Bio

In Puerto Rico, the kids at El Colegio Sagrado called me “La Chinita” because my birth name (“Xiao Ma”) was impossible to pronounce. My father, fresh out of China’s Cultural Revolution, moved there thinking that Puerto Rico was the 51st state (it said “U.S. territory” on the atlas!), to acquire a magical string of initials behind his last name—a configuration of the alphabet that he hoped would be powerful enough to make us worthy of being American. Unbeknownst to us, a Ph.D. from the Caribbean was useless in America, especially when accompanied by a Chinese accent. Difference, (studies show) can be threatening, because they violate expectancy. 

These days, I have a degree in Spanish and am a psychologist (by day)/author (by night) to solve precisely this kind of childhood mystery.