my ugly blue bag & the deeper, familial messages it conveys
when insults convey love: navigating the sometimes awkward, roundabout love languages between family members & the difficult thing in immigrant children called identity
"Your bag is so ugly." As I video called my boisterous aunt over WeChat, this phrase was repeated three or four times consecutively. After I pressed the bright red icon that ended our clunky, awkward call, I immediately felt tears start to build up around the bottom of my eyelids. If I ended the story here, I’d be doing my aunt injustice - because out of context, it truly does sound terrible. But the story thankfully doesn’t end here (and spoiler alert, it’s a feel-good sappy one). “Your bag is so, incredibly ugly,” she repeats again for the fifth time. As she said those words, though I…
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