“We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something has failed to go as we hoped. Though we can, of course, use our minds without being in pain… we become properly inquisitive only when distressed. We suffer, therefore we think and we do so because thinking helps us to place pain in context.” — Marcel Proust, according to Alain de Botton.

The Missing Teacher is about getting fired and getting back up again. It was my down-on-my-knees moment because I had made the mistake of wrapping my self-worth in a job that robbed me of it.

And while I can’t say, “I’m glad it happened”, I can confess, I learned a great deal about the human condition, all of which you experience in the classroom and at school. There was a lot of fear among the faculty and parents, which they took out on the teachers, but I learned to let go, forgive, and forge anew.

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My next memoir is called Misfortune Cookie and is about growing up Asian American, immigrant moms, and adventures in flexibility and resiliency in America and Thailand. Often, these stories are from an outsider’s perspective in the US, but my story offers a nuanced and unique in-between.

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