The Book

The epiphany happened over dinner one balmy night in Miami. My partner John and I had been invited over to a friend’s house for a housewarming hotpot dinner. There were six of us altogether. Bo and Sam, who were from China, Hong and Joseph, who were from the Philippines, me (from Singapore) and John, who was the only American at the table. We were treated to an awesome Shanghai-style hotpot, with mountains of sliced beef, pork, chicken, and not to mention a ton of vegetables. There was also quite a lot of wine and cocktails on the table that night.

At some point during that dinner, the conversation turned to Bo’s parents who were coming to visit from China. Someone — I don’t remember who — asked him if his parents knew that he was gay. This wasn’t a surprising question, because all the men at this dinner were either bi or gay. All the Asians were my friends from a gay men’s group. Hong teased Bo, asking him if he would like us all to go to the airport, welcome his parents to the US and introduce them to all our gay friends. Unsurprisingly, Bo demurred, and flipped the question back to Hong – do your parents know that you’re gay?

“I think so,” was Hong’s reply, but he confessed he had never told them – he only thought that they would have guessed by now, because he had been single for so many years and never brought a girl home. There was a bit more good-natured ribbing, going around the table asking each other if we had come out to our families. Bo defended himself, saying that it was particularly hard for him to come out to his parents because they were Chinese. He turned to me and said, “You know what I mean right? Asian parents, enough said!”.
It was sometime after the dinner while we were driving home, that John turned to me in the car and remarked, “Did you realize something at dinner? There were five of you around that table, all gay Asian men living a long way from your families back home, and you were the only one who was out to your family!” And it was true. Strangely enough, even though all of my friends were highly accomplished in their own fields and were living comfortably gay lives in various degrees of openness in the US, some with boyfriends and even husbands, none of them had told their families that they were gay, or that they had male partners.

And so, we began to wonder, why is it that so few gay Asian men come out to their families? Is it because Asian culture and society are simply so conservative and family-oriented that it makes it nearly impossible to do so? Is it due to a fear of bringing deep shame on family and ancestors? Is it because Asian men simply don’t feel the desire to come out? Is it because they don’t know if, when or how to come out?

Most of our gay friends, both Asian and Western, tell us they wish they could come out, if they have not already done so. Wanting to live truthfully, honestly and authentically is a universal human desire. So maybe it really isn’t that Asian men don’t want to come out. Perhaps it’s that it’s simply hard to do so, because unlike in Western societies, our families tend not to talk about issues of the heart. We may not even know how to talk frankly about any aspect of our personal lives, much less about being gay or lesbian, because we don’t have the experience or even the words to do so.

This book is our attempt to change this.