I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, that spanned from ages 10 to 18 when I left for college. I only went as far as Miami for school, less than an hour’s drive from my home in Lauderdale; I spent my impressionable years in the southeast coast of Florida. While the culture felt generally pretty progressive, it still reflected the 1980’s and painted a vastly different picture than the Seattle area in the new millennium. Once, you stir in the heavy Cuban influence in Miami, it gives it a very distinctive flavor.
Naturally, my community deviated even further from what is generically ‘South Florida’. Growing up Chinese American, this blue-collar, Cantonese-speaking community held their own set of values. While we didn’t have a centralized physical location, like a Chinatown or International District, we still casually knew each other. We generally prioritized service and family over love. By the time I left Florida in 1991, I knew precisely one Chinese couple who had gotten divorced. People stayed in loveless marriages.