TCK author Ann Liang grew up between China and Australia and draws on her own childhood experiences to write “If You Could See the Sun,” a fun YA romance novel set in Beijing. The book is about Alice, a Chinese/ American scholarship student at an elite Beijing boarding school. Surrounded by wealthy students, Alice is focused on her grades and set on beating her academic rival Henry. Then suddenly Alice goes from unpopular nobody to actually invisible. She can’t control when she turns invisible but still decides to use her powers for something useful and starts a lucrative side-business. As the jobs she takes become higher and higher stakes, she has to decide what she can justify for the sake of income.
It’s definitely a fun read, and I loved the chemistry between the academic rivals. The ending was a bit morally questionable and there is a good amount of swearing, so if you’re put off by that take note. No sex scenes, just a kiss. I’d recommend this book for high schoolers or older, though some middle schoolers would enjoy it as well.
This isn’t written as a “TCK book” but instead marketed to a wider audience. I enjoyed the international school context and seeing some reflections from the main character on being bi-cultural and the way moving countries affected her. The TCK themes are more subtle since the focus is on the characters and the plot. This book actually came to my attention in a list of other YA fiction since it’s a genre I enjoy reading for fun, and I noticed that the main character happened to be a TCK!
This workbook is a companion to Lauren Wells’s first book, The Grief Tower. In Unstacking Your Grief Tower, the principles of the grief tower metaphor are broken down into applicable sections for adult TCKs (aTCKs) and each chapter ends with reflection questions and space for the reader to write their answers.
TCK life is full of losses from moving and being in a mobile community where others are coming and going around you. Taking the time to process the accumulated grief is important and this short workbook is a great resource to help with that.
This autobiographical collection of essays was a joy to read. Adele Barlow is a TCK with Malaysian and Kiwi parents who grew up between Hong Kong and New Zealand. Her search for identity and meaning is a very relatable TCK issue and she writes about it in a fresh way, sharing anecdotes from her moves, relationships and therapy sessions.
I’ve read a lot of stories and essays about TCK identity and sometimes get tired of them but I enjoyed Barlow’s writing style and her candidness. I found myself cheering on her progress and eager to see the conclusions she came to in her self reflection.
This book explores what life is like as a TCK who has left their family of origin and is now on their own, still in the process of “adulting.” The challenges they face can be significantly different than those of Adult TCKs, and it is important for them and those in their lives to be able to address them appropriately.
While it doesn’t replace the classic Pollock and Van Reken TCK book, its narrower focus will help you understand the specific needs of Third Culture Teens. It’s very readable, including some of the author’s own personal experiences, but it also draws from important literature on TCKs.
The following sections are included:
- Third Culture Kid & The Third Culture Teen
- The Issues We Face
- The Life We Are Living
- The Life We Will Live
- Conclusion & Additional Resources
This book is rather different from other entries on this site. It’s part autobiographical and part treatise on what it means to belong. Greg Cole’s TCK background of growing up in Indonesia informs his understanding of belonging, since he grew up in a highly mobile community and his third culture-ness makes him different from most “normal” monocultural people. Another large aspect of Cole’s identity that informs his treatise on belonging is his sexual orientation and religion. As a celibate gay Christian, Cole doesn’t fit into the typical stereotypes of the LGBT+or Christian communities. Where does he really belong if he can’t find people who look and think like him? He proposes that similarities are not what tie people to each other, but that we can belong to each other in deeper ways.
I’d recommend this book to MKs and other TCKs who are struggling to “fit in” and find belonging outside the TCK bubble. For those who aren’t Christians, some of the messages about homosexuality may be unwelcome but the main points of the book are not about sexuality or arguing for or against celibacy.
This is a short but eminently practical book about helping Third Culture Kids process emotions related to grief and trauma. Lauren Wells, herself an adult TCK, applies research on the impact of Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) to TCK experience, noting the various types of experiences that may leave TCKs with unresolved grief and pain.
She then uses the term Grief Tower to paint a picture of how painful experiences may stack up when TCKs don’t have the opportunity or support to process them. And what happens when the tower gets too high? It comes crashing down, making a tremendous mess! To prevent that, Lauren offers practical activities parents and TCKs can do to purposefully deconstruct those Grief Towers piece by piece.
This little book is quick and easy to read, and whether you are an expat parent, a professional working with TCKs, or even a TCK yourself, it is well worth your time.
