I’m not a girl. I’m non-binary. But I take on a female role in my family of origin and I wrote this article about something that I see impacting Asian girls and women as well as those who are read as Asian girls or women.

Back in 2015, I got a divorce. I was living with an ex-partner who kept stealing from me. I couldn’t keep cash in my wallet because it would disappear every night after I fell asleep. My clothes would disappear whenever they needed some cash. They would take it to Buffalo Exchange for some fast money. This shit drove me crazy. They never fessed up to the stealing so I felt like my stuff was just going missing again and again without explanation.

When your stuff goes missing, you lose your coordination. The shirt you wanted to wear? Not where you left it. You were so sure you put it there in the bottom drawer. It’s just gone. Nowhere to be found.

The final straw was when they stole my ID. They stole my driver’s license for some reason. Maybe they sold it to some college student who wanted to use it to get into bars. Whatever the reason, that was the last straw. I have an immigrant’s mentality around these things. You don’t touch people’s legal documentation.

I got out of that relationship and moved to a tiny little hundred foot room with no windows. I had nowhere to put my stuff.

Throughout my twenties, I probably moved ten or so times. That’s just life with high rent increases and volatile work situations. I asked my parents for help once—just that one time when I was moving amidst a divorce. Why did I ask them for help? I didn’t really need it. I could have put some stuff into storage. Anyway, I did. I asked my parents to hold onto a few boxes of my stuff because I wanted to see them. They agreed and I leaned on them.

I have no memories of my early twenties because of that relationship. Years passed by and I didn’t really want to go through the boxes because I didn’t know what I would find.

Recently, I got my driver’s license again. I redeemed the identification that my ex stole from me. Suddenly, I felt ready to confront the stuff again. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that my dad had already donated or thrown out everything except for one box that he didn’t see.


So, this is not unique to me, right? I’m not the first person whose stuff gets thrown out without them knowing. This happens.

It happened to my cousin whose dad (my uncle and my dad’s brother) threw out all of the art that she made as a teen without telling her because she had stacked it in a portfolio under her old bed. I remember my cousin sobbing and sobbing when she found out that it was all gone. It happened to my aunt whose cousin would come through my aunt’s apartment and throw out all of her things when the cousin was coming through to take care of my grandma. It’s partially why my grandma had to go to a nursing home, because my aunt could not stand to share space with someone who would perpetually throw away her things. It happened to my aunt as a kid. When my grandma gave me a photo album, I saw my aunt as a child wearing a simple cotton dress.

“That was my only dress,” my aunt remembered while looking at the picture. She looked at her mom. “You gave it away without me knowing.”

My grandma had the audacity to laugh. “You screamed and cried over that dress.”

“You beat me for crying,” my aunt reminded her. Then, she went to take a shower.

My dad’s side of the family is much more patriarchal than my mom’s side. When I visit to help my grandma move into the nursing home, no one wants me there and no one wants my help. My mom’s aunt reminds me that her home is also my home but no one on my dad’s side acknowledges me at all.

I start to notice a pattern. If you are read as a woman and your last name is Yang, then you live a life where your clothes might be thrown out, your art might go missing, and anything you put around the home might be cleared away to make room for someone else’s things.


My dad’s things never go missing. He has a box full of computer mice from the nineties. Some of them have input plugs that don’t even match modern modems but he hangs onto them anyway. He has a box of old prescription bottles for no reason. When my dad puts something somewhere, he knows that no one will touch it or move it or get rid of it. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to lose all of your memories because your stuff was in someone else’s way.

I don’t really remember what was in the boxes. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of memories of that relationship. When all of your stuff keeps going missing, you start to feel like you don’t have any presence. Without any presence, how can you remember? I remember that I had a pair of shoes that someone made for me. I had a placemat that I picked up from a dollar store, one with fruit on it. Those things are gone. It’s not really about the things.

Back when I was in high school, I made myself a black hoodie with bear ears on top by hand sewing. I wore that hoodie once. As soon as my dad saw it, all he could talk about was how much he didn’t like it. Next thing I knew, the hoodie was gone. Cleared away. Gone. I had put so much work into it.

Back then, I would write in my journal in a really cryptic font because my dad would go through them and tell me if he found my thoughts to be sinful.

“He does this to me too,” my mom tries to tell me because I get angry when she’s not and she gets angry when I’m not. “I only have one drawer that I can trust. He throws everything else I have away.”

A lot of Chinese patriarchy is built around this idea that females are not really part of the family. Females are married off so you eventually leave your own family. Nothing that a girl owns truly belongs to the family. Sometimes, women are property managers for their husbands but nothing really belongs to them. They are seen as people who don’t have a stake in what’s going on.

To be fair, my dad does keep some stuff related to me. He keeps baby photos that he took, photos that he is also in. He likes the baby version of me. There's less of a line between what is mine and what is his from those days. The rest, he discards randomly with no communication at all. I should understand, he tells me. He has room for me but not endless space.

It’s not really about the stuff. I lost placemats that cost a dollar, funky little platform heels that were pieces of other shoes glued together. The stuff is about closure, about making your own decision on what to keep and what to discard and how to discard. My dad gave everything I had to a veteran’s association without my consent, including my baby pink shoes. I would never. The stuff is about having a stake in your environment, about trusting that how you are taking care of it won’t just be removed and cleared away without your input. It’s about knowing that people around you believe you. If you grow up with no stuff, then you can’t even give it away. It’s not yours to begin with.

I know that this is something that most Asian girls have to put up with when we’re kids. Our stuff gets thrown away without our consent. It gets cleared to make way for other people’s things. Our old stuffed animals never really belonged to us. Our dads will get rid of our clothes because he doesn’t like them. Our journals and our art gets taken to the curb when we’re not home.

Now, I’m older. I’m neither a woman nor a girl and I don’t live with my parents. Sometimes, I don’t believe that I can keep anything I have. If I make any money, I find myself giving it away. “None of this is mine,” my mind keeps trying to tell me. Maybe it’s a virtue. I’m not very possessive. I don’t buy a lot of stuff. In the last five years, I think I went clothes shopping around three times. Most of my furniture and clothes are just things that my old roommates didn’t want anymore. I hang onto everything because I don’t understand that the stuff is mine now.

What’s not a virtue is the way my lack of possessiveness makes me drop out of really engaging with people. “This isn’t my space and no one cares if I’m here or not,” my mind keeps trying to tell me. Why try? Evidently, I don’t have any stakes in my environment. Part of me believes that my actions will never impact my environment beneficially because, even if they do, someone will come to clear all of my efforts away.

I realize, as I am writing, that there is a stereotype that Asian women are demure and timid. I’ve never been able to figure that stereotype out. All of the Chinese women I know are extremely domineering and have a bad temper. All of the Chinese women I know also freak out constantly because our stuff gets thrown out constantly. It’s weird. A little mini-eviction that we get used to. All very routine because it's happening within the family.

Can anyone else relate? Any other Asians who don’t buy things or get rid of things because we think that we have no stuff?