I may have mentioned in earlier blogs that I am writing a book-length manuscript about Clare being raised by a first generation Taiwanese American mom and a fourth generation Midwestern American dad. While the book revolves around Clare, I did take brief looks at the lives of her bicultural friends and cousins. These are young people who, like Clare, bridge the gap between the millennial and Gen Z generations.* My hope was that I might be able to generalize some of my overriding conclusions about my daughter’s upbringing and apply them to young biracial Asian Americans in general. Only in the broadest sense could I do that.
These young adults, now in their late twenties or early thirties, are literally and figuratively all over the map. For example, Clare has two biracial cousins from the same family; one is an influencer living in Los Angeles and the other manages a UN-sponsored refugee camp in Haiti. If two siblings can have lives more different from each other, I do not know what they would be. Clare has one mixed race friend who is a veterinarian, another who is an airline pilot. Two are restaurant managers, and another is a developer of artificial flavors for processed foods. A few of Clare’s friends actually fit the Asian American stereotype by working in medicine or computer science. As far as I know, Clare is the only one to work for a government agency.** She may also be the only one still trying to figure out the general direction of her professional life.
Still these young bicultural adults do have a few things in common. All except one has a college degree. All have left the towns where they grew up. None are married, none have kids. All are doing well professionally, and all seem satisfied, even excited, about their life choices. In a number of cases, they are in jobs that did not exist when their parents were young.
To the extent that I’ve had serious conversations with any of these young people, I sense that they understand the world around us better than I do. It is cliché to say this, but the young adults I know are more than ready to take over as soon as the septuagenarians and octogenarians of my generation step out of the way. In the “Economy” chapter of Walden, Thoreau wrote that “the old have no very important advice to give the young.” When I was in my twenties, it was one of only a few passages in the book where I disagreed with the author. Now that I am in my seventies, I still disagree, but I also realize that the elders possessing the most timeless wisdom are the ones most likely to let younger minds figure things out for themselves.
* If I went strictly by the generational charts, Clare would be listed as part of the Gen Z generation. She feels, however, that she possesses characteristics of both millennials and Gen Zers. I grew assuming that one generation of parents produced the next generation. If, however, I am a baby boomer and Clare is a Gen Zer, my family leapfrogged two entire generations (Gen X and millennials). This is the kind of thing that confuses old baby boomers like me.
** Clare tests water quality, both drinking water and surface water, for Wisconsin’s Laboratory of Hygiene.
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