WE WERE DREAMERS

The star of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings recounts how he overcame his tortured relationship with his immigrant Chinese parents to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

Liu spent his youth with his loving paternal grandparents in Harbin, China, while his parents struggled to establish roots in the U.S. and, later, Canada. When he was reunited with his parents at the age of 4, they were unprepared to be parents. “Mom and Dad were about to experience the myriad of new responsibilities and burdens that came with raising a child,” he writes, “and would learn very quickly that ‘parenthood’ was a lot more complicated than just living together.” Liu vividly remembers that the first time he lied to his parents, when he was 5, they locked him out of the apartment, a punishment that led to a rupture of trust that was never fully repaired. Their relationship deteriorated further when Liu was accepted into a prestigious private school in Toronto, which required him to work harder than he ever had before at his academics—something that, as a young man, he had little interest in doing. Before detailing the physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his parents, he gives readers details about their earlier lives, which included a great deal of hardship. It wasn’t until Liu was laid off from his accounting job after college that he had the courage to admit to his parents—and himself—that he wanted to act. Today, he is the latest Marvel hero. Liu’s compassionate treatment of his abusive parents and his younger self results in a tender, nuanced narrative that is refreshing in its frankness. His focus on the pressure, rather than the promise, of the American dream actively subverts the model-minority myth. Though the prose is sometimes uneven, the book is mostly entertaining and nuanced.

A celebrity memoir that compassionately interrogates the dark side of the American dream.