These Losers are Going Places

Michelle on the trials of marriage, status anxieties in and beyond the West, and discovering your heritage through your partner

Michelle

Dear all,

Here’s the big news: we’re moving to Taiwan this summer. It’s been an agonizing decision. We haven’t told many people, in part because we don’t know how to talk about it. The short of it is that Albert has some personal reasons for going back and also got a research position in Taipei.

How am I feeling about it?

When Albert and I started dating in 2012, he told me he loved Taiwan and dreamed of returning one day. I’m pretty sure I cried. My life was in the U.S., I said; I couldn’t imagine leaving. Two years later, when he got a job here in France, I was reluctant to give up my family, my friends, my bar license, our community life in the Bay Area. I was embedded in a network of lawyer-activists in migrant communities and also had begun the most fulfilling professional experience in my life, teaching at San Quentin Prison through the Prison University Project. Most of my loved ones lived in California, and I knew I’d miss them terribly.

Moving for his career nearly bro…