#74 – On Family, Ethnicity & the Sacred Work of Belonging with Tasha Jun

Season 10 continues with a season of authors and their (mostly new) books. Rohadi invites author Tasha Jun to the show to chat about, Tell me the Dream Again. Reflections on Family, Ethnicity & the Sacred Work of Belonging. This episode discusses themes from her book including:

• The Why behind, Tell me the dream again, and how writing projects span decades to produce.
• On dissociation and assimilation for BIPOC/Asian folks. We discuss when a racialized person thinks they fit, and when the veil comes down.
• What to do with feelings associated with assimilation. A talk about embodied characteristics of fitting in.
• Food as a way to reconnect to your roots and ancestors.
• Dismantling individualization of finding one’s self. (Yes, I bring up Brene Brown again.)
• Naming the grief with finding your community, but realizing what you’ve been missing for so long. Ways to bridge the gap when it comes to reclaiming yourself, your people and your culture.
• Why finding belong is sacred work.

Find Tasha’s book available wherever books are sold. Visit Tasha’s website, her Substack, and connect with her on Instagram and Facebook.

A little about “Tell me the dream again.”

Tasha Jun has always been caught between worlds: American and Korean, faith and doubt, family devotion and fierce independence. As a Korean American, she wandered between seemingly opposing worlds, struggling to find a voice to speak and a firm place for her feet to land.

The world taught Tasha that her Korean normal was a barrier to belonging—that assimilation was the only way she would ever be truly accepted. But if that were true, did that mean God had made a mistake in knitting her together?

Tell Me the Dream Again is a memoir-in-essays exploring

• what it means to be biracial in America today;
• the joy and healing that comes with embracing every part of who we are, and;
• how our identity in Christ is tightly woven with the unique colors, scents, and culture he’s given us.

We are not outsiders to God. When we let all the details of ourselves unfold—when we embrace who we were divinely knit together to be—this is when we’ll fully experience his perfect love.