Sunday, September 8, 2019

The Farewell


Everyone struggles with their identity. Whether it is your sexual identity or your ethnic identity, everyone deals with their own stuff. Yet, these very struggles and our ability to overcome them eventually builds us into the people we are today. As cheesy as it is, I truly believe we are defined by our experiences.

For me, a large portion of my experience has to do with my upbringing as a Taiwanese Canadian.

I was born in Taiwan to a medium-sized but loving family. I left quite soon after because my parents wanted me and my older sister to have a life that expanded beyond the confines of a country with no recognizable sovereignty. We left to Canada where there were long bouts of time in which we did not see our family, or even our dad who was working to provide for us.

One of the most long-standing memory I have is holding my metallic purple binder and crying as my mom forced me to learn the phonetics of the english alphabet. Through those blood, sweat, and tears, I have been able to gain some invaluable experiences. I have been able to ski on Whistler and ice skate on lakes. I was in Shanghai during the World Expo and in Thailand when tragedy struck through the Phi Phi islands.

Throughout these moments, each one defined my existence and my growth as a human. Throughout these hard fought battles, I continued to forge my existence, one that is unique and unlike anyone else's. Through it all, it built me into the doctor I want to be today.

While watching The Farewell, it truly struck a chord with me. It exemplified the struggles of being stuck between two worlds. Whether it is for a wedding or for a medical emergency, there are moments where our culture seeps through and our viewpoints on life clashes with others. It is exactly in this moment that we need to reach into our humanity and recognize our commonality. We need to understand that we can not enforce our beliefs onto others, just as how they cannot do so to us.

I will not be spoiling the movie, but I do want to discuss one scene that really stood out to me. There is this one scene in the movie where Awkwafina, in character, asks her grandmother's doctor if it is the right thing to do to hide her diagnosis from her. The doctor provides an anecdote in which his own grandmother died of a disease she was unaware of due to the family's request.

Not only was the scene hilarious as it showed how the grandma tried to set up Awkwafina with not only a doctor but a doctor who can also speak english (albeit very brokenly), but it also showed how the doctor found it to be absolutely normal to hide the truth because in China, that is the norm. That is the norm. I think we need to remind ourselves that in times when we are questioning our own moral compass because no matter how much we want to be a great person, at the end of the day we are also doctors and we not only answer to our own ethics but more importantly we must answer to our patient's. That is a burden I truly believe every doctor must carry to ensure that we can help our patients not only physically, but emotionally.

This movie is powerful not only in its representation in the Asian American community, but as a commentary on cultural competence in the medical field. It is important to acknowledge the family's wishes, even if they do not align with ours.

I truly believe that any doctor that wants to be a good doctor should watch this movie.