Family Notes

Family Notes is a conversation toolkit to help facilitate intergenerational, multilingual conversations between loved ones. Rather than focus on genealogy and the concretizing of capital ‘H’ History, Family Notes welcomes the complexity of language and storytelling: non-linear, mythical-folkloric, creative, iterative, and collaborative. Family Notes Toolkit will include a 1) field notes style booklet, 2) an accompanying website for resources, and 3) ideas and examples of creative projects sparked by the conversations.

Stay Connected

While writing and researching Family Notes, I will share resources, working chapters, and media here under posts tagged FamilyNotes and on this page.

We are excited to hear from you and collaborate with you! Email your ideas and suggestions to: misreadingart@gmail.com or sign up to be informed of updates here.

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Working Chapters

Preface: Who am I? Generous Not-Knowing as My Underlying Life Philosophy

Who am I?

Historian

As a historian of Southeast Asia, I confront the limitations of my own knowledge all the time. I have learned that there is infinite amount of perspectives, directions, and narratives to understand any historical event, person, phenomena. As a result, I come from a place of generous not-knowing–I will not always have all the pieces of information to completely understand anything 100%. In the process of learning and gathering perspectives, I remind myself that my understanding is tentative and can be open to revision. This knowledge framework is hard because it invites complex, changing explanations rather than simple ones. I call it generous because I must be reminded to be humble in my tentative states of knowing (in other words, recognizing that I might be wrong), and that in fact, I’m just learning. We’re all still learning.

Language Learner

Language learning is the ultimate practice of humility. There is just so much out there to learn about a language! Besides the endless vocabulary, grammatical structures, and linguistic derivations of words, cultural context and personal meaning will depend on each individual. I love thinking and learning about language because it provides me a lens to understand and connect with someone. Language learning is both piecemeal (new vocabulary) but also super additive (using words to unlock new meanings of the world and relationships with others). I’m also not “good with languages” (whatever that means). I’m shy, hesitant, and self-critical when it comes to speaking different languages. It’s in those moments of pause and difficulty that I grow and learn the most. Words empower me and unlock new ways of thinking, feeling, and connecting with others.

Artist

For me, making art is playful expression. Regardless if you decide to share it or not, the process of making art can be liberating–to spend time with difficult emotions, to uncover new perspectives, and to celebrate joys and sorrows. Art making is a surrender to feeling before thinking, a meditative practice of making explicable the inexplicable.

An Honest Conversation with Yourself

• Why? Why do you want to speak with your loved ones? Is there a specific topic that you would like to address?
• What is your greatest barrier to having conversations with loved ones?
• What would an ideal conversation look like?

Questions Framework

• Fact questions: Oral histories and “What?” (When/Where were you born? What happened? What did you do?)
• Vulnerability questions: Nuance, reflections, and “How?” (How did ____ make you feel?)
• Realization questions: Understanding, meaning-making, and “Why?” (Why was that important? How did it shape you? Crafting a narrative)

Permission to Change

• Past values, now values, future values (What are my underlying values? What are my loved one’s underlying values? How have they changed over time? What do you want your values to be in the future?)

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Beginning Conversations and the Act of Listening

• Resource: Conversation Starters and Questions with Loved Ones (focused on bilingual Vietnamese American Diaspora) from Story Corps
  • Example: My interview with Story Corps First Days in America Project: “Thank you mom, you are my role model.” (2015)
• >>> Assignment: Active listen without judgment, shame, or guilt
  • Resource: How to listen without judgment “As Brené Brown mentions, “What’s clear is kind, what’s unclear is unkind.” And, often, asking the other person how they want to be supported, can give us a clear pathway towards our next steps. Don’t assume: ask“

Language – Multilingualism, Translation, and Speaking across Generations and Cultures

• Reflection Essay: “The Slow Undoing of Velcro Shoes” (2017) on growing up bilingual, misunderstandings, and the weight of cross-cultural communication
• >>> Assignment: With a loved one, collaboratively develop a list of meaningful phrases and translate them together
  • Example: My essay on the power of language to make explicable and communicable difficulty, mental health, and how to ask for support (Vietnamese and Korean) (2018)
  • Use this resource Creative and Simple Translations Writing Assignment (from Creative Every Day Book (2017)) (See below)

• >>> Assignment: Take the Love Language test with a loved one and discuss the different ways in which you communicate, share, and understand love.

Difficult Conversations – Trauma & Loss

• >>> Assignment: Write a gratitude letter.
  • Recall someone who has brought joy and care to your life. Or think about someone who taught you a difficult, but meaningful lesson. Decide for yourself if you would like to send this letter or not. (I have also done this assignment to mourn the loss of my grandfather. Specifically, I wrote out a few questions I wish I could have asked him about life and love.)
• >>> Assignment: After a difficult conversation, create a Words v. Feelings Chart.
  • On the left side, record what the other person said. On the right side, reflect on how those words made you feel. Afterwards, consider if there were other underlying intentions or meanings behind what was said. Decide for yourself if you would like to share realizations from this reflection with the other person.
• Resource: Intergenerational Trauma Reading List (in progress)

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1. Creative Translation

• >>> Assignment: Make a creative film with a loved one on the topic of translated phrases/words which are meaningful to both of you.
  • Example: “The Undeniable Force of Khó Khăn” Film (2018)

2. Poetic Storytelling

• >>> Assignment: Draw from the five senses (touch, smell, sight, sound, taste) and write a poem about your loved one.
  • Example: My bilingual poem “Inhale the Air of Tiger Balm/Hít vào không khí dầu con hổ” (2017)
• >>> Assignment: Re-authoring difficult events in your past (Choose from the variations below, or try all of them):
  1. Write a first person, present tense short story about a difficult event in your past.
     • Example: My short story about my father “Ba / Father 23:03”
  2. Write a third person, present tense short story of an event which concerns a loved one.
  3. Write a first person, present tense short story from the perspective of your loved one.
     • Example: My poem about my mother “XE LỬA/ TRAIN“

3. Historical Narrative

• >>> Assignment: Converse with a loved one about a momentous event and attempt to piece together a narrative.
  • Example: My oral history essay “Imagining ‘America’: My Mother’s Refugee Journey to America” (2009)

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Mental Health, Asian American Community Support

• Open in Emergency: A Mental Health Project: anti-racist, disability justice rethinking of mental health and an arts-based self-care package (includes Asian American tarot cards, a mocked “hacked” DSM: Asian American Edition, a communal tapestry, a “treated”postpartum depression pamphlet (free digital copy), a stack of daughter-to-mother letters
• If-Me.org: Community for mental health support. See extensive list of curated mental health resources and culturally attuned blog on mental health
• My essay on the power of language to make explicable and communicable difficulty, mental health, and how to ask for support (Vietnamese and Korean) (2018)
• Mental Health Resources – Compiled by

• Open in Emergency: A Mental Health Project: anti-racist, disability justice rethinking of mental health and an arts-based self-care package (includes Asian American tarot cards, a mocked “hacked” DSM: Asian American Edition, a communal tapestry, a “treated”postpartum depression pamphlet (free digital copy), a stack of daughter-to-mother letters
• If-Me.org: Community for mental health support. See extensive list of curated mental health resources and culturally attuned blog on mental health
• My essay on the power of language to make explicable and communicable difficulty, mental health, and how to ask for support (Vietnamese and Korean) (2018)
• Mental Health Resources – Compiled by Dr. Lei Wang (Graduate Psychology, Chatham University)
  • Asian Mental Health Collective: https://www.asianmhc.org/ 
  • Healing Asian Communities Therapist-Led Circles: https://circles.modernhealth.com/series/healing-asian-communities 
  • Clinicians of Color: https://www.cliniciansofcolor.org/ 
  • National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network: https://www.nqttcn.com/

Additional Conversation Starters

• The Conversation Project Starter Kits (Focus on end of life care, discussions with health care providers, loved ones with Alzheimer’s or dementia)