Week 5 - Andrew Wong

‘My mother not my mother’ told a story about an orphaned girl, who had been taken in by a wealthy family, who provided for her. She always wondered why her own mother did not want to take on a loving and maternal role, in her life. She was from Saigon and her birth was a product of an affair. Her life as a bastard child had always been the reason for why she had not been able to live with her mother. It was also the reasoning for why her mother had never been loving towards her. At the end, it is revealed that her ‘mother’s’ sister is actually her mother. This is somewhat common in Asian countries and in Asian relationships. I have a friend who is from the Philippians, that was adopted into an American family when her father’s health declined. She would find out after her adopted mother’s death that, that was her real mother. The woman had left her father to move away with a military man, and she felt bad. My friend’s father was the only one who knew the truth. He had told them that she had died. This speaks to a higher sense of shame that Asian cultures experience. This sentiment is not absent from the west, but it is not felt to the same degree.