Anita Rao 00:00
"So, where are you from?"
It seems like a harmless question, but for as long as I can remember it is one that has spiked my anxiety. Depending on my energy level and whether I think I'll ever see that person again, my answer spans from 10 seconds to a couple of minutes.
The 10 second version is my parents are immigrants and I was raised in the Midwest. The minutes long version takes you from my birthplace in the Northeast of England, to my home for the first two and a half years of my life in Hyderabad, India, back to England, and then to Iowa City, Iowa, where I lived from the ages three to 18.
The addendum to that minutes long version is that my parents don't live in Iowa anymore and I rarely go back. So now I don't even know if I should call the Midwest home.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao.
There are many people who can relate to the identity crisis brought on by the question, "Where are you from?" Some of them are multicultural kids like me. Others are refugees or first and second-generation immigrants. A nd then there's one particular group who is always thinking about this question: Third Culture Kids.
Aria Spears 01:19
My name is Aria Spears. One TCK superpower would be regular experience and familiarity with the stages of transition. When you arrive somewhere new, you know what to expect of your internal world and can ride it out when other people might not understand what's happening.
Dani Osorio 01:37
I think something pretty unique about the Third Culture Kid experience, is that it starts off really lonely and then it becomes really, really full.
Ryan Alexander Holmes 01:49
I had someone tell me that they didn't want to have kids who were Third Culture or mixed because they felt like all their life would just be suffering. And that's not the case with my life. We live very fruitful lives. We're constantly discovering rediscovering ourselves, and uncovering and evolving. And once again, when you share that with the world, it brings people together, it makes people understand each other. And it shows people what empathy through culture really means.
Ruth Van Reken 02:23
When I look at the world and I see that we're living in a social experiment that's never been done before in this way, where there's so much cultural mixing and matching. I feel like the Third Culture experience was really a prototype for what was going to become normal one day. So I hope that one of the positives from the Third Culture Kid experience and as many more are experiencing that now is that we would share how we learn to be who we are, despite the many places that we've grown up, and the experiences we've had.
Anita Rao 03:01
The term Third Culture Kid was coined in the 1950s by sociologist Dr. Ruth Hill Useem. It describes people who spend a significant number of their developmental years living in places that are not their parents homelands. These kids synthesize aspects of their parents cultures and the places where they grow up into a third culture.
Since the 1950s, more people have been owning and exploring this identity, including another sociologist named Ruth Van Reken. You actually just heard her voice at the end of that montage. In 1999, Ruth co-wrote what has become the most well-known book about the TCK experience. It's called Third Culture Kids. It offers some practical advice for parents and counselors, and gives a voice to this highly globalized young generation.
Rayla Heide 03:49
I first heard about the term Third Culture Kid, I think it was at an assembly in middle school. It was kind of the first time that I had heard this term that kind of encapsulated my experience as as a kid that grew up moving around all over and who had a fairly complicated idea of where my cultural identity came from.
Anita Rao 04:09
That's Rayla Heide. She's a 35 year old narrative video game designer living in Los Angeles. And the story of her upbringing is definitely of the three-minute-long variety. She was born in Indiana, and by her 18th birthday had lived in Taiwan, Belgium, and Hong Kong. All of this moving around was due to her parents' love for international exploration, and her mom's career as a teacher and leader in international schools. I got the joy of talking to both Rayla and her mom together. And as it turns out, Rayla's mom, Madeleine Maceda Heide also identifies as a Third Culture Kid.
Madeleine Maceda Heide 04:47
I grew up in the Philippines and I was in a biracial home in Manila. My father is Filipino, my mother was Canadian. And we were very grounded in being Filipino but I always knew that I was not only Filipino because I was also part Canadian ... but also because my father was a very world renowned ethnomusicologist we had lots of visitors from all around the world who frequented our home. And I think that, of course, because I grew up with that, that's something that was so familiar to me and it was a good thing and I felt like that's what I wanted for my family. My daughter, when you know, after I had her, I just felt like that was really something that we we wanted. And it happened to be that I married somebody who was also interested in the world. And so we began our married life in Taiwan.
Anita Rao 05:34
So Rayla you lived in Brussels in Belgium from ages six to 12, then you moved to Hong Kong for ages 12 to 18 and you went to international schools in both of these countries. And these are spaces where kids are kind of coming in and out. They're also in a lot of transition. So what was it like for you to build and maintain friendships going to that kind of school?
Rayla Heide 05:54
That was one of the most challenging parts, I think the nature of the TCK life and international school kid life is that your friendships are always transient, they won't last the, you know, traditional, quote unquote, K to 12 experience, it's very likely that you'll make a friend and then they might even leave the next year.
So my childhood life was full of really great friendships that would then like abruptly end with no ... sometimes very little notice ... or like, you know, as kids we had no control over that. I also grew up in a time when email was starting to become a thing. So I remember, I had some friends that I stayed pen pals with over the years, and some friends that are still very dear and close to me, even now in my adult life. And so it's been really great to be able to maintain those friendships over time.
Anita Rao 06:46
What was it like for you, Madeline, as a mom to see Rayla going through these transitions and having to make new friends and then lose friends. That's, you know, friends are kind of the center of your world as a kid. So I'm curious what that was like for you and how you supported her through that?
Madeleine Maceda Heide 07:01
Well because I was a leader in an international school, that was our world. Rayla wasn't the only one going through that. And it was my job to really support so many families, as well as our own faculty who were living that experience. But in terms of Rayla in particular, I think it was very important that our home was an important place for us, that it was a homey place and that, you know, what we believed was important for our home was very prominent. So we had photographs of our members of our family always present so that we wouldn't forget who they were. And we talked a lot about our own cultural own upbringing. And it was part of what we did with Rayla so that that would be part of what she experienced as well.
Anita Rao 07:01
So you mentioned this physical home. And I want to talk to you both more about that, because I've heard from so many different Third Culture Kids that they say home is not necessarily a place, but rather the people who you surround yourself with. But it seems like Madeline put a lot of intention into setting up the physical space. So Rayla, what was your concept of home? Was it a physical place, was it the people you were around?
Rayla Heide 08:09
It was the combination. So I'm an only child, it was just me, my mom, and my dad. And we would kind of maintain our home wherever we were, and start over if we had to when we moved. And, you know, we kind of described ourselves as like turtles with carrying all of our stuff, all of our possessions on our back, because we never had like a home base. So we were constantly carrying everything that we had with us, and then re-setting up shop wherever we landed to create that home feeling.
And I think my mom and dad did a really good job of having that consistency, those traditions, you know, those like, key furniture items, like I remember, I had that brown chair that I think we inherited from Grandma, I think we kept that like my whole life. So they're kind of those those core possessions that make a house feel like the home that you grew up in, even if it's not the physical walls, it's the people and the stuff inside.
Anita Rao 09:08
Were there any moments of tension in any of those moving points? Both when you were, I guess, your three and then six, and then 12, that you remember like not wanting to move or feeling a particular way around moving? And maybe Madeline I'll put that to you. Do you remember any of those conversations with Rayla?
Madeleine Maceda Heide 09:27
Yeah, I remember one, you know, kind of hilarious story. We were living in Belgium at the time. And then we were considering a position in Hong Kong. And we had talked with Rayla beforehand and said, you know, we're going to Hong Kong, you know, we're going to be moving back to Asia, and it's going to be so cool. If it happens, and what do you think and she was all for it. So we came back from the interview and we said well guess what? I got the job and we're going to be moving to Hong Kong. And she said nope, I changed my mind. We're not going to move there anymore. And so we began to realize that you know she needed support in making that transition, especially because she would be entering middle school, that's a really hard time for a kid to move. So we had to, you know, go through that process of supporting her transition.
Anita Rao 10:11
What did that support look like Rayla? And do you remember feeling supportive?
Rayla Heide 10:16
Yeah, I do. I remember having a lot of conversations on what Hong Kong would be like when we were still in Belgium. Like, I think my parents bought a bunch of travel guides and like books to Hong Kong with photos, and they would show me like, here are all the cool things you can do in Hong Kong. Here's what the school looks like. And I remember my parents and I would have a lot of conversations about our life in Belgium. And so we kept those memories fresh. And a year later, we actually went back and visited Belgium and that helped a lot with my closure and being able to say hi and bye to my friends one more time as well.
Anita Rao 10:49
As globalization continues, the number of Third Culture Kids is growing at an exponential rate. It's hard to track exact numbers, but estimates are in the hundreds of millions. An online survey of about 200 Third Culture Kids concluded that a typical TCK will move at least four times in their life. A lot of them grow up going to international schools where other students understand their experience. So when they leave those environments, it can be a bit of a culture shock.
Rayla Heide 11:30
I would say the biggest moment when I realized how abnormal my life was, was when I went to college. So I went to college in the US, in Boston, Massachusetts. And I chose my college, in part, because it was so international, had a big international school population. But when I went there for the first time, I realized that I can just blend in. I'm kind of even though I'm mixed race, I'm white passing and people don't always know from looking at me that I'm Filipino, that I grew up all over.
Anita Rao 12:05
Did your experience having such transient friendships and like making strong bonds and then having those bonds shift, inform how you approached romantic relationships once you were in high school or even in college?
Rayla Heide 12:18
I think for me, it was a little bit different in that I was in a relationship with another Third Culture Kid that whole time. So I kind of looked for continuity in one area of my life where I didn't have it anywhere else. So I became in a relationship when I was in, I think it was junior year of high school, and I'm still in that same relationship. So despite all of those changes in our life, we've stayed together through all of that. And so that was, you know, in addition to my family is kind of one of the one of the things that stayed the same around my life.
Anita Rao 12:55
So Rayla, you went to college in the US now you are living in Los Angeles, you have been working in video game design and narrative design, and you are very well known for creating the League of Legends character Yuumi, the magical cat. And I am not a gamer but my brother's a gamer, and he told me this is a really big deal. And this character, a lot of people have big feelings about this character. As you're developing characters and thinking about what it means to have a backstory and what it means to have an identity, how does your experience as a Third Culture Kid inform how you approach the process of creating characters like Yuumi or other ones?
Rayla Heide 13:34
I would say, as a writer, I'm constantly trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who is not me. That's a big part of my work. And I think that being a Third Culture Kid helps me tremendously with that because I was surrounded by people from a really young age, from different cultures, from different backgrounds who had really different worldviews than me. And I think that was something that I learned growing up as a TCK is how to how to relate to people from different worldviews, and empathize with what they're going through. So I think that's something that really helps me as a narrative designer and as a writer, as I as I devise characters, whether they're from an imaginary world or the real world, it's really helpful to be able to imagine yourself in those those character's shoes or paws as it were.
Anita Rao 14:30
Yeah, Madeline, I'm curious if you've played any of Rayla's games, and if you see her in those games?
Madeleine Maceda Heide 14:38
I've tried to play a few times and actually I do have a commitment to try more. But I have to say the first time I tried, I was I think I was killed like within the first three seconds. So I was kind of ... but what I was I was going to add to this topic because I think the other thing that being a TCK and being somebody who's lived in different parts of the world, the quality that that brings out is the ability to be flexible, and to manage, change, or to be prepared for things to be different, a little bit more easily than perhaps somebody who's always been everything being consistent in their lives. So I think there's, there's some kind of ability there or skill in terms of managing the things that things will be different and it's okay for them to be different, and that you can handle it.
Anita Rao 15:38
How does your experience growing up like this inform how you think about your own future, whether you want a family or just in your own partnership, what you want that to look like?
Rayla Heide 15:48
I think that I still seek that novelty in life, that's something that I don't think I'll ever be able to get rid of as much as I feel the sadness of moving and leaving a place. I also love the excitement of getting to discover a new city, discover a new place and all the people in it. There's something that makes you feel alive when you do that. And so I always want to feel free and feel that curiosity of of discovery that happens when you get to lean into life's many changes.
Judy Lee 16:41
Hi, my name is Judy and I am a Third Culture Kid. The one thing I wish people would understand about being a Third Culture Kid is that a lot of the times we don't really necessarily want to be seen as different or unique. Even though I'm very thankful for my experience, I can be also kind of jealous of someone who has grown up in only one place and has roots and has people that they've known their whole lives. There will definitely be times when we really feel like we're being two people or have two identities and we don't really know which one is us. But maybe maybe we can be both.
Aria Spears 17:18
I wish more people recognized the grief involved in the TCK lifestyle. Often TCKs can't even name it themselves. Moving around so much as constant loss.
Kyle Leung 17:31
As a Third Culture Kid, hope that people can understand you don't have to pick and choose. And you shouldn't because I think Third Culture Kid, you are everything that you're exposed to and that's what makes it great.
Maria Garcia 17:47
There's something very valuable to be learned when we're taken out of our comfort zones and faced with many different realities and perspectives of life. Of course, all of this change brings a lot of loss and instability too. But the struggles of not being rooted per se to any one place works as a catalyst to our growth and to our connection with the world.
Anita Rao 18:12
All of the moves that each of those Third Culture Kids just talked about, required their families to uproot and repot in new environments. And when you're in the midst of all that transition, it can be hard to stop and reflect. Even one of the most famous Third Culture Kids, Barack Obama, says that he struggled to make sense of his identity as a teenager. In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, he talked about how often he pushed questions of identity out of his mind. There is one 12 year old, however, who dove right into it.
Kaden Tran 18:52
For some reason, I was always so attached to that American Dream, oh Hollywood, this and that, and always fantasized about it.
Anita Rao 19:01
That's Kaden Tran. He's a middle schooler and Third Culture Kid who is coming to terms with the whole American Dream versus reality thing in this very moment. He and his mom, Phuong, moved from Bangkok, Thailand to Carrboro, North Carolina in 2021, mid-pandemic. All of this was a huge change for Kaden because he'd spent the entirety of his life until that point overseas. He was in Vietnam for a year, but mostly in Thailand. And since coming here, he has been grappling with a struggle common to all Third Culture Kids, making friends in a new place.
Kaden Tran 19:35
I was always stressing about what they would think. I was just scared that they wouldn't become friends with me because I was a little different from them. And I would always ask questions to them, like, what do you think of, you know, people that weren't born in the US? And they don't really have an opinion because they've never really thought about it. They've just stayed in one place.
Anita Rao 20:00
Do you feel like there's a certain place that feels like home to you in this moment?
Kaden Tran 20:05
Probably Thailand. I feel like I didn't really care that much when I lived there. But when I moved to the US, I feel like I just didn't appreciate it enough. And I had just so much friends there that, you know, would do anything for me and I would do anything for them too.
Anita Rao 20:26
Those relationships are really strong there.
Kaden Tran 20:28
Yeah, it became stronger.
Anita Rao 20:30
For you as a mom, Phuong, what has it been like to watch this transition for Kaden in friendships? That's something that a lot of Third Culture Kids go through of like making and remaking friends as you transition environments.
Phuong Tran 20:44
I think we also came in at a hard time, you know, we came in where social alliances had shifted, kids had been out of school for the year. Everything ... everyone was awkward, period. When I move in, normally I would open up my backyard, put a picnic table, and invite neighbors over. But we left quietly under the cover of night in Bangkok and we came the same way to Carrboro. So given that context, I tried to do social engineering, signing him up for BMX, biking, improv acting classes, sports, trying to make friends with other parents so that he could have access to their kids, because a lot of our relationships, kids relationships are from community bonds, church, family, neighborhood, and I didn't, I don't have roots here. I have my older sister and my nephews. They're a little bit older than Kaden. So it's hard because I'm going through the same. And all parents swallow what we go through in order to help our kids manage to some extent.
Anita Rao 21:52
So this has been a big transition for the two of you. It's happened quickly, it happened in the middle of a pandemic. I would love to know if you have any questions you want to ask one another about, about this process and about how this has been going. Phuong, maybe I'll start with you. If you've a question for Kaden.
Phuong Tran 22:09
I'd love for us to kind of rewind, go back to lockdown in Bangkok. What made you want so badly to come to America then? Do you remember?
Kaden Tran 22:21
I feel like I always made the excuse of family. But for some reason, I was always so attached to that American Dream. And everything I would watch on YouTube was based in America. And while in school, I thought it was a flex to be American. So I told everyone that, you know, I'm American, not knowing that my mom's Asian to be honest. So I always just was an American fanboy, something a Third Culture Kid could dream of.
Anita Rao 22:55
But the reality hasn't quite met up to your expectations.
Kaden Tran 22:58
No, not that much. And it's just kind of like the friend part too. I didn't think that through.
Anita Rao 23:06
Do you have any questions for your mom?
Kaden Tran 23:08
What is it like raising a kid outside of the US?
Phuong Tran 23:13
Well, I've never raised a kid in the US so I don't have anything to compare it with. It was, it was fun. You know, we had such a big village, Jojo, Mati. Jojo is his godmother slash disciplinarian co-parent since birth. We had helpers, we had neighbors. And coming back here, I realized what an elitist commodity time is. Because there, we just had more support, even though I have my my sister here, but everyone's busy.
Kaden Tran 23:51
Yeah. My next question is, what are the pros and cons of moving back to the US?
Phuong Tran 24:00
If we're talking losses, I would say that I've I've lost my zen a little bit. I've lost my mojo, my my temper more. I'll be honest, both of us have lost access to the world that we've built over the last decade. Gains. It's been more than 30 years since I've lived in the same city as ye tau, your aunt. So it's been nice to be there for each other in this season of our life. We've gained a lot, you know, blueberries, trails, clean air, to be in a country that doesn't have lèse-majesté laws, which is what Thailand is, you know, we can't speak critically of the monarchy, or else risk, you know, detention.
We've gained other things like I started dating when we moved back, and that's not anything I did in Thailand because you were so young. I never felt it was home. I was transient. And I met someone really great, which wouldn't have happened had we stayed in, in Thailand. So, on the balance, we've had losses, as you said, and we've also, we've also gained,
Anita Rao 25:14
Do you have advice at this point for other kids who are in the midst of a transition similar to yours?
Kaden Tran 25:23
Well, just try to adapt the best you can and give it all you got trying to make friends because I don't like being lonely. I'd rather hang out with people I don't like really, not bad influence ... but I'd just rather do that than being lonely.
Anita Rao 25:42
Yeah. What are your hopes Phuong for this next phase as you all get more adjusted into your life in Carrboro? How do you imagine this next chapter of your lives in this international journey that you all are on?
Phuong Tran 25:58
I'm like a bird mid-flight. I just finished a contract in Southeast Asia in July. And I'm considering next steps. So the next part of that project will gear up in a year in Bangkok again. So the opportunities I'm looking at are international as well as here. So you can imagine what he's lobbying for.
Anita Rao 26:20
I have an idea.
Phuong Tran 26:21
No secrets around this table. He hasn't been muted or subtle about what he's hoping for. I would hope that I lean into gratitude and to find a semblance of home and connection and great conversation. The other day Kaden had cross country and he came in super excited because he'd had a great 40 minute conversation because they walked versus ran. And those are what I hope for both of us, that we just string together these conversations and until it becomes a story and then a chapter. Because otherwise, it is hard.
Anita Rao 27:04
I'd love to end talking about your relationship with each other. How do you feel like this move has affected your relationship with your mom.
Kaden Tran 27:13
My mom complained about it like a lot for the first year. And I always told her to be positive. And sometimes I still do, but sometimes I also do get her, I get where we're coming from. And I just feel like me and my mom just try to make it together. Now a little bit of different situations. She's not in school too. But you know, she needs a social life too. So I try to be understanding about it.
Anita Rao 27:48
How about for you Phuong?
Phuong Tran 27:51
As with intimacy, I think it's it hasn't been a linear path, there's been jagged edges. And this is my first time parenting in the US. It's my first time single parenting in the US, which is a whole different ballgame than probably single parenting where we were coming from. So he's been amazingly patient and filled with grace in a way that I don't understand. It didn't come from my side. This is, you know, somewhere else in the genetic pool. And I'm grateful, I'm grateful for how thoughtful this experience has made both of us, especially him.
And in the really, really hard moments, I just wanted to remember that I was modeling for him that we left our comfort zone and we found joy on both sides. It isn't always joyful on this side. But I hope that at some point, when he comes up against another time where he will say oh, you know, do I do it? Do I not? That he can remember that we did it. We left in the middle of a lockdown. We flew into a place that had just come out of lockdown where schools had just opened. So that's some comfort that hopefully that that can be a reference point for the next time. When you wonder, can I move out of my comfort zone? And maybe you would remember ... yeah, we've done it, we do hard things.
Anita Rao 29:45
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC, a listener supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. You can find more about all of the guests we talked to today in the show notes of this episode and I want to give a special thanks to other people who contributed to today's show: Maria Garcia, Judy Lee, Ryan Alexander Holmes, Dani Osorio, Aria Spears, Kyle Leung, and Ruth Van Reken.
This episode is produced by Paige Miranda and edited by Amanda Magnus. Kaia Findlay and Gabriela Glueck also produce for our show. Skylar Chadwick is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our sound engineer. Quila wrote our theme music.
Thank you so much for listening to Embodied and if you want to support this show, the best way to do it is to spread the word in your own networks. Text this episode to a friend or family member who you think would love it or post about an episode you love on social media. We so appreciate all of your support of this show.
Until next time, I'm Anita Rao, taking on the taboo with you.