Telling Multiracial Tales

Beginnings

What follows are experimental autoethnographic tales of ambiguous embodiment. They are rooted in experience and the telling has already begun. The tales weave in and out of the text and struggle to articulate gender in unsuspecting spaces. They are “generative” and aim to “trigger” moments where a reader might respond in kind (Alexander, 2000, p. 97). Like Alexander (2000) I am “interested in the generative nature of autobiographical reflection as an interpersonal (collaborative) phenomenon” (p. 99). Building on Chomsky’s generative grammar, Alexander offers “generative autobiography,” which is a collaboratively constructed performance that emerges in the audiencing of performances of autobiography. Admittedly, I do not present a conspicuous performance on a formal stage. Instead, I offer a performative text that aims to transform audience members into “practical collaborators, performance practitioners engaging at the border between the literal text and their own life scripts” (Alexander, 2000, p. 99). The goal is that my multiracial tales will elicit in you a desire to generate your own tales that “engage critical memory through a critical performative response” (Alexander, 2000, p. 101). Together, we will reconsider gender through multiple locations at once. I invite you to speak back, to challenge, to applaud, to detest, to engage, and to craft your own tales.

This article began as an investigation into embodied and differently situated masculinities. I was asked to write about queer masculinity. It was evident that the project proposer had a different conceptualization of queer from me. After I suggested some dynamics that I consider queer—temporary hormone replacement therapy, bearded women, and feminine masculinity—I realized that he meant gay male masculinity. My use of queer cleaves gender from a presumed biological sex (whatever biological might mean) and does not necessarily denote same-sex sexual desire or nonheterosexual identification. See, I do not identify as a gay man or as a gay male like I once did. Nor do I identify as cisgender. I understand my gender, sex, and sexuality as queer. My partner identifies as transgender and as genderqueer and is in the ebb and flow of gender and sex transition. As a result, so too am I. Despite my relative masculine persona, I often fall into the trappings of masculinity by being in seeming opposition to her body. Her relative hyperfeminization renders my mediocre ambiguity masculine in ways that are difficult to discern. However, this alone is not what this article is about. In thinking through this personal conundrum—of masculinity in relationship(s)—a familiar theme emerged: Masculinity is not static. Nonetheless, I took the challenge, as masculinity is something I think a lot about and something that I attempt to perform and fail at well.

I recall Reeser (2010) who suggests the need to consider masculinity as “pure becoming,” which is “constituted by a myriad of masculinities, by an endless series of different masculinities that never recur” (p. 47). According to Reeser, it is advantageous to consider the impossibility of a known masculinity, and to focus instead on the ways in which masculinities converge and diverge with one another. However, rather than comparing different masculinities between bodies, I am interested in multiple masculinities performed simultaneously in one body. This article is about multiple masculinities enacted through my body and mediated by sex, race, class, religion, sexuality, (trans)nationalism, and higher education. It is an autoethnographic tale of masculinity as told through a multiracial lens.

Multiracial tales, limited as they are, can be confusing. They are confusing because they challenge the categories thrust on our bodies. Root (1996) gives me hope when she says the confusion that multiracial tales conjure “may be necessary to accomplish flexibility and complexity for deeper structural change” (p. xxiv). To consider masculinity with a mixed-race lens means engaging multiple racialized masculinities always already at once. The trouble in writing the multiracial tale involves the same confusion one experiences when reading multiracial bodies. There is the tension between trying to write multiple tales while reminding your reader (and yourself) that they cannot be understood as separate. Bureaucratically, we are asked to “check one” race as if there is a linearity and hierarchy to being mixed race. In the performance of everyday, one sees only one race or the exoticism of the mixed-race body. I find that context plays a key role in the ways that others racialize my body. For instance, I might be read as masculine because I am large and White and don facial hair (Reeser, 2010), or have feminine features/tendencies because I am Asian (Kim, 1998). I am multiracial in relation to my Asian family and monoracial when with my White family, because of my passing White skin. Alexander (2006) describes passing as a “performative accomplishment” that “is a dialogically negotiated act between the one passing and those who would accept or deny, support or sanction, that passage” (pp. 70-71). As such, passing is relative (Serano, 2007). That my two families do not interact make these understandings more prevalent as I navigate a politics of relative passing in and out of the home.

The multiracial tales that I weave throughout this essay thrive for a mestiza consciousness, which Root (1996), who is influenced by Anzaldúa (1987/1999), theorizes. A mestiza consciousness is a “central reference point” that resides on a given border (Root, 1996, p. xxi). The mestiza considers all sides at once effectively constructing a new frame of reference. Rather than viewing my masculinity as informed by my White or Asian side, I consider both sides at once as this is how they manifest in my daily navigation of life hence my multiracial identity. My use of “multiracial” instead of “multicultural” as an identity marker is intentional. In her qualitative study of mixed-race women, Bettez (2012) articulates,

While it is problematic to utilize the term “mixed race” because it has the potential to reify racial categorization, it is also important to recognize that racial categorization continues to define people . . . [and] because race is real in its material consequences, and we have yet to escape racial designations, using race-based terms is necessary to unpack operations of power. (p. 28)

Using “mixed-race” and “multiracial” terminology does not signal an end to interrogating racialized language. On the contrary, it begs that we continue to critique such uses and to note that racial categories (including multiraciality) are socially constructed ideas with material consequences. Conversely, it is my view that “multicultural” as an identity designation erases the nuances of racialized experiences. Arguably, many people experience multicultural lives while not many people experience multiracial(ized) lives; though the multiracial population does continue to grow.

Multiracial tales might elicit confusion. Root (1996) suggests that confusion must remain present in narrating our lives so as to allow for a perpetual rethinking of our social lives. As such, allow me to complicate my story a little further. I am multiracial by way of U.S. militarism. My mother is from Taiwan and my father’s family has been in the United States for many generations and they are all White: Scottish and English to be sure. My understanding of masculinity is mediated through racialized categories and “transnational connectivities” (Grewal, 2005, p. 14). To better grasp these slippery spaces, I trouble the idea of what to focus on. I seek an anchor for mediating my embodied relationship to masculinity. Rather than focus on masculinity itself, I turn to higher education for understanding. By telling multiracial tales about higher education, I draw out a new understanding of masculinity as pure becoming through an ambiguous embodiment via autoethnographic writing.

My experience between worlds has shown me the demands that White masculinity enforces on my body and the potential that other masculinities might have. While my White queer friends struggled in their homes when they came out as queer (as I did with my White family), they were surprised at the acceptance I experienced with my Asian side of the family. Admittedly, my mother’s acceptance came not in the individualistic form demanded by White queers but in the tranquility of maintaining familial bonds. It was a coming home, not out (Wah-Shan, 2001). I believe that coming out needs to be rethought based on the demands of cultural experiences.

While I draw on tenets of queer theory for understanding, I remain wary of its tendency to evade race (Alexander, 2003, 2006; Johnson, 2001; Lee, 2003; Puar, 2007). Johnson (2001) argues for a move to “quare” theory, a vernacular adopted from his grandmother’s pronunciation of the word queer (p. 2). Johnson articulates what many nonnormative queer bodies of color struggle with when engaging queer theory. Lee (2003) engages Johnson’s work and adds a womanist and transnational dynamic. Lee coins her turn “kuaer,” which “mak[es] a transnational link between and beyond Taiwanese quare wo/men and radical quare wo/men in the United States” (p. 161). The word, “kuaer” is a transliteration of two Chinese characters: kua and er. Together, the words take on multiple meanings, of which Lee pegs as “children who cross worlds; children who are proud; children who are transnational womanist quares” (p. 149). Similar criticism of queer theory has come from transgender and transsexual camps that charge queer theory of disallowing mundane embodiments to emerge—primarily in following the gender troubling work of Judith Butler (Califia, 1997; Namaste, 2000; Prosser, 1998; Stryker, 2008).

This brings me to my specific contribution to these ongoing dialogues. I imagine a queer theoretical frame that advocates against White supremacy at the start, one that engages multiple embodiments at once. I imagine a kuaer/quare/queer theory that is embodied and experienced, like Johnson and Lee, through the performance of the everyday. What might appear mundane to Western queer theory is anything but mundane to those bodies that cannot afford to be post-gender, post-sex, post-race, post-class, post-sexuality, post-nation, and/or post-ability. What follows are multiracial tales that reconsider identity in relation to stagnant shifts that occur in place. Because focus on one entity inevitably privileges one mode of being over others, I turn to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) for help in articulating an assemblage of meaning, a reconstitution of understanding new lines of convergence and divergence. I consider my relationship to the academy as an assemblage that mediates gender, sex, race, class, religion, sexuality, (trans)nationalism, and higher education itself. Mediating identity through the academy as an assemblage allows for a becoming or a new mode of thinking that moves beyond resemblance, and toward regenerative potential that has “the capacity for capacity” (Puar, 2007, p. 200).

Assemblages of Meaning

There were three of us: brothers. I’m the oldest. Nathaniel, the middle brother, is dead. Leukemia took him 33 days after his 16th birthday in 1999. The youngest is Steven. He works for an oil refinery. I am in graduate school on route to achieving a PhD in communication. Our single mother raised us. She has been married and divorced 4 times. Nonetheless, my mother raised us alone. Each prospective father inevitably turned scarier: drug addiction, alcoholism, and many forms of abuse.

My mother is an immigrant woman from Taiwan. She, along with my grandmother, made their passage to the United States by way of the U.S. military. As a result, my brothers and I were raised in a conventional Taiwanese household infused with a drive for the American dream. Behind closed doors, we are traditional (in comparison with my American-born friend’s families); outside of those doors we embody the model minority. I am the first one born in United States on that side of the family. My grandmother demanded that I avoid Mandarin and Cantonese and to speak English exclusively. I was to be the bridge that would integrate my family into the United States. This duty turned out to be relatively easy as I pass as White. Nathaniel had, in the words of my grandmother, “Asian hair,” which stood straight up and out and Steven dons dark skin.

My birth father drives an 18-wheeler for a living and is a steadfast Southern Baptist. His family has been in the United States since the 17th century, our great aunt tells me. They came primarily from Scotland and England. My father made sure that mother’s Buddhist and Taoist ways were suppressed well before I was brought into this world. He refers to mother’s ways as “Ornamental”—an intentional mispronunciation and framing of my Taiwanese family as mere ornament from the Orient for his amusement.

Before I had conscious memory, my mother divorced my father and fled—with my brothers and me—from father’s “addictive personality” and “wandering tendencies.” Since then, my mother worked around the clock ensuring our survival, while the subsequent men she married did little beyond providing temporary housing. On rare occasions, my father would watch us for the weekend, but my mother would have to pay for our care, as he did not manage his money well. When I turned 10, he moved to Louisiana with the rest of his family and I can count on my hands the number of times we’ve interacted face-to-face since. Our resulting mediated relationship has diminished since. My coming out to him as a gay man while in high school did not help recuperate what little relationship we had. Meanwhile, my surviving brother’s relationship with him continues to flourish.

Our working-class history is beautiful and my mother has managed to climb the class hierarchy to a sensible middle-class existence that depends on a continuous paycheck. Of course, this is the secret of every working-class family in my mother’s neighborhood who parades in middle-class drag: We’re middle class so long as we have a job. Like drag, the façade of a middle-class aesthetic is assumed mere surface. But more than the ephemeral present constitutes drag. Drag is a process that involves persistent labor. The beauty is the result of hardwork and dedication and the varied kin that are engaged in creating that image. We aren’t simply middle class, we continue to labor to lend authenticity to our performative façade. Meanwhile, my father continues to struggle financially but has become increasingly creative in his ability to survive with what little he has access to. Every step we (my mother and my siblings and I) made up the class ladder was met with my father’s criticism charging my Asian side of the family with greed effectively dismissing the labor and love that goes into maintaining our achieved façade. As a result, I continue to feel a tinge of guilt surrounding our move to the middle class, while bearing witness to the hardwork and pain my mother continues to endure.

My own eventual ascension to the middle class by way of education has been difficult, but is the impetus for the current exercise. In addition to being the first born in this country, I am the first person on both sides of my family to go to and to finish college. I reluctantly completed my bachelor’s degree in 8 years at my mother’s request. I would have rather completed truck-driving school and followed the path of every man on my father’s side of the family. Manual labor coupled with the open road and seclusion are compelling job requirements indeed. Interestingly, my choice to pursue higher education was a catalyst that made a relationship with my father impossible and one with my mother and her side of the family stronger. For me, higher education has served as an assemblage for reframing and understanding gender, race, class, sexuality, (trans)nationalism, and religion in my life. I find that my choice to pursue higher education allows and constrains my bodily expressions and inevitably serves as a contradictory locus that is informed by the various tensions that arise from my multiraciality.

In my Western and White working-class father’s perspective, my choice to pursue higher education, rather than to work as a manual laborer like himself, positions my gender as always moving away from masculine potential and himself. In my father’s view, my move toward higher education is a move away from manual labor and himself. I find that White working-class masculinity analogizes gender performance with labor and race, and that aligns manual labor and working-class location(s) with White masculinity and any move elsewhere as a move toward the abject feminine. This binary thinking is largely informed by a Protestant ethic that rests upon oppositional logic and a Cartesian separation of mind and body (Connell, 2001). Manual labor, though, is deeply racialized in my father’s view as “we” drive trucks while “they” mow lawns. Thus, the masculinized manual labor that my father desires and embodies is always already White. The other manual labor is reserved for other, non-White folk. My brother, who is a refinery operator, performs what Alexander (2006) might call the proper “heterotrope of masculin[ity]” and thus retains Whiteness and proper masculinity in my father’s eyes (p. 119). This slippery view of a racialized manual labor is perpetually contingent upon my father’s (and his family) changing notions of “proper” manual labor.

Conversely, my pursuit of higher education to my mother and her side of the family is the impetus for validating my queerness as a nonissue. Theorizing Chinese masculinity, Louie (2002) finds it productive to consider the wen–wu dyad. Wen and wu refer to two expressions of masculinity, with neither one privileged over the other. Wen is the intellectual pursuit of mind or “cultural attainment” and is aligned with the philosopher Confucius (Louie, 2002, p. 4). However, there is wu, which is associated with Guan Yu—the Chinese deity of war—and “martial valor” along with the ability to know when to use this training (Louie, 2002, p. 4). Wu speaks to working and laboring classes while wen is framed as an expression of masculinity attributed to scholarly pursuits. Nonetheless, while proficiency in both expressions mark whole masculinity, “a scholar is considered to be no less masculine than a soldier” (Louie, 2002, p. 11). Thus, my brother’s post as a refinery operator coupled with his military service are expressions of “martial valor” that are equal to my pursuit of higher education and “cultural attainment.” My brother and I express masculinity differently, but equally, in my Asian family’s view. As a result, I have never had my sexuality, my butch-femme aesthetic, or general queerness called into question as I have performed my masculinity well within the realm of acceptability as a scholar. While my multiracial body is perpetually at odds with Western ideals of hegemonic masculinity and on the verge of—or already in the throes of—failure, it is simultaneously recuperated through an alternative assemblage of gender construction informed by a pursuit of higher education and mediated by relative transnational connectivities: With my father, I fail at masculinity; with my mother, I flourish.

My drive to develop the mind is seen as being in opposition to my father’s development of body via manual labor. Feminist critics have long made the case that patriarchal rule relies upon an oppositional logic that pins women’s bodies against men’s minds. However, I imagine that contemporary White working-class logic, which has linked manual labor to masculinity and race, has recoded the development of body at the demise of the mind as a marker of White masculinity. Halberstam (2011) adds, “Male stupidity is in fact a new form of macho” (p. 57). Thus, mind development is reframed as a feminine pursuit by way of not involving “appropriate” manual labor. Dualistic thinking refuses to believe that “both sexes [and genders] can coexist within one bodily inscription” such that development of mind and body are equally valid pursuits for masculinity and femininity (Bloodsworth-Lugo, 2007, p. 62). Furthermore, this idea is supported by the wen–wu dyad where wu, the pursuit of intellect, is a primarily elitist project due to the material means that it takes to access higher education. The difference is that Chinese masculinity positions wen as equal to wu, while my father’s notion of masculinity frames intellectual labor as less than manual labor.

My father and his family hold my departure from the working class in contempt. Such framing is an attempt to retain some form of masculine authority over my perceived intellectual superiority and attributed femininity. I use these words with hesitation, but the constant reminder that I “talk fancy talk that we can’t understand” or “we’re just poor truck drivin’ hillbillies” substantiates them along with a homophobic flick of the wrist gesture that accompanies the description of my vocation. These performative acts belittle and bemoan my departure from their ranks to a perceived elite caste of educated liberals.

Higher education coupled with a departure from the working class, perceived queerness, tainted-White blood, and Puritanical gender norms render my multiracial body emasculated or never masculine at the start. Thus, the charge of “be a man” is largely evoked because of my failure at the “performative nature of masculinity” or the material manifestation of what a proper masculinity might look like (Alexander, 2006, p. 70). My multiracial body experiences masculinity, as mediated through higher education, as an amorphous entity that is highly analogic to a given circumstance.

Telling Multiracial Tales

I came out to my mother as a gay man on accident. I was 15 years old and she was driving the car. I was looking out of the window rehearsing a debate with my friends who thought I should tell her. Out of my mouth slipped, “I’m gay.” My eyes widened unsure whether I had said that out loud. I refused to turn toward my mother who responded, “What did you say?” She was not angry; she authentically had not heard me. I was red, sweaty. I took a deep breath and followed through, “Mom, I think I’m gay.” She smiled and asked whether I was sure. I said, “yes”. She said, “okay” and kept driving. A few moments later she added, “Just do well in school.”

***

On the occasional summer weekend, dad would take me across the country in his 18-wheeler. It was against the rules and so I would have to crouch down into the wheel well when we arrived at various plants. The rule stated: “no passengers.” But I was his child, not an ordinary passenger. I was never caught. I hid well. Because we moved so frequently from one major city to the next, we constantly scanned the radio for “good” music. I recall that this truck did not have a tape deck, or one of those new CD players, and so we left our Christian music at home. Somewhere in Kentucky, Michael Bolton’s version of “When a Man Loves a Woman” comes on the radio. I look out of the window at the passing scenery. It’s beautiful. I grin and slowly sway my head to match the slow beat of the song. I chime in, changing the lyrics, “When a man, loves a ma-aaan!” I smile, pleased at my clever word change. Suddenly, my right cheek is on fire. I am confused and hold my now burning, and probably red, cheek. My eyes are filled with tears at the searing pain.

***

We’ve decided on Dim-Sum for dinner. The food is delicious. These are the moments when I am not allowed to be vegan. Grandma likes to put things on my plate—usually from her own plate. When she likes it, she likes to share it. Tonight it’s chicken feet and octopus. These items remind me of my childhood. The kids would laugh at me for eating the weird food, often with chopsticks. I never understood their taunts but learned early on the difference between being called “weird” and being called “different.” Grandma and I suck the tender flesh from between the toes of the chicken feet and a common sound of disgust is shot our way. I look up at grandma who is chewing. She looks up at me in turn. We look over to my brother’s girlfriend who is evidently disgusted. I take the bait and ask, “What’s wrong?”

“That is so gross. How can you eat that?”

I am speechless. Grandma continues to chew looking back at me. The table is speechless and I can tell that my face displays anger by the way my brother cuts in to diffuse the situation, “Hey! Sarah and I have great news!” My mother, grandmother, Aeron (my partner), and I all look to Sarah and Steven who are now holding hands and smiling. My brother adds, “We’re getting married!” Grandma continues to chew her food and smiles hesitantly. Her lips glisten from the thin layer of chicken feet grease.

My mother, Aeron, and I congratulate them on their engagement. We shoot secret glances back and forth as we hug them. They’ve only met 2 months prior. Sarah looks at my grandma and smiles, “Grandma!” I feel my eyes widen. Grandma’s eyebrows furl at the center but she manages a reluctant smile. Sarah gets up and wraps her arms around Grandma. Grandma is not pleased.

The meal continues and we all perform with hesitation. The engagement isn’t necessarily unwanted, but is sudden. At the close of the meal, Aeron thanks my grandmother for the meal, “Thank you. Dinner was delicious.” She responds, “You’re very welcome.”

I hug grandma goodbye and she whispers in my ear, “Your friend is nice. He is special, isn’t he? What is his name again?” I tell her Aeron and she smiles as we say our goodbyes.

Sarah once again hugs grandma, “Thank you for dinner, grandma!” I cannot put my finger on it, but I know that she cannot call her grandma. Not yet. Not yet.

***

“Hi Dad. It’s me.”

“Hi Son!”

“You’ll never guess what happened.”

“You discovered sliced bread. Wait. The Chinese already discovered that.” He chuckles at his clever joke.

“No, dad. I got into graduate school. I’m going to be a doctor.”

“Wow, son. I had no idea you were that smart.”

“Um, thanks?” I am hesitant to say more. I manage, “I’m real excited.”

“Great, son. So what will you do for work?”

“I’m going to research and write primarily.”

“Ah. Well, time to get back to work on my truck. Are you still . . . ”

“Yes, dad. I am still queer. And my partner . . . ”

“Alright, son. Gotta go. Bye.”

Click.

“Bye, dad.”

***

My mother calls me, “What are you two doing?”

“I’m researching and writing today,” I respond.

“Oh yeah. What is Aeron doing?”

“He’s right here. How about you ask him.” I hand the phone to Aeron.

I hear Aeron say, “Hi Alice . . . Yeah. I’m just sitting here with Benny while he works . . . No, I’m reading a book and sipping on a latte . . . Yeah! Sure. Can you pick me up so Benny can keep the car? . . . Okay, yeah. I’ll be ready! . . . Okay, here he is.” He hands the phone back to me.

“Hey,” I say, partially checking that she hadn’t hung up while the phone was passed back to me.

She responds, “I’m going to come pick up Aeron so we can go shopping.”

“Okay. He’ll be ready. See you later, mom.” We hang up.

***

I hadn’t seen him in more than 6 years. He had a route through California and had a few hours to spend with my brother and me. My brother and I drive to the truck stop and pick dad up and go to lunch. Dad lives in the South and craves In-N-Out burgers when back this way. I opt for an order of fries—the only animal-free option at In-N-Out. We sit on the patio and I watch him devour his double-double animal style. My brother does the same. They interact. I watch. My dad inquires about my brother’s life: Are you dating anyone? How’s school? How’s life? I watch. I sit alone. I observe the relationship that I never had manifest before my eyes yet again. I think about my brother, who lived with my dad for a while when we were younger. I recall my brother calling me on the phone to tell me that I was going to hell for being gay and that I needed to repent. This memory still clouds the view of my brother and dad. I don’t exist. I slowly eat my fries and see how distant I am—not even in the periphery of my father’s consciousness. I am literally unintelligible to him. My brother and I say our goodbyes to dad and we take customary photos to document this great moment. Dad’s heard nothing about my life in the 3 hours we have together. My brother’s biography was read aloud.

***

It’s Spring Festival and we’re preparing to eat. The family is present: grandma, mom, Aeron, Steven, Sarah, and me. The food is prepared and the table is set. We get in line. We each have our own plate. Grandma is first in line, but she has been snacking already so I know she won’t eat too much. She is first down the line and she takes her place at the table. She reserves a spot for Aeron to her right. She makes this point clear when Sarah enters the room. Her left side is reserved for me. Aeron and I sit on either side of grandma. Aeron thanks her for her cooking. She responds, “You’re welcome, Aeron.” She smiles and begins to eat. Sarah extends thanks as well, but grandma waves her left hand toward her acknowledging the thanks without looking up. I focus on my plate and hold back a chuckle.

***

“Benjamin!”

“Hi Grandma! How have you been?”

“Very good. And how are your studies?”

“They’re great, grandma. Challenging and necessary. It’s a lot of hardwork but I’m enjoying it. I’ve made the right choice to move to Carbondale to study.”

“That’s very good to hear. So, are you teaching as well?”

“Yes! The students are great. I am teaching two sections of public speaking and my classes are very . . . ”

“Benjamin. You’re speaking too quickly.”

“Sorry grandma. My studies and teaching are going well.”

“Good. Well I just wanted to call and say hi. I love you!”

“I love you, too, grandma.”

“Tell Aeron that I say hello.”

“I . . . will. Goodbye, grandma.”

***

For the past month I have mentally prepared for the move to Carbondale. I have come a long way working through my severe anxiety and agoraphobic tendencies. Aeron and I are prepared for the move. I am excited to begin my studies and to have Aeron with me makes the thought much more promising. We are set to leave the next morning and have decided to get a car wash. Aeron is sitting on a bench and I am standing staring at the cars as they exit the wash and enter into the hands of underpaid immigrant labor. My phone rings. It is my dad.

“Hi dad!”

“Hi son. What are you up to?”

“Aeron and I are getting the car washed. We leave for Carbondale in the morning.”

“Ah. Big move.”

“Yeah.” I can sense that he has more to say. He’s hesitant to engage me further. I add, “what’s up, dad?”

“I have something very important to say. And I say this because I’m worried about you. I’m your father and I love you very much, Benjamin. The end times are approaching, Benjamin. And I would be a terrible father if I didn’t try to . . .” He offers an Evangelical argument about my need for salvation. I have checked out and do not hear him. All of the anxiety that I have suppressed has emerged. My heart is racing. My hands are shaking. Aeron gets up and places a hand on my arm. I shake him off and walk away. He was raised atheist and the effect of religious zealotry does not wear on his body the same way. I hear my father mention the unifying of Israel as prophesized in the Bible as a sign of the end times. He berates the president according to the holy books of Beck and Limbaugh. He carries on and I am beginning to pant. I am light-headed. The car is nearly complete. Aeron is pacing, looking at me.

I take a deep breath and calm my body the best that I can. I stop my father,

Stop. Look, I’ve been working very hard to prepare for this move. I have never controlled my anxiety so well. It is evident that you are a large reason for my anxieties. As hard as this is to admit, I’m not interested in your dogma. I appreciate what you’re doing and I get that as an evangelical, you’re supposed to do this or you won’t get into heaven. Tell you what, tell God that you tried your hardest and know that we’ll both be fine. For now, I need to let you go. We cannot talk any more. You’ve weighed me down for too long and your words make me feel bad. They do not make me want to hear you, they hurt me. I’m more concerned with getting to Carbondale with my partner, Aeron, whom you have never asked about. We are moving into a nice house with our dog and bird. I’m concerned that you will never visit us and you will not be allowed in my house so long as you bring this dogma with you. It hurts me and it hurts us. I cannot handle this any longer. I will call you when I am ready to talk.

I hang up on him. I am panting. A tear emerges from my right eye. I have not cried in years.

***

So, not a real doctor? Doctor?! That’s great! We’re so proud of you. What a waste. Do you think you’re better than us? You make us all so, very proud. You and your brother are incredible! Yeah, but how’s your brother? Aeron’s like my daughter. Who’s Aeron? You and your rich . . . I have to work another shift tonight . . . Your education made you stronger! College turned you into a girl! What will you do with that?! I know you’ll be successful with that! That doesn’t matter. Your education does. Of course you’re gay. You don’t talk like us anymore. Wow. Your language is so sophisticated. I’d rather work like a man. You’re just as much a man as your brother. Don’t listen to your mother. Respect your father. How’s the ornamental? How’s your father?

I love you.         I love you.

***

Aeron and I are back in Southern California for a friend’s wedding. Grandma calls me and says that she wants to have dinner with Aeron and me. We meet her at her house where she is putting together a plate of food for Aeron. We sit and eat our meal. The conversation is pleasant. She asks about our move to Carbondale. She asks Aeron about work prospects and school. She tells Aeron that school would be best and to find work wherever it is. When the night is done, she hugs me big and long. She kisses me on the check. She looks at Aeron and hugs her long and hard in much the same way. She wishes us well. Aeron is part of the family.

Coming Home

I have argued that my pursuit of higher education has been the force that has mediated my gender performance in my families. According to my White, working-class, and conservative Christian family, higher education is framed as antilabor and thus antimasculine. My queer gender and sexuality further support this view, which are seen as obvious effects of higher education. The framing of my queerness as an “of course” or obvious excess of higher education is further complicated by my White family’s view of “yellow masculinity” which denies strength and assumes nonheterosexuality (Kim, 1998, p. 272) with the symbolic use of “racial castration” (Eng, 2001). Thus, my White family struggles to consider my body as masculine in any capacity. Because of their misogynistic and racist beliefs, my educational milestones are discarded as pointless, feminine pursuits (Brittan, 2001). The rare visit from my father involved my watching my brother and him interact as I sat on the side. The further I go in my education, the larger the chasm between my White family and me grows.

My failure at masculinity (and working-class, White femininity) has led to my overall rejection from the family. While rejection is a harsh word, it is the most accurate word that I can use to describe my experience. My coming out merely reinforces their rejection. They do not know who my partner is and do not care to know. My father does not know what I study in school. He does not know anything about me beyond my choice to abandon a career in truck driving and to embrace higher education. He has decided that I am “fancy,” and that he cannot understand a word that I say. While I do not want to give up on my White family, they make it difficult to care. I admit, I have not been easy on them either. However, I hurt. And I continue to hurt. I do not ask to have my masculinity validated, but to be seen for once would be nice. Not only as queer but also as educated and as accomplished and as different and worthy.

My Asian side of the family does not outright accept my queerness as an identity. But they confirm me as a valid part of the family. I do the task that I am supposed to do and as a result, am not questioned in my personal affairs. They respect Aeron and acknowledge the bond that we have. Wah-Shan (2001) argues, quite compellingly, that a move to come home rather than out is a more effective means of working within the established and traditional Chinese family structure. Integration of the partner into the ren lun of the family structure—the (in)formal rules that guide familial interaction—is a dialogical means of performatively refiguring the Chinese family structure in such a way that queer partners are rendered present and as valuable parts of the family (Wah-Shan, 2001).

When my grandmother first met Aeron, she had a hard time recognizing him as anything but a friend joining us for dinner. As time passed on, she slowly began to remember his name. At the last meal that we had with her before moving to Carbondale, my grandmother put together Aeron’s plate for her. She placed food on Aeron’s plate and shared with her her favorite items. Similar to the findings of Gao and Xiao (2002), the propensity to act is informed by blood relations and thus the strongest bond is rooted not in some individually defined identity, but by ties to the family structure. Thus, the work of coming home has less to do with coming out as queer, and more to do with integrating Aeron into the structure we hold so dear as a “special friend” or as “quasi-kin” (Wah-Shan, 2001, p. 37). Over time, Aeron has become like a grandchild to my grandmother and like a child to my mother. For all intents and purposes, Aeron has become a valid part of the family: a component with her own position at the table.

Wah-Shan (2001) advocates that recognition lies not in the politics of individualism or in difference but in dinner and family rituals. Indeed, “quasi-kin” designation “is a crucial indication of breaking the insider-outsider distinction” (Wah-Shan, 2001, p. 37). In comparison, my brother’s wife still struggles to be validated at the table. My grandmother and mother struggle to see her as “quasi-kin” and I think that this lies in large part to her initial assumption that she could refer to my grandmother as “grandma,” a move that was too sudden and that dismissed the work that goes into establishing oneself as part of the family. In this way, even heterosexual marriage does not necessarily equate to access to the family structure. It is a process that takes time. I do not doubt that she will eventually enter the family as “quasi-kin,” but in the meantime, the “in-law” status is merely a state-defined title.

This brings me back to my opening tale. Coming out is a process for many of us and it looks different for each of us. Aeron and my coming out has been more like a coming home. Because I perform wen masculinity, my relationship is seen as arbitrary. My grandmother and mother came to America well before the tongzhi (slang for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community members) movements developed in Taiwan. In fact, Taiwan currently hosts one of the largest (if not the largest) tongzhi pride parades in Asia (Damm, 2011, p. 165). While Taiwan has seen much shift in the integration of tongzhi, coming out is still quite difficult. Because my family came to America prior to these shifts, they still hold on to more traditional views of family.

Without recognizing these transnational distinctions, coming out becomes the master narrative that struggles to work in non-Western contexts. In my family, it does not work. Coming home does. What Aeron and I experience is “tacit recognition without mentioning it” and that is okay (Wah-Shan, 2001, p. 37). My pursuit of education allows for this tacit recognition of my queer masculine performance and butch-femme aesthetic. Thus, my masculinity emerges in “unpredictable flows” that are not bound solely by a masculine identity but by way of assemblages of meaning (Reeser, 2010, p. 48). I imagine that education, as a marker of how gender can be understood in family, is only one such assemblage of meaning. Education concurrently rejects and rejoices my masculinity and by extension, my sexuality.

My mundane performance of gender can never be understood as only ever subversive or compliant. It is always both of these things at once. Obsession with the transgressive at the dismissal of the mundane is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it denies the transgressive potential of the mundane. Second, it denies the multiplicity of identity that it purports to advocate by suggesting that gender performances can only ever be one thing or another when they shape and shift temporally and spatially (Brittan, 2001). And third, it dismisses the complexity that is the performance of the everyday. Such complexities are important to imagine and to tell through tales, because it allows us to disrupt the performativity of our surrounding social world. The performance of everyday is filled with transformative performative potential. There are multiple sites where my ongoing gender performance is framed and reframed. For now, we need to continue looking to the personal mundane to better formulate new questions. Identity is an embodied act that is not distinct from the material world (Bloodsworth-Lugo, 2007). Generate your own tales as they emerge in dialogue with my multiracial tales. How is your gender multiple? How are your identities multiple? How might we reconsider identity through new assemblages of meaning? How do we mediate our identities in unsuspecting ways at multiple times, effectively constructing identities that are always already contingent upon spatial and temporal queerness?