By Angelie Hu (they/them)
When my Nai Nai first came to the U.S. as a grad student from Taiwan, the unthinkable happened: one of her bags was lost in transit. As my father described the story to me, I was struck by the idea that the contents were worse than unsalvageable - it was as if they had never existed.
Whenever your bags are lost on an airline, it’s a nuisance. But this was beyond a case of some lost shirts. It was just her luck - just my family’s luck, I suppose - that the bag that was lost had been stuffed entirely full of heirlooms. Fabrics sewn by generations past that had been tenderly handed down across time met an abrupt end. Family recipes with secret ingredients and such esoteric measurements for spices as “what feels right” or “the amount you’d use only for a special occasion” were relegated to the fickle confines of memory. Every single picture my Nai Nai had - of her family, of birthday celebrations, of no special event in particular, of her wedding - was gone in the blink of an eye. She was, understandably, heartbroken. More than heartbroken, because her anguish wasn’t for the things themselves but for the memories they held and the legacy they tied her to. Everything that connected her to her larger community and history was gone, so she mourned a part of herself and resolved to start again from scratch. She developed her own recipes to replace the ones she lost, even if they wouldn’t taste exactly the same. She bought a camera and documented her children’s youth as they grew up in the States. She expanded to fill the hole that the loss of those pieces of her history had left.
For years after I first learned of the lost suitcase, I was terrified that everything that physically tied me to my identities could disappear in an instant. I didn’t know what would be left of myself if I couldn’t look around and see the history of my people and know exactly where I fit in their larger story. Having those physical reminders that I was a part of something bigger than myself was deeply embedded in the environment that made me who I was.
As I grew up, my queerness often felt like my grandmother’s lost suitcase: I had a link to others who were like me, but true community was just out of reach. When I began to realize that I was queer, my biggest source of panic wasn’t my fledgeling identity itself. It was that I would have to pave my own path and be the first. I didn’t know anyone who was queer - or so I thought.
I certainly didn’t have any queer elders in my life to guide me through the tumultuous time between childhood and adolescence as I was growing up in Florida. Having a basic historical grasp of the AIDS crisis and knowing why we don’t have queer elders doesn’t change the basic fact that people (especially of my generation) don’t have them. When I was younger, I didn’t have the language to pinpoint what it was that I felt. I had no sense of belonging or community in the queer community because I had no personal sense of queer history. No sense of what connection I had to this ephemeral group of people who I knew were theoretically out there somewhere (thanks, internet!) but I had yet to find for myself. I was a person adrift, waiting to be tied to something.
With some distance, I can more confidently see that my childhood need to be understood and to belong was doomed from the start.
I am both Chinese and Cuban.
I’m disabled.
I am a proud anti-zionist Jew, which some people think is a contradiction in and of itself.
I’m queer.
Having any one of those identities is an act of othering in American society, but all together? I’m the stuff of conservative lawmakers' nightmares. It’s a marvel if I can find an affinity space (a space specifically created for people of a specific marginalized identity to be in community with others of that identity) that centers even two of my identities. I will always be othered in some way or another, regardless of the space I operate in. Rather than being resigned, I can recognize that my inherent otherness opens a door for possibility.
Above all, my otherness spurs me towards a radical kinship with people. It has taught me that being understood is nice, but it isn’t a prerequisite for being respected or acknowledged. My Asianness is what I decide it means for me, and the same can be said for my Queerness. When my Nai Nai could no longer see where she fit within the verdant forest of her own history, she planted a new tree. It was her courage to start anew with no path to guide her steps that helped me to feel at home in my queerness and find comfort in building a life for myself on my own terms.
I’m in a place now where I know enough about myself that I can be at peace with my otherness. I’m past trying to fit myself into a single box that I was always going to expand out of. I think that’s far better than treating myself like a suitcase, perpetually waiting to be claimed by someone else. I find myself in my Nai Nai’s dumpling recipe (much improved from the family recipe, according to her), my shoddily made scallion pancakes that aren’t as deliciously crispy as she gets them because I have yet to purchase an actual rolling pin, my own perfected ingredient ratios for a spicy and tangy dipping sauce that goes perfectly with everything worth eating.
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