What My Bones Know is notable for exploring the topic of Trauma and Silence in Asian American Communities. Stephanie Foo finds it unfortunate that despite enduring and surviving traumatic experiences, refugees and immigrants from Asia often refuse to speak of their past experiences. As people with unacknowledged and unprocessed trauma, they occasionally perpetuate destructive behaviors in their interactions with their families, including their children, resulting in a traumatized, anxious, and equally silent second generation. She discusses her father’s family’s background and history as ethnic Chinese Malaysians and how they persevered through personal and social upheavals. Indeed, Foo claims that most immigrants and refugees who arrived in the United States from Asia between the mid-19th and 20th centuries lived through some degree of traumatic experience. A brief survey of recent Asian history—with a focus on the Chinese Malaysian experience—from the colonial period to the Cold War illuminates this claim.

Many Asian immigrants to the US came from countries that suffered under European (and later Japanese) colonialism. This includes, for example, the Indian and Vietnamese communities. Malaysia, as a hub for seaborne trade between India, the West, and East Asia, has also been touched by colonialism.