THE CIRCUS INFINITE Blog Tour Guest Post: Found Family & the Queer Experience by Khan Wong + Giveaway!

I’m so happy to be joining Angry Robot on the first leg of their blog tour for Khan Wong’s The Circus Infinite! Today I have a guest post from the author, and it’s one of my favorite themes in fiction, found families. I’m also excited to be hosting a giveaway for a finished copy of the book! This time it’s U.S. readers only, and you can enter at the end of this post.

The Circus Infinite by Khan Wong
Published by Angry Robot on March 8 2022
Pages: 400

Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon. Here, everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job. When the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him, or face vivisection.

With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down together. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.

---

Guest Post: Found Family & the Queer Experience
by Khan Wong

In the Season Five episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer titled “Family,” the family of the character called Tara Maclay (the girlfriend of Buffy’s bff Willow) comes to town on the occasion of her 20th birthday, to bring her home. She is not happy about this and we soon learn why: in this case, “home” means to assume her proper place, being subservient to her male relatives, who perpetuate a myth that the women in their family show their demon selves on their 20th birthday. Said women must stay in the family home for their safety and that of others, and of course, they must serve. By the end of the episode, the ruse is revealed, and the Scooby gang (Buffy’s friends and support network who help her slay, for any readers not familiar) declare that while the Maclays may be her blood relations, they – her friends – are Tara’s real family. Upon first viewing this episode when it aired in the year 2000, I cried.

Why was I, an at the time 31-year old man who was decidedly not of demon heritage, so moved by this? It had everything to do with growing up Asian in a predominantly white community, and simultaneously being queer in a traditional Asian (and Catholic) household. My family unit, my homebase, was different from all the others surrounding us. And within that homebase, I was a thing I was not supposed to be. I didn’t choose to be that thing, I just was. Given this background, I was primed to receive and vibe with this notion that “blood relations” and “real family” are not the same thing at all. I, like most queer folk, knew that the ones that are supposed to accept you might just let you down, and the ones that do provide that love and acceptance may not be of your lineage, or ethnicity (or species!) at all.

Now, I have to admit I’m not super-conversant in tropes. Of course I’m familiar with “the chosen one” and “saving the world” and “scrappy rebels take on Evil Empire.” In general, I don’t consciously deploy tropes in my work but I know they show up, mostly unconsciously, having been absorbed by osmosis. (I mean, can there be a story without tropes? I think not.) But one trope that I do use with intention is the one used so effectively in the episode described above: chosen family, or found family as it’s now more popularly known.

The resonance of this trope is rooted in the experience of being different from your kin, of being alienated from those who you’re supposed to fit in with the most. By “supposed to” I mean what you’re taught by that family, and by messaging from mass media and close-to-home communities, such as religious congregations. Family is everything, right? We all know the old adage “blood is thicker than water.” We take this to mean that familial bonds are stronger than the bonds of friendship or love. Except! The actual saying is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” In other words, the bonds one chooses are stronger than the ones that result from an accident of birth. I think the found family trope derives its power from a collective memory, a collective understanding of this truth that persists in us despite how the saying has been warped.

Obviously, the experience of alienation from kin is not exclusive to queer folk: a lot of people not queer-identified come from abusive or neglectful family situations, for example. However, I would argue that for queer creators and audiences it’s particularly fraught, as growing up queer so often means being taught from a young age that who and what you are, fundamentally, is evil and vile and undeserving of love, belonging and acceptance. It so often means rejection by those that brought you into the world. And depending on where in the world you happen to live, you may or may not find that acceptance outside of the family home. A straight child with an alcoholic, abusive parent is to be pitied. The queer child, no matter what the parents are like, is at fault for their own rejection. Sometimes especially if the parents are “pillars of the community.” The message is “you will be rejected by everyone, not just your blood relations.” And the fact that so many families reject their queer children reveals the lie in that whole blood being thicker than water saying, doesn’t it?

In his model of human needs, American psychologist Abraham Maslow identified five levels of such needs: Physiological, Safety, Social belonging, Self-esteem, and Self-actualization. Belonging and acceptance are right in the middle, and can be seen as a sort of threshold that one must reach in order to attain higher levels of needs such as feelings of accomplishment or fulfillment. In other words, one cannot get to the peak of fully achieving one’s full potential without first finding that place of belonging and acceptance. Those of us who don’t find that with our families of origin, seek it elsewhere without necessarily being fully aware that’s what we’re doing. It’s instinctive.

Being in the closet means pretending to be what you are expected to be, even when you know deep down, that you are not that. Even when you know in your heart of hearts, in your soul, in the very core of your being, that you are something else. Staying in the closet is something that queer folk do to maintain that feeling of belonging that is the third tier of Maslow’s hierarchy. But in the closeted circumstance, that sense of belonging is predicated on a lie, and is therefore false. That false sense of belonging, in turn, threatens the second tier of need in Maslow’s hierarchy – safety – which includes resources and shelter and employment. So we’re getting pretty close to an existential threat now. And so, to survive, to maintain our (false) sense of belonging with unaccepting blood relations, we pretend.

The thing is though, with real family, you don’t have to pretend. With real family, you can live your truth, and receive the support you need to be the best version of yourself you can be. Not in spite of who you are, but because of it. Queer folk – and anyone who has found that support away from their blood relations – know this truth and have lived it. And we know, more than most, that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

---

About the author:

KHAN WONG is a published poet, has played cello in an earnest folk-rock duo, been an internationally known hula hoop teacher and performer, toured with a circus, and founded a flow arts performance showcase. He is the author of many books and his work has appeared in Born magazine, nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, Mason’s Stoup, Del Sol Review, and the “Poetry on Display” section of the BBC’s Arts website.

Find the author and the book: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository

---

And now for the giveaway! (1) U.S. reader will win a finished copy of The Circus Infinite. Please fill out the form below to enter. Prize is provided by Angry Robot Books. Good luck!