Book Launch | The Invisible Third Culture Adult

Thirty days, 40,000 words, 11 stories. The Invisible Third Culture Adult is released today.

• Amazon Kindle
• Amazon Paperback
• iBook

Synopsis

Nora Jia Qiao-Bridges’ home is everywhere and nowhere - from China to New Zealand, and from the UK to the world. Born in China’s cultural centre as a descendant of Confucius, Nora grew up influenced by western culture. She constantly struggles with the inner conflict of embracing the dual cultures from the East and West.

Nora’s campus scandal with her English teacher Tom Norton makes her move to New Zealand to start a new life chapter. Her sexual experience with Jason Mitchell, her lifelong friendship with Eloise Feger, her entangled relationship with Kevin Yew, and her interactions with people from different cultures and backgrounds all lead Nora to discover her multicultural identities, to find a sense of belonging and to fight the battle against racial bias and discrimination.

Everyone has a story to tell. Here is your chance to listen to an ethnic minority’s eleven stories on stereotypes, identity, loneliness, relationship, sexual harassment, race, media manipulation, and the hidden history.

You may resonate with Nora’s life as a global citizen who has experienced cultural similarities and differences between different countries. You may understand international students and new migrants struggles and difficulties living abroad. Most of all, you may develop compassion to people around you and understand each other from different perspectives.

Eloquent, pure and entirely stylistic, here lies a fresh voice in fiction from a Chinese New Zealand writer. The Invisible Third Culture Adult is the perfect read for anyone who feels they are not being seen or heard.

No man is an island in the current world. Everybody is connected. We all have stories to tell. Let’s listen to each other one by one with a curious and open mind.


Outline
Prologue
Chapter One - An Unexpected Journey
Chapter Two - An Eternal Outsider
Chapter Three - An Awakening Mind
Chapter Four - A Puzzled Persona
Chapter Five - An Inevitable Stereotype
Chapter Six - A Prejudiced Media
Chapter Seven - A Boundless Career
Chapter Eight - An Abnormal Name
Chapter Nine - An Unforgotten History
Chapter Ten - A Lonely Traveller
Chapter Eleven - An Untouchable Lover
Epilogue


Why support this book?
According to the MIGRATION DATA PORTAL, there are 271.6 million international migrants at mid-year of 2019 and 5.3 million international students in our current world. However, there are few mainstream novels, movies and TV shows featuring their stories. Here comes a huge potential to showcase a story from the increasing number of international students and migrants’ perspective.

• The Third Culture Kids (TCKs) term is one of the trending research topics in today’s multicultural world with 12 million search results on Google and 74,800 research papers. There is no major work focused on The Third Culture Adult; therefore, this book will fill the gap and encourage the researchers to follow up after TCKs grow up.
• Camellia has 20,000+ followers on Weibo and WeChat and has a vast network across China, New Zealand and the UK. Camellia has her website, media contacts and podcast channel The CJ Show to promote her book. Camellia also has been invited by non-profit organisations and universities as a guest speaker five times in the past few years.
• One of the biggest New Zealand media companies Stuff published a piece of treading news in May 2020 to promote Chinese New Zealand voice to the mainstream society because the increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants will change the social demography in New Zealand. The Invisible Third Culture Adult will serve an excellent tool to extend the discussion on developing multicultural society.
• Camellia is currently working on her second novel: an English mysterial and historical fiction, using football as a clue to connect two people from China and England (10% complete, aim to finish by 2021). This new novel is part of Camellia’s WORLD CONNECTED series with characters crossover and delivers the same theme that we are all human beings with more similarities than differences.

Similar titles

• Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, New York Review Books Classics edition (April 14, 2009) A story written by a Sudanese novelist, featuring two men who leave Sudan to study in England and afterwards belong in neither place. The Invisible Third Culture Adult has a similar cultural conflict and internal conflict from embracing dual cultures between East and West but in a contemporary setting from modern Chinese international students’ perspectives.
• Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, Amazon.com Services LLC, 1st edition (September 25, 2012) Through the 60 years of two Neapolitan women’s lives, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between two women. The Invisible Third Culture Adult tells a story about a Chinese girl’s 30 years of life in China, New Zealand and the UK who also witnesses the changes happening in different cities and herself.
• Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch, Vintage Digital (February 1, 2018) A black girl’s memoir on racial identity and unconscious bias. The Invisible Third Culture Adult is a fiction novel focused on a similar issue from a Chinese girl’s perspective.

Audience

• International students and new migrants who feel lonely and struggle living in a foreign land.
• Researchers and scholars who are interested in multicultural communications and the Third Culture Kids topic
• The Third Culture Adults like the main character from the novel who has an open and curious mind to understand people with different background and cultures​

Available for purchase on Amazon and iBook.