Maxine Mei-Fung Chung: “I am my forebears and my ancestors”
The author on the longing for connection, intentionally seeking her culture and peripheral living
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to psychotherapist and author Maxine Mei-Fung Chung, who is of mixed Chinese and white British heritage. In her book, What Women Want: Conversations on Desire, Power, Love and Growth, Maxine shares an intimate examination of womanhood through sessions with her patients, from a bride-to-be struggling with her sexuality to a mother grappling with identity and belonging. I was excited to delve into how Maxine’s mixed heritage has influenced her perspective – read her story below.
How do you define your identity?
My mother was white working class and my father was Chinese. He was from Hong Kong, so Cantonese. I never stick to one thing when describing myself – I say I am my forebears and my ancestors, and I’m mixed-race. Sometimes I say that I am part of the family of my ghosts, so it depends who I’m talking to. That’s not morphing or moulding to the other person, but whether I feel I'm going to be understood.
I would say I’m mixed-heritage, British-born Chinese, but also Anglo Asian. It feels a lot to put in one sentence. I’m also very much part of my forebears. I always have in mind my lineage when I'm talking about race and identities. The reclamation of the ancestors helps us feel less alone in many ways.
Has the way you’ve connected with your culture over time changed?
I was raised alongside my two older brothers by a single mum, I thought a lot about her birthing racial difference. What did she see in me as a brown girl with her being white? I imagine that must have been quite difficult. I've had to go on the hunt for my Chinese heritage because we were the only Brown family on a white working class council estate. I've had to really have intention behind my search for my Asian heritage and try to connect with communities.
I’m always looking for East Asian inlets, whether in literature or therapy or whatever. You feel somewhat regressed sometimes, you're that young Brown Girl again trying to access, and you can be self conscious, not wanting to appear weird. It highlights our real longing for connection. We’re vulnerable with those primal wounds with our birth heritage.
How did you intentionally search for your Chinese identity?
My name is Mei Fung, which means beautiful bird, and the bird is the phoenix rising. That name was whipped away from me when I went to school and I was called Maxine. My mother thought it would be a better fit and I understand her reasoning, but I’ve always preferred Mei Fung. The name is more intimate for me, it’s almost like speaking in a mother tongue.
I had these mixed messages – my mother wanted me to keep my head down and not be too visible, while my father was stuffing my lunchbox with Asian delights and saying quite the opposite. It’s difficult to navigate, as a little girl you want to please both. So food was my earliest memory and way into culture. Since then it’s been through art, clothing, history, books, reading… It's been an ongoing journey, a beautiful one that I feel very safe in and nourished by.
I’ve passed cooking down to my son, trying to hold onto that together. Food is universal, a coming together.
How do the conversations you’re having with your son differ from those you had, or didn’t have, with your parents?
I think it was very difficult for my mum because we didn't have any East Asian families around us. My father left when I was nine, and I don’t think my mum knew what to do. There wasn’t much existing culture for my mum to integrate with. The way she spoke to me was very white, very English and very British. There was also a lot of racism aimed at me within my mother’s family, like calling me “the funny looking Chinese girl” and saying “she’s different to us.”
Now, my son and I talk about it a lot. He's an artist, integrating all these mixed identities of pronoun, race and sexuality into his art, so it's a constant conversation. It’s a freedom that I didn’t experience myself as a child, but I get some healing with it now.
Do you think being mixed makes you more compassionate? It must be key as a therapist.
I think because we stand in multiple places, we have to work quite hard. I get a little bit bristly when people say ‘you're so lucky,’ it’s pure graft. I think we're compassionate because we know that peripheral living – we always arrive anywhere on the outside looking in. It could go the other way where we could become very defensive if we didn’t check in with ourselves, but I think it comes from a deep longing for more connection.
How do you want the conversation around mixedness to move on?
I love the notion of educators, but I don't like the notion of explainers. Maybe we need a collaboration, a dialogue. As Asian women, we can fall into several categories; we’re servient, quiet and meek, home folding underpants into origami swans. When we buck those stereotypes, we mess with people’s heads.
The more we keep talking about borders and peripheral living, looking at the expanding circles of ourselves and where they overlap… I just love the idea of more conversations and openness. We need to knock on doors and not build too many walls.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
That I'm the daughter to my mother and father. It's the honouring of my forebears. It’s quite simple. The difficult part is the noise, which is when we are awake to our border living. I've likened it to fireworks: I love the colour, the communal gatherings, the awakeness, the noise not so much.
Can you sum up your mixed identity in one word?
Spirited. It encompasses and embodies the experience of a life lived, but also a lived and living experience of others.
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.
Love this reflection: “. I think we're compassionate because we know that peripheral living – we always arrive anywhere on the outside looking in. It could go the other way where we could become very defensive if we didn’t check in with ourselves, but I think it comes from a deep longing for more connection.”
I have gone both ways… but I think my mixed-ness makes me more available to look at people and situations with more openness and curiosity and empathy.
Interesting to read. Something for me to bear in mind to keep the conversation open with my mixed-race children!