Dysphoria On Your Tongue

To the ones who mocked me for the texture of my hair and
the colour of my food.

Fuck you.

CONTENTS

8
10
18
26

WHO AM I WHEN NO ONE’S IN THE ROOM
GREEN. RED.
WEAVED WITH LOST BONDS
REFLECTION IN THE LENS

Linda Tran is an Asian-Australian graphic designer and artist who
enjoys writing as a hobby. She is also a photographer in training, with
hands as shaky as an earthquake and the most dreadful eyesight. To
make up for the fact that she’s only 5ft tall, she’s in a constant state
of rage. Being lactose intolerant never stopped her from downing
chocolate milk, and that won’t be changing any time soon.

She spent four years in high school believing that she’d be studying
architecture but found out she’s absolute trash at maths and
changed her mind in her last year. Oh, and also due to the fact that
her architecture major in high school destroyed her. Who thought
trying to create a whole proscenium theatre running on solar power
by the seaside in a boat-shaped structure would be that difficult?
Good ideas and no skills to back it up is truly a curse.

Besides that, Linda admits to hoarding scented candles and drinking
too much tea. She owns a pet bunny who likes to do zoomies on her
face while she’s knocked out from pulling all-nighters and crying
over fictional characters. She often turns to vulgarity as a form of
expression and also to channel her inner Aussie.

This will be her first printed book and will also mark the final step in
obtaining her Bachelor degree.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR/DESIGNER

8

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book is dedicated to those who never felt right in their own
skin; those who struggled to love who they are. As someone who is
Asian and born in Australia, Linda often struggled to find her footing
between her ethnicity and her nationality. Having spent most of her
life being told she’s neither one nor the other caused her a lot of
internal turmoil.

Linda spent the majority of her childhood trying to appear more
‘Australian’ as she felt ashamed of her Asian ethnicity. Despite
attending Asian-dominated schools, she still experienced a lot of
internalised racism.

This may not seem like much to some, but to many other people, this
is a struggle they often don’t realise or a struggle that they end up
undermining. This is a project weaved with years worth of unpacked
emotions and experience of one ‘third culture child.’ While Linda can
not speak of the same for every other person who has experienced
this, she will still present to you her story.

This is an encouragement to all the third culture children.

This is a dedication to the ignorant.

9





12

Green. Red.
The two colours clashed, stirring and tangling but
refusing to blend. Vivid and strong - they seeped
through the pores of my unevenly toasted skin
and the lines between these two contrasting
pigments started to blur. I struggled to define
them. Desperation forced me to clutch onto the
bold and alluring green, begging it for any form of
salvation, any form of identity, no regard for that
deep red whatsoever and I watched as it slipped
through my burning fingertips.
Red became nothing but a dull and constant itch
under my skin.

13

14

I’ve never liked the red. I’ve never liked how
the red’s humidity gripped my skin like melted
sugar - like a vice. Or the thick scent of smoke
that clawed at my throat with every gulp of air,
and the stench of scorched wood from the coils
that were supposed to fend off the winged
vampires of night. I remembered the hectic blares
and thundering roars of cars and motorbikes
hammering through my skull in this foreign land
that my parents once called home. So I’ve never
really understood the red’s appeal to foreigners.
Never understood why they were so obsessed
with that bowl of steaming hot beef broth whose
name they could never pronounce correctly,
always exclaiming - singing about how that sweet
aroma of herbs had wafted through their nostrils.
I couldn’t understand.

Perhaps I was too young, perhaps I was too
oblivious, too drowned in the thoughts of
green. Or maybe I just simply didn’t want to
understand, too in denial, too afraid and maybe
even too embarrassed to admit my familiarity and
connection to the red that crawls on my skin.

Green. Red.

15

16

Enchanting, enthralling, entrancing.

Green. Green compared to red was almost
heavenly and I hadn’t, for one second, felt
remorseful for embracing the deep and
picturesque colour. I gazed, immersed with how
the salty waters hugged the green much like a
lover would. The touch of clean air melted on
my tongue much like that delightful, sugary
chocolate biscuit that I adored and loved to eat.

However, denial is merely temporary bliss.

For years, I had believed that I didn’t need red
and that the green would suffice. That the green
was enough to preserve me, to give me a place
to call home, to give me a tongue to use. But
time moves swiftly without any regard for my
feelings, can I really say that green runs in my
constantly pumping veins? Where is that heavenly
green I saw as a child? And I’m lost, stranded, the
lines that I thought I had defined starts to blur
again. And I’m desperate, desperately retrieving,
reclaiming, rebuilding what I’m left with. Neither
green nor red.

Australia. Vietnam.

17





PT.1
THE MOON

Symbolism: Illusion. Inner confusion.
Instability. A misunderstanding or a truth that
is hard to accept.

20



PT.2
THE WORLD

Symbolism: Incomplete. Lack of closure. The
feeling of unfulfillment and the need to give
closure to a life that’s been outgrown.

22



PT.3
THE DEVIL

Symbolism: Blindness. Pettiness. Awareness.
Becoming aware of the things that have been
holding one back.

24







Red.
You hug me like a jealous lover and it’s suffocating.
Please let me go.
I don’t want to carve a coffin for two.

28

29

Green.
Was it fun making a fool out of me?
To make me hate what I am, then leave without
a trace?
You were my dependency, my only identity.

30

31

Red.
You are the poem that’s too long to read.
You are the incessant noise in my ribcage.
You are the one line I keep rereading; trying to
grasp at its meaning.

32

33

Green.
You built me up with vague words so I wouldn’t be
able to translate them.
Hiding your bloody hands with your toxic love.
But I lack self-preservation; you are my serotonin.

34

35

Green. Red.
I see you two.
Hushed whispers and shared secrets behind my
back.
It seems you’ve both made a fool out of me.

36

37





Explore disorientation through the lens of a
third culture child.

Author and Designer