Content warning: This article contains references to emotional and physical abuse as well as suicide. If you or someone you know needs assistance, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Both programs provide free, confidential support 24/7.
Asian Americans and, in particular, Asian American women, are among the least likely to seek mental health support. Advocate, writer, and Mochi alumna Michelle Yang is one reason that might be changing. Not shying away from the stigma of mental health, Yang’s memoir is titled “Phoenix Girl: How A Fat Asian With Bipolar Finds Love,” and is the perfect read for May, which is both Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.
Her story is uniquely intersectional and largely untold even as representations of Asian Americans continue to prosper. Being fat, bipolar, and desiring love is often unspoken about in our communities and in America as a whole. Yang’s writing is a salve for those who do not feel seen by current narratives that hide the mental and psychological pressures of being Asian American.
Starting by introducing her ethnically Chinese family with roots in Incheon, South Korea, the memoir follows her and her family as they immigrate to Atlanta, Georgia when she is 9 years old and as they move several more times across the United States until she finds herself in Phoenix, Arizona helping out at her family’s Chinese restaurant. The memoir explores her struggles as a teenager with her appearance and racism, as well as her father’s abusive nature, her eventual hospitalization, and, later, her adult dating life. Despite the subject matter, Yang always voices a hopefulness and a desire to be seen, to be loved, and to not hide who she is.
Mochi Magazine talked to the writer and advocate about Asian American families’ silence around…
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