\n <\/p>\n
Once upon a time, Jeremy Lin made me cry.<\/p>\n
No, he didn\u2019t bully me when we were kids. (I\u2019ve never actually met him, plus I was born in the Early Triassic.)<\/p>\n
It happened when he hit a dramatic game-winning three against the Toronto Raptors on Valentine\u2019s Day 2012. Far from being tears of sadness, mine were tears of elation. I wasn\u2019t just happy for the dude. I was also moved because, as a symbol of Asian America, Jeremy\u2019s success was our success. Literally and logically, of course, that wasn\u2019t true. But symbolically and emotionally, it was a powerful truth. <\/p>\n
I have tons of respect for Jeremy and others who\u2019ve embodied the sufferings and victories of Asian America. But I\u2019d like to suggest an additional symbol for us, or at least for those of us who have struggled deeply with self-defeating behaviors. Her name is Kai-Lan Chow, a six-year-old girl who lives with her kind and nurturing Ye Ye, or Grandpa. Exactly where she lives is unclear, but it is clear that she\u2019s a delightful, incredibly loving little girl. Oh, and her friends include a panda-loving koala, a turntable-spinning monkey, and a flying rhino.<\/p>\n
Okay, so she\u2019s a cartoon character on Nick Jr. But just because she\u2019s fictional doesn\u2019t mean she can\u2019t be a symbol for us to rally around!<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve never heard of her, imagine Dora the Explorer as a Chinese girl, teaching Mandarin instead of Spanish, and familiarizing viewers with cultural traditions like Chinese New Year and the Moon Festival. But what she teaches best is the healthy processing and handling of feelings. In every episode, she walks viewers through the process of identifying her friends\u2019 feelings, usually more \u201cnegative\u201d ones like anger, sadness, and feeling excluded. She and Ye Ye then show her friends how to talk about such emotions and express them in healthy ways.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s striking how Kai-Lan\u2019s emotional world is so different from my childhood and that of most real-life Asian Americans. Relatively few of us ever experienced such an emotionally nurturing environment, especially in our families, which did not generally know what to do about feelings. I mean, how many times did our parents ask us how we felt about things in our lives, especially unpleasant things? Instead, our parents communicated to us that it wasn\u2019t acceptable to express our feelings if they conflicted with parental opinions or decisions. Again, how many times did our parents answer us with emotionally invalidating phrases? Things like, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t feel that way\u201d or shaming statements like \u201cYou show that I\u2019m a failure as a parent\u201d or the Confucian granddaddy of them all, \u201cYou ungrateful child, after all I\u2019ve done for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because it wasn\u2019t okay for us to have our feelings, many of us learned to stuff them away, hiding who we really are behind a fa\u00e7ade our elders deemed more acceptable. As a consequence, we then developed emotional problems like depression or crippling anxiety as we got older. To survive, we learned to self-medicate, using self-destructive addictions and behaviors to numb our pain.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s where Kai-Lan comes in. She can serve as a symbol of hope \u2013 hope that things will be different for the next generation of Asian Americans! I’ve done some blogging for organizations that help folks with eating disorders, and according to the National Eating Disorder Association, \u201cA well-rounded sense of self and solid self-esteem are perhaps the best antidotes to dieting and disordered eating.\u201d I’m convinced that’s true for our other addictions and unhealthy behaviors as well. Kai-Lan, then, gives us hope because she models for us ways to cultivate that emotional health in Asian American children. She gives us a tool to talk about feelings with our kids, nieces, nephews, and any other Asian child for whom we\u2019re an \u201cauntie” or “uncle.” They can learn from her (and us, as we watch with them) that it\u2019s okay to have whatever feelings they have, including the \u201cnegative\u201d ones. They can also begin to grasp how they can express and handle their emotions productively, instead of just stuffing them. Ni Hao, Kai-Lan<\/i> gives me hope that the next generation of Asian Americans can be more emotionally healthy, with a more \u201cwell-rounded sense of self,\u201d and less likely to repeat our self-destructive behaviors. It\u2019s a tool that\u2019s easy to find, whether on the Nick Jr. website or on iTunes, and it\u2019s easy to utilize.<\/p>\n
Of course, I don\u2019t for a moment think that just plopping kids down in front of the TV to watch Kai-Lan is going to give them that strong sense of self. The show, again, is just one tool for loving, nurturing grown-ups to use as they foster a safe, emotionally healthy environment for kids. But it\u2019s clearly a tool of high quality. And a powerful symbol of hope.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To watch an clip from Ni Hao, Kai-Lan,<\/i> click here.<\/a><\/p>\n The majority of this post first appeared at<\/i> ThickDumplingSkin.com<\/a>, a wonderful community with a focus on Asian Americans who struggle with body image and disordered eating issues.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once upon a time, Jeremy Lin made me cry. No, he didn\u2019t bully me when we were kids. (I\u2019ve never<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11068,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"2","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Once upon a time, Jeremy Lin made me cry. No, he didn\u2019t bully me when we were kids. (I\u2019ve never","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":153,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":5,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=11068"},"magazine_blocks_comment":2,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}