This week I got to hang out with multiple people in their 60s and 70s.
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This week I got to hang out with multiple people in their 60s and 70s. Whenever I walk home I walk by a Vietnamese Chinese retaurant where the 80 year old former owners (their kids run it now, they sit there and drink tea all day) want me to come in and drink tea with them all the time.
I’ve always enjoyed speaking with people in those age groups, even when I was a kid. And out here, it stops me from forgetting how to speak the languages close to my heart.
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A demographic I never really got to meet until I got to the Bay Area: LGBTQ people and families in these age groups
Like, I now know SO MANY of them. Through some work in AAPI queer activism I also know many elderly queer women from my community (invisible to me back home).
It was important to me to be able to see this.
I now know what my future holds: bird watching, camping, fishing, activism. Well I’m already doing most of that. Just that I’ll be older, and honestly I can’t wait
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(Because I never got to imagine what being an old queer SE Asian women would look like! And now I like what I see!)
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Helen Chong :v_lesbian: :v_enby:replied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
That's wonderful to hear. Not going to lie, after realising I'm queer myself, one of my biggest wishes is to be able to actually meet and connect with old queer Malaysians and Southeast Asians.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Helen Chong :v_lesbian: :v_enby: last edited by
@helenclx hahah so many of them are here
I talk to a retired queer woman from Sarawak. She’s married to a Taiwanese woman and they have a daughter in college. 2 decades ago they published a little book where they got the parents of Chinese-speaking queer women here to write letters to them about what they thought about their queerness. Their parents were from China, HK, TW, SG, MY, VN etc. it was so great. It’s out of print but I hope to republish and translate.