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About the Book

How To Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps: A Modern Asian American Guide is a prescriptive memoir designed to offer a bridge between isolation and asking for help for two key audiences:

  1. The primary audience is Asian American adults who have also “failed,” those seeking reassurance that their failures are not failures, that their lives have not gone to waste;

  2. The secondary audience is young Asian Americans who’ve barely scratched the surface of the freedom available to them outside societal and cultural expectations; they intuitively know it’s there and they’re looking for the confidence to consciously cultivate it.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, suicide was the leading cause of death in 2019 for Asian/Pacific Islanders ages 15-24.

Geoffrey Liu, M.D. explained the stigma in the Asian American community: “Mental illness is seen–and I should emphasize, incorrectly–as taking away a person’s ability to care for others. For that reason, it’s seen as taking away someone’s identity or purpose. It’s the ultimate form of shame.”

As one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States, Asian Americans are experiencing an increasing gap in mental and emotional support resources that speak specifically to us.

The concept of duality is something frequently explored in therapy, and How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps creates “both/and” conversations, where the audience can hold two often opposing realities without feeling the need to choose a binary construct. Instead, this book can alleviate tension by embracing all of what makes us who we are.

It’s time to maximize the collective momentum toward visibility.

As psychotherapist and Red Cross trauma instructor KJ Nasrul relayed in my F*ck Saving Face podcast, the first step towards healing begins with a feeling of validation that what we have gone through is real.

“Being seen enables individuals to feel validation and relief, knowing that our experiences are real, that through the telling of our experiences, we are heard.”