Book Talk | The Hyphenated Life by Dr Han Ren

Pre-purchase your copy of the featured title to guarantee your signed copy! This helps ensure that everyone who wants a book goes home with one, in case we sell out at the event. ABOUT THE BOOK For readers of Permission to Come Home, Minor Feelings, and Pleasure Activism, an insightful guide for “hyphenates” seeking to better understand themselves and help others understand them, too. What does it mean to live a hyphenated life? So many folks are forced to toggle across the multiple layers of who they are, and across the diverse spaces they occupy. They may be children of immigrants, 1.5 gen, of color; they may be disabled, neurodivergent, or queer. Regardless of how they identify, they exist in an in-between space while also trying to fit into the dominant culture. With a foot in multiple worlds, belonging fully to none, it can be hard to figure out where they fit in. Dr. Han Ren, licensed psychologist and a hyphenate herself, seeks to offer solutions for those with intersectional identities to fully express who they are in any and every environment. The Hyphenated Life is an intersectional, inside out excavation of how existing in marginalized bodies affects the ways folks show up in dominant culture and predominantly white spaces. Offering tools, stories, conversations, solutions and insights, this book will resonate with anyone who is navigating the intricacies of their multicultural identity development. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Han Ren, PhD, is a hyphenated professional: licensed clinical and school psychologist, speaker, educator, and content creator. She is also a 1.5-generation Chinese-American immigrant, neurodivergent mind, mother, partner, and only child. Dr. Ren holds a doctorate in Child Clinical and School Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master of Education in Special Education from the University of Houston, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Michigan. She was an adjunct professor at UT Austin and a former pre-K special educator. Han lives in Austin, Texas, where she co-leads Pivot Psychology Austin, a group private practice. IN CONVERSATION WITH Kimmy Wu, MHC, MA is a NYC-based psychotherapist, writer, and founder whose work lives in the hyphenated spaces—between cultures, identities, and ways of belonging. Born and raised in Taiwan, and now rooted in New York City, she brings an embodied understanding of what it means to hold multiple worlds at once without dissolving the tension between them. Her clinical practice centers on narrative, relational, and anti-oppressive frameworks, with a particular focus on intimacy, identity, and the slow work of reclaiming wholeness across fractured contexts. She writes about these themes on her Substack, Between Living & Dreaming, and is the founder of Thirdspace, a relational technology company dedicated to exploring the depth possible in close relationships. She comes to The Hyphenated Life not just as a clinician, but as someone who has lived the intersections the book highlights—and has spent years helping others find language for it.