My name is Linda…I’m a mom, partner, and all around pain in the ass to many. I love being inspired to be creative and analytical, which makes me particularly restless sometimes. I’m a nonprofit educational research and evaluation consultant because I like making sense of things and telling stories through data.
Most recently, I added entrepreneur to my list, and started a company called Evaluation Studio, which will hopefully benefit those nonprofits that I work with. My partner and I have been together for 13 years, and have a son, Max, who is getting close to 2 now! Family time usually includes being weird together in various settings. I think my biggest strengths in being a mom is learning from others, being intuitive, and also being a little silly.
However, with all that said about who I am or think I am, I feel like before I was a mom, so much of understanding “who I am” was about trying to become the person you thought you wanted to be. After being a mom, understanding “who I am” has become so much more about my family, my upbringing, and my history. There’s a lot of clarity in confronting yourself as a parent.
The Interview– Raising a Biracial child
When Max turned one, we took him to get a routine blood test. As we filled out the form, the phlebotomist asked, “What’s his race?”
I asked the phlebotomist, “Is there a multiracial option?”
She responded, “No, you have to pick one.”
I think when talking about race, or being multiracial, that’s the lingering question. You wonder how your kid will contend with it, and the extent to which it will be important to them.
Do they have to pick a race?
While the obvious answer is no, I think the real and inherent truth is that that might be a perpetually evolving question.
One thing I think that will be hard is, at the heart of it, my husband and I will never be able to truly understand what it will be like for Max to negotiate his multiracial identity. I am Taiwanese, and my husband is White. While I have embraced and resisted what it means to be Asian in culture, perception, and racism, it has been as a full first-generation Taiwanese American. My husband is a white man in the United States, and while being culturally and politically aware, he cannot ingrain the same understanding of discrimination and inequity. Neither of us will know what it’ll be like to navigate the terrain of being multiracial. Neither of our families talked about race in the way that it is now so prominent and essential. Our multiracial toolkit is build as you go, and I think both of us feel grateful that these issues are highlighted now so that we can create the meaningful dialogue we seek for Max.
Another thing that I’ve asked myself more now is, culturally speaking, what does it mean to be Taiwanese. The most accessible aspects are food and language, but in many ways those are just parts. Being Taiwanese is so intrinsic and intangible. It’s not just speaking Chinese, but it’s how you speak, and the way the dialogue is unfolded into temperament and belief. It’s the way that food is about community, both past and present. I think inherently, Max will never retain the innate cultural sensibility of being Taiwanese, but I also think that’s ok. While I can only feel and not define what it means for me to be Taiwanese, I think he will feel and not be able to define whatever multiracial cultural identity he carves for himself.
I definitely think that it is changing and that being multiracial, especially in the Bay Area, is commonplace. Bay Area communities are seeing a lot of reinvention when it comes to identity and multiculturalism. I think race is a multifaceted concept of belonging. Identity is not only about who you see yourself as, but it’s also about how others see you based on what they think you look like or don’t look like. And of course, race does not standalone and is complicated by its intersections with class, sexuality, and gender.
I’ve lived in both big and small cities, and in some ways racial and social divides are the same in smaller towns as they are in bigger towns. I lived in Chicago for 6 years, and while the ethnic and racial makeup was quite diverse, the segregation was palpable by neighborhoods, by communities, and by the EL line you take home. Regardless of where you live, diversity can be an incredibly inaccessible concept to understand and manifest. As a parent I can teach about racial, social, and sexual diversity, and go home where the community I live, the friends I have, and the television or social media that I watch is muted or even disruptive to ideas of equity. I have no real answers, and am caught in aspects of isolation myself.
I think what helps me, and especially in times like now, is really reserving assumptions, and connecting to what is real and not just abstract ideas about difference. We demonize and glorify, we run to the extremes, and we live and die by abstract ideas, both good and bad, but in reality we connect most to the things that are personal. I hope that’s true too for the ways in which we create connections for our kids. I honestly don’t know, and am figuring it out, but I think someone is less likely to make assumptions about me, and to understand me individually and culturally when they spend some time with me. 
This is Max staying incognito while evoking his spirit animal Bruno Mars.
My company is: www.evaluationstudio.org.
Linda, thank you for sharing a bit of your lovely world with us, and an up close account discussion of difference and assumptions. I agree fully– assuming anything at face value isn’t true or even fair to the heart and soul inside.
We hope to spend some time with you soon in person!