from bound feet to transcending boundaries
Donna Wong

An allegorical representation of my life story is a hanging scroll, a painting   of a meandering river flowing through a picturesque Chinese landscape: tall, green, majestic, partially clouded mountains rise in the distance with only a narrow path along the river’s edge providing a hint of human presence.  

Look closely: a small person walks along that path. I am that figure. I can’t see the top of the mountains yet, but I am moving forward with hope and a sense of my place in nature. I meet many people, join hands at times, confront unanticipated obstacles along the way, and sometimes change direction. What matters most is that the journey continues, and I walk at my own pace with purpose, thankfulness, and a message for peace and equality.

The foundation for my journey are my family’s traditions and history: an odyssey across physical and cultural hemispheres, from China to California, during which my parents faced monumental challenges and sacrifices to enable their daughter to flourish. Of course, there were rocky stretches to overcome. Like many second-generation immigrants, I navigated between two distinct cultures, code-switching between the traditional Confucian values of home and the modern American societal norms of school and workplace.  

I made compromises and decisions that resulted in a period of distancing from my parents as I rejected Asian gender roles. Finding an independent path required (through an adolescent’s lenses) a defiance of gravity. I painfully wrestled with my conscience to shed the emotional and physical bondage of thousands of years of ancestral history.

My ancestors routinely subjected daughters at age five to the mandatory female rite of passage of severely compressing their feet with tightly wrapped cloth bindings. Only two generations ago, my mother’s mother had four-inch-long feet. Even so, she failed to achieve the three-inch cultural ideal of beauty. The painful deformity served a social function, a necessity for attracting a wealthy husband—and a lifetime of complete reliance on that husband for her every need.

By the time my mother was a young girl, foot binding was generally shunned, a reflection of the changing customs and less tightly scripted pathways for China’s females. My mother was unusual for the time in that her father allowed her to attend college to become a teacher. But once married, her education took a back seat. Thereafter, she abided the cultural code later passed down to me: men ran the world, and women served men.

My parents emigrated from Guangdong Province, China. I was born in Los Angeles Chinatown and raised in Hollywood in a Chinese-speaking household. Although my father learned English as a young man in ESL classes, my mother did not have that opportunity and to this day has very limited use of English. Nevertheless, my parents were successful and devoted, working six days a week at a labor-intensive family laundry—washing, pressing, and folding laundry to feed and clothe their children as well as build a better future for them.

My mother’s goals were fixed: obeying my father’s orders, cooking, cleaning, caring for me and my three siblings, and also working hand in hand with my father in the traditional Chinese laundry. She raised us in that laundry. The contrasts between my mother’s life and the possibilities I witnessed outside the laundry were the genesis of an eclectic value system.

Chinese culture places high value on education as an important step toward prosperity and stability. However, there was a gender-based hierarchy within my traditional Chinese family: the expectation that a woman’s place—my future—was tied to marriage, a marriage often arranged by the parents. I couldn’t openly disobey my parents while living at home. I realized the direction I eventually had to take included leaving home as soon as possible, but there were obstacles.

I wanted to go away to a private women’s college that admitted me; however, since I had no money, I went to UCLA on a state scholarship set for low-income students. My parents didn’t allow me to move onto campus, so I had to work and save my own money before I could pay for residency in a women’s cooperative house during my junior and senior years. Throughout college, I worked half time to support myself.  

I often felt lost, and my intellectual and social confidence was easily shaken. The first B with critical comments that I was given on an English literature paper discouraged and intimidated me, causing me to switch from an English major to something else. My practical parents pressured me to focus on a teaching career. Meanwhile, my best friend, a fine arts major, influenced me to try a drawing class, where I discovered a passion for creativity, colors, and examining light and shadows. What an unanticipated change of course.

At graduation, the U.S. Information Agency purchased a series of my etchings, enabling me to purchase a one-way ticket to Asia for study abroad. The decision led to a three-year trip, a means to further distance myself from my parents’ grip and to transcend the cultural boundaries of generations past.

Studying and traveling abroad, I grew independent, developing the self-confidence to cope with challenges. I made my own decisions and became a student of my own mistakes. In Taiwan and Japan, I taught English and studied art. I immersed myself in new cultures, learning other traditions, meeting Asian professional women, and experiencing Third World conditions. I returned home ready to self-direct my life. My parents accepted me and respected my choices in vocation and marriage.  

For the past two decades, I have dedicated my professional life to teaching and mentoring students of diverse backgrounds (often immigrant students) who face the complexities of race, culture, class, gender, and generational differences that I once faced. Walking the path I mentioned earlier, I stay committed and on course.  

I have found my strength through a cross-cultural balance of Confucian and American values: to help and advocate for others, promote education, and further a love and commitment for family and community. It has been a fulfilling journey along life’s path, and there is more to come.