When I was young, I saw my mother as a tyrant. Now I see myself in her photograph

‘We will never be equals; our conversations will never really be discussions between two adults,’ writes Yen-Rong Wong, in an extract from her new book, Me, Her, Us. Photograph: University of Queensland Press

I once found a photo of my mother as a young woman while I was trying to find photos of myself as a child. I was struck by how similar we looked – the structure and shape of our faces, the positioning of our hair and our facial features. I wondered what a colourised version of the photo would look like. When I mentioned this to my mother, she brushed it off. “Out of the two of you, you were always the one who looked more like me,” she said.

Mothers and daughters are destined to clash, but our run-ins with each other weren’t like the ones I saw on television