Reimagining Tarot with Elizabeth Su

This article is part of Mochi’s fall 2024 issue on Resilience, redefined as “finding agency in adversity and fighting for radical change.” We highlight the strength of individuals and communities and their courage in dismantling systems of injustice. Our hope is that you will feel the strength pulsing through these stories and that you also are inspired to pair resilience with actions that lead to real, necessary, and revolutionary change.

As a 15-year-old, walking through Borders bookstore (RIP) at Stonestown Mall in San Francisco, I remember picking up my first tarot deck. Being brought up in a household where we revered our ancestors on altars and burned incense to show respect, of course I’ve always been a spiritual person who believed in guardian angels and higher beings. Perhaps those are the reasons I picked up the tarot deck that day – to have more of a connection to my life.
Growing up in the early-mid 2000s, there wasn’t much diversity in the creators and writers of mystical or astrological media. Most astrological books and tarot decks were created by white authors, and I truly craved a tarot writer who looked like me.  Nowadays, there’s a bit more variety within creators and authors in the tarot deck and spiritual guide space. I was intrigued when Elizabeth Su’s TikTok popped up, picturing her crying, with the captions “your idea has to be marketable,” “tarot people DON’T love camping,” and went on to document her tarot creation journey. After seeing an Asian woman vulnerable enough to post a video of her difficult tarot deck publishing journey, I felt compelled to follow alongside her journey.

Su’s The Adventure Tarot was released in March 2024, and I got the opportunity to chat with her about her background and the tarot release.

Su, who is half-Chinese and half-white, grew up in a small town in the Midwest, with few people who looked like her and even less exposure to Chinese culture. Aside from the occasional dim sum, there was no acknowledgement of Chinese New Year celebrations, or that red was considered a lucky color, or the taboos over the number four, which in Chinese sounds similar to the word death. Growing up in a predominately white population, she recounts there was only one other Asian kid in school, and they were ultimately forced into different social hierarchical groups. Only one Asian kid was allowed in the “cool group,” which left Su in the “nerdy group.” Facing bullying and racial trauma, Su tried to minimize her Chinese identity to fit in.

Eventually, Su would go to work in corporate America, where she found herself burnt out and frustrated with the long hours and nonstop demands, even working while sick up until the day of her wedding. She knew she needed to free herself of the shackles of corporate life and decided to leave and pursue her coaching certification. Su went back to school for her master’s in clinical psychology and studied the effects of perfectionism and burnout, which helped build the foundation of her current projects.

Su set out to write a memoir, but had issues finding an agent due to the gatekeeping in the publishing industry. Lacking support, she considered self-publishing, but at the last minute, she was connected with her current agent, who understood her and her story. After reviewing her memoir, Su realized her writing was “catering towards the white gaze.” With no mention of her race, she knew she wouldn’t be able to publish her memoir with integrity, and ultimately placed it on the backburner. She turned her attention to something that had always piqued her interest – a modern-day tarot deck that she and others could relate to.

“Because the tarot came so intuitively to me, I think part of it is the way my brain works, just being neurodivergent in its own way,” Su shared. She had seen tarot decks that were created for Asians, but couldn’t identify with them because it didn’t reflect her experience as an Asian American woman. She wanted to incorporate her experiences as an Asian American woman, of living a nomadic life, and of feeling at home while in nature. With flexible remote working abilities, she and her husband decided to pack up their lives and move out of New York City. They traveled around the United States, venturing into different cities and small towns for two and a half years. While on this trip, Su and her husband, who is also Chinese from Hong Kong, experienced racial microaggressions ranging from stares to people proactively avoiding them on nature trails.

With reflections of her childhood and recent travel experiences, she set out to create a fresh, modern tarot deck focused on the Asian American experience. However, when pitching to publishing houses, Su received rampant racist feedback. Publishers worried that the idea was too niche and the deck wouldn’t sell, or that Asians wouldn’t be able to relate to the idea of enjoying the outdoors. If there were any doubts from previous publishers that an Asian American centric tarot deck wouldn’t sell, Su has mangled those doubts and found a willing publisher. 

I personally bought the deck when it first came out and, at first glance, it’s aesthetically wonderful, with gold edges and a hologram-like front on the cards. When flipping through the cards, the first thing I noticed is that the illustrations were relatable to things and people in my everyday life. For example, “The Sun” card has a girl with long dark hair, and a sun hat facing a sunflower field, and it instantly reminded me of a picture from my cousin’s Instagram feed. 

Jenny Chang, the illustrator of the deck, was introduced to Su by her agent. Within minutes of meeting each other, Chang understood the assignment, and a beautiful, creative partnership began. It took two years for everything to come together, with Su providing pictures from her nomadic travel and other inspirations, and Chang translating it with her creative personality and spirit. As a nod to the Asian American audience, there’s little Easter eggs throughout the deck such as incense or a boba drink drawn on some of the cards.

Within a tarot deck, one can ask for guidance from their spirit guides or a higher being to help solve the matter at hand. While creating the deck, Su compared the usage of a tarot deck to her life story. “I think it gave me a lot of freedom to be able to write what I wanted to say, in these discrete vignettes. Without having to set the stage and share this about my life and make it make sense. Because I feel like so much of my life has been nonlinear. And the things I have to say don’t always go together. That was a really good medium for me.” 

Instead of saturating the market with another self-help book for those looking for life’s answers, Su hopes the tarot deck can provide insight for people from within themselves. When someone is looking for answers within The Adventure Tarot, Su hopes they would be able to “practice and embody that self-compassion or that breaking of the rules, or it helps them actually develop their intuition and connect to these different parts of themselves and learn how to embrace all aspects of the journey.”  

Elizabeth Su is currently working on another sassy and fun new project coming out in 2025. Learn more about her at elizabethsu.com and follow her on Instagram at @heyelizabethsu.

Images: Courtesy of Elizabeth Su