The Forgotten Queer A Journey of Self-Discovery, Breaking Free, and Healing by Stella Mok: Tragic and Triumphant Memoir About Coming Out, Authenticity, and Living Ones Truth
Bookworm Reviews
Stella Mok’s book The Forgotten Queer: A Journey of Self-Discovery, Breaking Free, and Healing is a tragic and triumphant memoir about coming out, authenticity, and finding the physical and emotional space to live one's truth.
Mok’s writing style is both personal and informative. She summarizes and gives dry fact based accounts like most nonfiction authors and memoirists. But she also uses literary techniques like dialogue and internal thoughts in parts. This dual nature is a means to highlight the most important conflicts and themes within her story.
For example, most of the book is centered around Mok’s troubled relationship with her parents, Leandro and Nora. In the first chapter Mok, her siblings, and her father get into an argument about future plans and Leandro goes into a paragraph long diatribe about how women couldn't be doctors. This exchange is foreshadowed in her opening sentence, “I wish I were a boy.”
This chapter and various other ones reveal the toxicity between Mok and her parents which went beyond cultural, generational, or gender conflicts. At one point, they use emotional blackmail to keep Mok’s sister tied to their family business. They also used various other means to keep Mok and her siblings under their control. It's a troubling environment that one does not thrive so much as be fortunate enough to survive.
Mok lived in a tight, oppressed, and psychologically abusive atmosphere in which Mok did not only have to suppress her true self, she had to pretend that it never existed to begin with. One where the freedom to be honest with herself was treated as a luxury that she could not afford so it couldn't exist. At one point she realizes this by thinking, “I had to fight for my life, or end up losing what I worked so hard for.”
This fighting for her life also played into Mok’s sexuality and various relationships. An early romance ended because Mok was uncertain about pursuing a full romantic relationship with another girl. She also had a long term relationship with another woman who had trouble reconciling her lesbianism with her religious beliefs.
Throughout the book, Mok used different means to find her own inner strength and personal happiness. Two of the most triumphant moments occur when she wrote letters to her parents dealing with their deficiencies in parenting while also forgiving them and herself. These gestures show someone who is ready to move on into the next step in life.
This and other actions moved her to a more positive path that led to a new more honest and fulfilling life. She had to break the cycle that her family gave her and heal herself.
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