All Mixed Up

‘My family may have been all mixed up, but I discovered a love and a resilience that ran deeper than any of us could have imagined.’

When Jason Om was just 12, he witnessed his mother die of a heart attack. No one else was home and he blamed himself for her death. So begins this unflinching memoir about coming of age in a ‘mixed-up’ Melbourne family. There was Jason’s perfectionist Buddhist Cambodian father, his Catholic Eurasian mother, who seemed stricken by an inexplicable sadness, his Muslim Malaysian half-sister, his domineering grandmother and various cousins, aunts and uncles on both sides.

Everyone seemed to harbour secrets, including Jason, but when he came out as gay, his openness was met with reticence. It wasn’t until the 20th anniversary of his mother’s death that he found the courage to uncover the truth about his family’s past and the cause of his mother’s sorrow, and was able at last to feel pride in his ‘mixed-up’ identity.