp of realizing the situation she was in, and she wanted to chase happiness and chase freedom. Sometimes, I think about my father, my mother, and to some degree *beep* and I think if it’s too late for them to bring out their cycle, if it’s too late then to fully understand in the big picture, things that happen to them or if they’ve sort of resigned themselves in some way. If they sort of accepted that their job is to provide financial assistance to their children. I think *beep* does want what’s good for her children. She has learned from our parents, but I don’t think she understands generational trauma. Have you seen Turning Red?
The one with the panda? No.
Person D: You should see that, it’s generational trauma, it’s like Asian Americans.
Have you seen the, what is it called? Like Everything Everywhere[, All at Once].
Person D: Yeah! With the eye.
Yeah, that one, I cried during that one. Every Asian can relate.
Person D: You should definitely see Turning Red.
It’s the same thing?
Person D: It’s generational trauma.