A Conversation with Author Anne Liu Kellor
Anne Kellor Liu grew up in Seattle hearing the Mandarin of her mother and trying to assimilate in the white culture of her father. For mixed-race children of the 1970s and 1980s, there were few role models in the media who identified as multiracial. In the 1990s, Kellor decided to travel to her mother’s birth province of Sichuan to improve her Mandarin and to immerse herself into Chinese culture, a culture she still felt she had much to learn about. She writes about her two stints in China in her new memoir, Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging, out September 7th. Susan Blumberg-Kason recently chatted with Kellor about writing, travel during simpler times, representation in the media, and how to immerse oneself in another country.
Undomesticated: In your forthcoming memoir, Heart Radical, you write about traveling to your mother’s birthplace of Sichuan Province for the first time when you’re twenty-one. Travel back in 1996 was nothing like it is now. There were no bullet trains, no WeChat, and even e-mail was still in its infancy. Can you talk a little about how you got around without all these modern conveniences? Of course, we had no idea how quickly technology would advance in the years to come so the old way was all we knew. But are there some things you did while traveling then that surprise you now?
Anne Liu Kellor: I guess since I barely used email or the Internet then, even when I was in the States, I didn’t miss it. I just had to rely on the Lonely Planet, those terrible maps that don’t show very much detail, and also just asking for help. I spoke basic conversational Mandarin, so could usually get my point across if it was something simple I was asking, but there were also times when people couldn't understand my accent or I couldn't understand theirs, or plenty of days that would become devoted to just figuring out how to get somewhere. Everything required more patience and time.
I didn’t know any other way to travel apart from backpacking, so in many ways I adapted to it easily. Now, though, when I look back, I don’t think I could travel that way anymore. Those long bus rides and then just not being in touch with family or anyone back home for weeks at a time. But back then it was kind of exciting because I wanted to get away from my family and from everything I knew. And I think that kind of travel really just forces you to rely on help from others, whether travelers or locals. So looking back I do kind of shake my head at some of the choices I made that I wouldn’t necessarily now, like hitchhiking or staying in strangers’ homes, although I don’t really get into those details in the book so much because that was on my first trip, whereas on my second trip I was more rooted, primarily in Chengdu.
Undomesticated: I think you trusted people and I think we’re now all used to scam artists on social media and we are on the defensive more these days. Back then I think people were more trusting and if you met someone on an airplane, why wouldn’t you go out to dinner with them later? I don’t know if people would do that now.
Liu Kellor: Yes, and sometimes I wonder if I was so trusting simply because I was so young. I think that was a part of it. I was less fearful and I took more risks back then, and there was something beautiful in that because it really did allow me to connect to more strangers and adventures and situations I would never normally find myself in. But I also recognize that my brain was not fully developed and I was not making the wisest decisions all of the time. I am lucky that nothing traumatic happened to me, but it easily could have, especially as a woman traveling alone.
Undomesticated: In the same light, do you think young people today would have as much of a meaningful experience traveling back to a parent’s or grandparent’s birth country as you did, given all our modern conveniences? Is there something more authentic about “roughing it”?
Liu Kellor: Roughing it does create more challenges at times, which can create more opportunity for growth, like realizing that you’re tougher than you realized. But I think in any traveler pilgrimage, the journey is always internal. So it always comes back to your intentions and how you remain aware of your own body and mind and heart. I don’t know if I would say that you could learn more back then than you can now. I think it’s the same, but also different. So much of travel for me is about connecting. When you have time to connect with locals and to talk with other travelers, time to make those human connections, this kind of experience is still available now, even if many of the older villages or more pristine ways of life are disappearing. For example, even in the few years that passed between my first trips to Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province, so many of the local people were being displaced out of the old town centers to make room for tourist shops and restaurants. More and more big, loud tour groups were arriving, and the feeling of being in a slow, remote old town was rapidly disappearing.
I can only image what these places must feel like now, with the "local ethnic culture" completely commodified for outsiders. How much do people continue to practice their own songs and dances and traditions for themselves, versus turning them into a show as a way to make money? I think if, as travelers, we go in wanting to see people for who they actually are, right now, and not as some relic of the past, then it is still possible to have a so-called "authentic cultural experience."
Undomesticated: That’s such a great point. It is about the connections that we make, not just the things we see. And your book is special: It’s a homecoming of sorts, since you were determined to improve the Mandarin you had learned before you could talk. It was your mother’s and grandmother’s language, and the one you heard them speak the most when you were young. Now that you are a mother yourself, do you speak Mandarin to your son, and do you feel that it’s more socially acceptable to speak a second language at home—from the child’s standpoint—than it was when you were young?
Liu Kellor: I tried to speak to my son when he was a baby. That was relatively easy when he was immobile and I could just walk around and babble and point out objects in Mandarin and say phrases. But once we entered the stage where we needed to get something done or to go places, I was so sleep-deprived and it wasn’t the easiest experience being a new mother, so my efforts faded away. My mother did help a lot with childcare and so she also spoke to him in Chinese, but we didn’t carry it on in part because he didn’t show a lot of interest as he got older. I just let it go and I still hope he’ll take up an interest later. But I just forgave myself for not having the energy to pursue that more and I was also responding to who he was as a person, which is so active and not inclined to sit at a desk for long.
As for growing up bilingual, it’s probably increasingly common and therefore kids will see more of their peers with similar experiences and perhaps not feel as unique in that way. But it also depends on where you grow up. Regardless, I think the experience of feeling a divide in yourself will always remain if you grow up bilingual, especially if you see that one language is spoken in the home and one is spoken out in the world. So for me, not having anybody explain or help me process this experience created a sense of confusion early on, and the desire to assimilate into the dominant culture. When you are young, it’s hard to understand why you feel different until you see unspoken layers of your experience mirrored somewhere in the outer world—and eventually learn to tell your story yourself.
Undomesticated: Speaking of mixed-race children, I was so upset when you wrote about the missionary kids in Chengdu and how they told you that God doesn’t like mixed race people. That was 20 years ago, so do you think attitudes have changed since then? My own son is 23 and is also mixed race with a Chinese father. We’ve talked about his experience at school in the U.S. and China, and he really hasn’t heard any comments like what those kids said to you. I’m wondering if he’s just been lucky, or do you believe Americans in general now celebrate mixed race kids?
Liu Kellor: I think the answer is yes and no. On one hand I also didn’t grow up with those kinds of comments in Seattle. And there were quite a few mixed kids in my school, even though at the time I didn’t necessarily see and identify with them as “my people.” But again, I think it really depends on the culture of where you live.
Now, on some level, there’s more acceptance of interracial relationships and more of an overall embracing of diversity. On another level, the racist roots of our country run really deep. So even though I grew up in liberal Seattle with a large Asian community, it was still very segregated, and my white father and Chinese mother didn’t talk to me about race. There was a lot I internalized that took decades to unpack, and that I’m still unpacking. Although kids these days might not experience as many direct racist comments, I think about those questions of identity—of where do I belong, or am I a person of color, or am I fully one thing or another; all these layers of questioning one’s identity still exist for mixed kids even if there are more resources and more people talking about these things overall. It can take a lot of intentionality from parents to seek out resources and mentors for their kids, because in the mainstream media that kids are usually exposed to, there still is not a lot of mixed-race representation.
Undomesticated: That’s such a great point. Just looking at celebrities and movie stars, I know mixed-race actors have had a hard time when it comes to casting. In Crazy Rich Asians, it was a huge deal that Henry Golding was biracial and people were really upset he wasn’t 100% Chinese, and that’s a shame because I think he did a fabulous job. Hollywood has been white for so long, and it’s been so hard for biracial actors.
Liu Kellor: Some of that critique comes from communities of colors around multiracial, and especially mixed with white actors, often being cast in roles for people of color that are so lacking. Colorism and light-skinned privilege are still so prevalent that it’s understandable why some would be upset when light-skinned actors are chosen. But I think there are more mixed-race actors and celebrities out there than we realize. They just may not identify publicly as mixed-race.
Undomesticated: You’re so right. There are actors like Jennifer and Meg Tilly, Phoebe Cates, and Keanu Reeves who are always cast as white and there is never much mention of their Asian parents.
Liu Kellor: Yes, and this might be a marketing choice, or it might be a personal and political choice like in the case of Kamala Harris, who identifies publicly as African American, but privately she’s also an Asian American and mixed. We all get to define for ourselves how we identify or how that may change from context to context. I’m sure Kamala Harris is perfectly clear on why she identifies primarily as a Black woman, and yet of course there are also many unique layers and nuances to growing up with parents from two cultures or races that connect mixed-race people. So I’m sure she has other stories to tell.
Undomesticated: Right! And President Obama had the same thing, too. It was hard to please everybody, so we still have a long way to go. Getting back to your book, your thoughts on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism show how it’s become a cause celèbre. You call that out and feel disconnected from it because of the appropriation issue. Have you been able to reconnect to Buddhism in the decades since you left China? Are you still involved in Tibetan activism?
[For the answer to this question, please come back for part two of Liu Kellor's interview.]
