Scottish/German | Vietnamese

Photo credit: provided by subject

A biracial, left-handed, cisgender gay man. My Mom grew up in Vietnam, Dad is of Scottish and German descent and grew up in Ohio in the United States. They met in Vietnam while my Father was serving in the US Army during the Vietnam War.

I've spent so little time with my extended family. For the most part, it was always just my parents, my two brothers, and me, which expanded to a Stepmom, Stepdad, and some half siblings after my parents divorced and remarried. My Mom's second husband, also a White man, had a family whose elders were not pleased that he was marrying an Asian woman. I remember always being slightly uncomfortable when I was around his Mother. If it bothered my Mom, she didn't let it show. She'd regularly prepare gỏi cuốn as her contribution to Thanksgiving dinners.

My Stepmom passed away this summer. I hadn't seen or spoken to her in many years, but her death hit me hard. I have step kids of my own now, and I understand how tough and slightly weird it is suddenly to be helping in the upbringing of someone else's children. She was always there for us.

I realized I was gay at a pretty young age, something I kept it hidden from my family until my early twenties. My Mom suspected I was gay, everybody did, and told me, point blank, that she'd disown me if I was. My Dad was a conservative Republican whom I'd heard make snide comments about effeminate men, so I was pretty certain he'd be disappointed if I ever came out. Despite my Mom's threats, my Dad's homophobia, and society's general treatment of gay men (this was the 1990s), I had a strong sense of self and justice. I came out to my parents at 21. My Mom, as promised, disowned me, we didn't see each other or speak for more than two years. My Dad was surprisingly gracious. Since then, I've been open about all aspects of my identity. I decided early on that I would never take a job in which I felt like I needed to be closeted. I've had a bunch of role models throughout my life, but right now, I'm super into creators who are telling stories about intersectionality, people like Maya Erskine (Pen15), Issa Rae (Insecure), Michaela Coel (I may destroy you), Mike White (White Lotus), and Soo Hugh (Pachinko).

My family sort of fractured early on. My Dad and his family moved away when I was twelve, and I rarely saw him after that. In the last thirty years, I think I've seen him three times? After I came out of the closet and was disowned, I stopped going home for the holidays, and even after my Mom ‘welcomed’ me back into the family, I opted to use my vacation time differently. I wanted to be around people who accepted me fully. Things are better with my Mom, but I don't see her that often. I'm closest to my older brother, Britton, and my Mom's daughter, Nicole, but he's in California, she's in Illinois, and I'm in New York. Today, I celebrate special occasions with my chosen family; I vacation with my husband and closest friends. All that said, I'm conscious of the influence of my family on my life. I recently had a new book come out (about being mixed-race), and I dedicated it to ‘Mom and Dad, for making me, and Britton and Nicole, for understanding me’.

To be honest, I do very little to retain my cultures. My Mom cooked Vietnamese food, but we didn't do anything else that spoke to her heritage. My Dad's family had been in the United States for a few generations, so there was nothing we did that was a callback to his European ancestry. I'm focused on creating new traditions with my husband.

Knock on wood, but it feels like the big challenges are mostly in the rear window, though I understand there will be more to come as I get older. I sought out therapy in my twenties, which was hugely helpful, and there, I cultivated skills that I still practice today.

For many years, I felt like I wasn't enough. I wasn't Asian enough in terms of my appearance or knowledge about my heritage. I know that many of my experiences as the son of a Vietnamese immigrant overlap with those of Asian friends, and yet I regularly shied away from having those conversations out of fear that I'd be dismissed, like, ‘Yeah, well, you don't really understand because your Dad's White’. I don't look wholly White, something White people often love to bring up immediately. Out on acting auditions (back in the day), upon walking into a room filled with all White men or all Asian men, I'd immediately come to the conclusion that I wasn't going to get the job. In my romantic life, I didn't feel Asian enough to attract men who were into Asian men or White enough to attract those who weren't. It's only within the last few years that I realized that I've spent so much time looking outward to figure out who I am instead of looking inward. I let the way others saw me dictate how I saw myself. Well, no more! Now, I seek out opportunities to talk about identity, relishing in the commonalities and treasuring the differences.

I was recently reading an interview of Jin Ha, one of the stars of Pachinko. He noted how he felt walking onto set on one of the first days and being surrounded by Asian people, he'd never had that in a workplace setting. It made me think about how I'll likely never have that experience. Growing up, I didn't have the words to talk about being mixed-race. I don't recall ever once talking about race with my family, and it's not something that was discussed at school, other than on the playground in the sense of ‘You're only good at math because your Mom's Asian’, I understood that there was something about my appearance that confused others, and that it was my job to clear up that confusion. That's a big job for a kid, and an unfair one. I had this friend back when I lived in LA in my twenties. I remember him encouraging me to lean into what made me uniquely me at auditions, instead of trying to be what I thought the casting director wanted. It was great advice, advice, unfortunately, that I couldn't figure out how to put into practice. I'll say that I'm very proud of who I am and that I'm grateful for my experiences as a mixed-race person. I write and edit books for a living, and I drew from those experiences in two recent projects, the picture book ‘What are you?’ (which I wrote) and the essay collection ‘My Life: Growing up in Asian America’ (which I edited). I'm currently editing a novel by Anna Gracia called ‘The Break-up Vacation’, which stars a young biracial woman figuring out her love life, with her mixed-race identity figuring prominently in the story.

I know there are mixed-race people in my organization. I see them regularly on Zoom, and I've met some through our Asian American employee resource group. I think my colleagues know that I'm mixed-race, but I'd guess that they'd check ‘Asian’ if asked? I work for a content-creating company, and I'm pushing for more representation of the mixed-race experience.