Exploring immigration through a common experience: feeling like an outsider

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There is a common hurdle for many first generation immigrants: feeling out of place. Whether that's in school, speaking a different language, or living through parents' expectations. Today: two books about overcoming those feelings of inadequacy. First, Simu Liu, Marvel's first Asian superhero, discusses his memoir We Were Dreamers, where he talks about his complicated relationship with his parents and what he calls his "immigrant superhero origin story." Then, Cuban-American author Margarita Engle explores what it's like to be an outsider as a bilingual speaker and the creative freedom she found in writing Spanish without italics in her book.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. There's a certain irony to feeling like an outsider, to not fit in, which is that I'd put good money on a bet that literally everyone feels that way sometimes. Like, who is out here being all, oh yeah, I feel totally comfortable here, and everyone around definitely gets me
0:21.5	and appreciates me, you know, like 100% of the time. Today on the show, we've got two different
0:26.5	takes on fitting in, or, you know, not fitting in actually. In a bit, we'll hear about a YA novel.
0:32.4	That's about how being bilingual is a hurdle of identity for a lot of kids. But first, the actor Simulhu, you know him as Marvel's Shang-chi, just wrote a memoir.
0:42.4	It's called We Were Dreamers, and in it, he writes about how fitting in with his immigrant
0:47.6	family was weird for him.
0:49.4	Because, you know, as a teenager, he wanted to do teenager stuff, cut class, hang out with girls, play sports.
0:55.7	But his parents, who had gone through a lot to get to Canada, were not having it.
1:01.5	Liu talked to here and now's Anthony Brooks about how he looks back on their rough relationship
1:06.1	now in light of all of his success and how he sort of not excuses some of the things they did,
1:12.5	but understands them.
1:14.3	A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story.
1:18.7	But right now, you probably need more.
1:21.4	On Up First from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one's story
1:29.6	can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen
1:35.2	now to the Up First podcast from NPR. And now a conversation with a real superhero, or at least
1:42.5	with someone who plays one on the big screen.
1:44.5	So here he is being introduced at the 2018 Comic-Con.
1:49.0	It is a huge honor for me to introduce you to the incredible Simu Liu.
1:57.4	That was a big moment for the Chinese, Canadian actor Simu Liu, when he was introduced as Marvel's first Asian superhero, Kung Fu Master Shang Chi.
2:08.4	Now the young actor has a new memoir about his journey from his native China to Canadian immigrant to failed accountant to successful superhero actor.
2:18.0	As he writes, the journey wasn't always easy.
	...

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