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Weird Culture Kids :

/wɪəd ˈkʌltʃə kɪd/

noun - informal

Person who does not fit into any one specific cultural standard and who creates his or her own“weird culture” to give him/herself a sense of belonging. The process of making a “weird culture”is very straightforward: the WCK takes bits and pieces of the traditional and nation-state cultures that s/he’s previously experienced while growing up and mix everything together to create his/her own customized culture. These customized cultures are deemed “weird” because, objectively, there are many different and conflicting elements within it, but somehow for the WCK in question, things just seem to fit and to flow.

Weird culture kids were once children who grew up in international school systems or in foreign host countries and cultures. They are kids of international and biracial couples, kids of immigrants who grew up in a place— be it school systems or countries— where they don’t feel completely belonging to the culture that they were raised in.

Ngoc Nguyen

New Degree Press

Part I	The Psycohistorians	3
Part II	The Encyclopedists	43
Part III	The Mayors	87
Part IV	The Traders	147
Part V	The Merchant Princes	173

About the book

Have you ever felt strangely out of place? Have you ever thought you didn’t truly belong?

Weird Culture Kids is a memoir about growing up in and between different cultures and experiencing the world through international lenses. It goes deep into the author’s journey from birth to adolescence, navigating into the different cultures she lived in, encountered with and consciously chose as part of her identity. Sprinkled with conversations with other, culturally-speaking, Weirdos, this book gives insights into coping mechanisms for displacement / change / relocation / a mobile life.

Nguyễn explores questions around cultures, identities and belonging, such as:

Can you be ‘from’ a place?
What happens when part of your identity disappears?
What’s the relationship between language and identity?
What does the question ‘where are you from?’ even mean?

You’ll discover you don’t have to belong to a physical man-made piece of land or a nation-state. You can belong to people, cities and memories. You can belong to a shared habit, a song or a dance routine.

And most importantly, you belong in that peaceful state of Acceptance that is nested somewhere deep within you.

Ngọc (Bi) Nguyễn was born in Moscow, Russia, raised in Hanoi, Vietnam, and educated in an International French school for twelve years. Aged fifteen, she moved to the United States to attend a very Connecticut boarding school. Ever since, she’s been asked this simple, yet deeply confusing question: ‘where are you from?’. Because she didn’t have any concrete answer to give, Ngọc decided to write a memoir about her identity quest.

Weird Culture Kids is her firstborn.

Today, Ngọc is committed to build an alternative community for Weird Culture Kids through her book. Her story, and that of others shared in this memoir, is a tangible proof to demonstrate that beyond her rootlessness, her tribe does, indeed, exist.

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Ngoc Nguyen

Contents

About the book

About the author

Praises

Press