Fat, Asian, and Bipolar: Michelle Yang’s Memoir Challenges Stigma

Content warning: This article contains references to emotional and physical abuse as well as suicide. If you or someone you know needs assistance, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Both programs provide free, confidential support 24/7.

Asian Americans and, in particular, Asian American women, are among the least likely to seek mental health support. Advocate, writer, and Mochi alumna Michelle Yang is one reason that might be changing. Not shying away from the stigma of mental health, Yang’s memoir is titled “Phoenix Girl: How A Fat Asian With Bipolar Finds Love,” and is the perfect read for May, which is both Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.

Her story is uniquely intersectional and largely untold even as representations of Asian Americans continue to prosper. Being fat, bipolar, and desiring love is often unspoken about in our communities and in America as a whole. Yang’s writing is a salve for those who do not feel seen by current narratives that hide the mental and psychological pressures of being Asian American.

Starting by introducing her ethnically Chinese family with roots in Incheon, South Korea, the memoir follows her and her family as they immigrate to Atlanta, Georgia when she is 9 years old and as they move several more times across the United States until she finds herself in Phoenix, Arizona helping out at her family’s Chinese restaurant. The memoir explores her struggles as a teenager with her appearance and racism, as well as her father’s abusive nature, her eventual hospitalization, and, later, her adult dating life. Despite the subject matter, Yang always voices a hopefulness and a desire to be seen, to be loved, and to not hide who she is. 

Mochi Magazine talked to the writer and advocate about Asian American families’ silence around mental health, separating culture from trauma, and combatting the stigma of bipolar disorder.

When Mental Illness Is Met With Silence

At 20-years-old, while studying abroad in China, Yang experienced a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Prior to being diagnosed, Yang was any tiger parent’s dream child: a high-achieving student with a prestigious scholarship. In her memoir, she details admitting her struggles with mood and sleep to her parents — and these are not your everyday angsty teenage mood swings: Yang endures weeks without sleep and has delusions of being in the center of a Truman show-like world. 

So why didn’t her parents take her to see a doctor? When I tell her that most rational parents would take their kids for physical ailments and mental health should be understood similarly, she jokes, “Would they go to a doctor for a broken bone?” recalling that the Korean American chef David Chang, who also lives with bipolar, once recounted a time when his parents didn’t take him to the doctor after he broke his arm.

“Especially with mental health, there’s just so much shame involved and just a lack of understanding of what mental health conditions are,” she explains. “In the memoir, I remember the first time I learned about depression as a child was through hearing my parents talk. My dad was gossiping about this woman who claimed she had depression. He didn’t believe her, and said, ‘Did you see how her eyes light up when she’s playing mahjong? How could she have depression when her eyes light up like that?’”

Especially with mental health, there’s just so much shame involved and just a lack of understanding of what mental health conditions are.

In addition, older generations in Asian communities often carry a deep-seated fear of having mental health issues formally documented. At one point in the memoir, Yang’s father connects with a doctor through his network for an off-the-record visit — the two of them drive over 8 hours to Los Angeles to see his connection after the clinic closes, yet once the doctor shares his concerns privately with Yang’s father, he whisks them back without further treatment or explanation. 

In conversation, Yang describes her adolescent mental health as a state of “masking” — concealing symptoms without addressing the underlying disorder. In the early chapters of her memoir, the need to mask takes the form of striving to meet her parents’ expectations and earn their approval. 

“For my family, in particular, my dad always saw us as extensions of himself, so he didn’t want any of that to reflect on him,” the writer says. “It’s not just an Asian American problem. It’s something that comes from the countries that they come from themselves: [that people there] think that mental illnesses are something that should be hidden away and denied that they exist. But you cannot wish away your mental health conditions.”

A lot of the stigma surrounding mental health, including bipolar disorder, was reinforced by Yang’s family. Even after she is diagnosed, her parents shame her rather than offer her support and later even claim that she does not have bipolar anymore.  

“When I came back [from China], that’s when I was treated for the first time properly. I was diagnosed. I was hospitalized,” she recounts. “Afterwards, when I was picking up the pieces and trying to find a way to move forward, my parents were like, ‘If this gets out that you have these kinds of struggles, no one will marry you, nobody will hire you, no school will accept you. Your life is over.’” 

Yang’s experience isn’t an anomaly — it’s a reflection of how deeply the shame around mental illness runs in many immigrant communities, where saving face and success are often prioritized over well-being.

Separating Asian Culture from Trauma

Being an immigrant and the child of immigrant parents is often hard enough, but when compounded by her parents’ flat-out refusal to pursue treatment, Yang’s childhood proves to be ultimately heartbreaking. 

While constantly under the threat of a physically and emotionally abusive father, Yang shapes herself to fit their ideal: a top student, obedient child, shrinking herself — both emotionally and literally by dieting and exercising — to keep the peace. Yang’s father’s abuse and her mother’s silence taught her early on that compliance was safe, and survival meant disappearing parts of herself.

For children of immigrants, the desire for safety in one’s own home is a familiar feeling. Homes can be unsafe places for children when instability, intergenerational trauma, or cultural silence are the norm, filled with fear and conditional love. 

For Yang and her brother, being physically abused, forced to partake in self-harm, and emotionally manipulated by their father is a normal part of growing up. Yang’s mother is complicit in the violence, never getting in the way, excusing her husband’s abuses, and ganging up on Yang when it comes to her appearance, leaving no sanctuary in their family home other than the shared victimhood between siblings. She recounts in her memoir how her father tells her and her brother, “Shēng mìng zhī ēn” (生命之恩), the debt of life, is something you can never repay. You must dedicate your life to trying.” 

At another point in her novel, Yang is invited to a weeklong sleepaway camp hosted by Anytown for emerging leaders. Her father does not want her to go but relents after her teacher convinces him. Even though he does not know where the camp is located, he shows up unexpectedly midweek, leading Yang to confess to a white camp counselor named Jackie that she is suicidal and that she is being physically abused at home. 

Sadly, at the end of the day, Jackie’s response as quoted from the book chalks Yang’s father’s behavior up to culture: “It makes me so angry. And there is so much I would do, but I also know it’s cultural … It’s cultural, so I’m trying to understand that it’s different.”

As an adult, Yang pushes back on that kind of thinking. For her, calling abuse “cultural” is a dangerous oversimplification and further stereotypes Asian Americans. 

“My whole thing is separating culture and trauma. I think abuse is a result of trauma that not only I endured, but my parents and my ancestors have endured in their lives and have been passed down to them,” she explains. “I reject that as part of culture, so my whole advocacy has been trying to separate trauma and culture so that I can continue to love and celebrate my culture, which I absolutely do and take so much pride in. I want to pass our culture on to my child, but not the trauma, not the pain, not the abuse.” 

Actively resisting the idea that violence, control, and shame are inherent in Asian cultures, Yang reclaims not only her family’s version of Chinese identity, but a heritage that can be rooted in pride without reproducing pain or guilt. It is a difficult task for children who have been told again and again that their lack of agency and powerlessness to their elders is cultural. Yang does not intend to continue that trend for her child.

“The whole philosophy around parental sacrifice is another thing that I reject. Because I’m a parent too, now, and I don’t think I’m sacrificing for my child. I chose to bring him to life; he did not ask to be brought to this life. And so I don’t think he owes me anything,” she adds.

Fighting the Stigma Around Bipolar Disorder

For years, Yang’s diagnosis was something her family treated with denial, shame, or outright disbelief. But today, she refuses to be invisible. In both her memoir and advocacy, she confronts the stereotypes around bipolar disorder head-on — and challenges the narrative that mental illness defines a person’s worth.

“Bipolar disorder, not only in the Asian American community, but in all societies, all communities at large, is very misunderstood,” Yang shares. “It has a lot to do with how bipolar disorder is portrayed in movies and shows, where it’s much more interesting to see someone who is like a hot mess than someone who is managing their symptoms and has their life together — who wants to watch that?”

In her advocacy around the condition, she shares that bipolar is treatable and that she herself has been managing symptoms for over two decades. Yet medications are also stigmatized in older Asian American communities, with Yang’s own parents voicing the concern that medications are addictive. Nevertheless, taking medication for physical health conditions like diabetes is totally normal and vital to health. 

“[Bipolar disorder] is not a life sentence. There are a lot of these mantras that have become part of the bipolar advocacy world because many people think there is no hope after you get such a serious mental health diagnosis,” she says. “But it’s like getting diagnosed with diabetes. You can live with it. It’s fine. There’s treatment for it; there are lifestyle changes you can make.”

She shares that she did take a break from her medication while pregnant, but so far, she has had only two episodes in her life. Today, she wants people to know: “I am living a good life, living with bipolar … and I’m thriving. I’m happily married, I’m a mom — because that was a thing that I didn’t know if I could ever be once I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.”

And while Yang admits it is terrifying to share her story, she recalls Toni Morrison’s saying: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” From the loneliness that she felt trying to better understand her symptoms and later her diagnosis in a pre-internet era, Yang shares that she wrote “Phoenix Girl” to be the book she never had. 

In telling the truth about her family and bipolar disorder, Yang offers a new kind of narrative: one where Asian American identity isn’t defined by silence, shame, or sacrifice. Her book is a reminder that survival doesn’t have to mean self-erasure — and that joy, love, and visibility are not only possible, but worth fighting for.

You can purchase “Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian With Bipolar Finds Love” on Bookshop.org, where every order supports Mochi Magazine’s mission to amplify Asian American voices.