Invisible Invincible

Invisible is so close to invincible. In my sloppy cursive, they almost look the same.

I was taught to be invisible. Not just me. But my whole people. This whole people that I seldom yet constantly claim. Even after 40 years of China's one-child policy, this whole people are one fifth of the world's population. Han Chinese (that's me) are the largest ethnic group in the world. Only a people taught to be invisible can be the largest ethnic group in the world and still seem like a minority. Our faces blur, not only to western society, but also to ourselves.

Ourselves. For me, “ourselves” is culturally American and Chinese. In the classrooms where I teach, when Chinese families show up with their children, I eavesdrop on mainland accents of a language so old and familiar, yet foreign. When I try out my broken Mandarin, there’s an excited chatter of acknowledgement. "Ah! Ta hui shuo pu tong hua!" A bit of pride showing. And my westernized ego can't help but suspect that they are proud because "this Chinese language of ours is so great that this American-born woman can speak it."

Invisible. This not being able to tell our faces apart is caused by systemic racism, by unfamiliarity, by lack of understanding, isn't it? Is it also because we're taught to be invisible? 

On a train traveling north from Guilin to Beijing, there is a couple from a small nameless town. She is pregnant. She is also ill. Though Chinese couples show little physical affection in public, he has a hand on her elbow, she's rocking, and not only with the rhythms of the train car or the hard seats beneath them. She's rocking for her baby. She's rocking to the sound of an unknown voice calling. Were it years before, she might have heard the voice of Buddha, or heard the voice of her grandmother's grandmother, or God. Maybe God. But because it is today, she hears and rocks, but has no name for the voice. If she'd heard God, or her great-great-grandmother, she might have told her husband. She'd have told him where she was going.

In the hard-seat train car, the cheapest of the four classes of seats, the chickens are more at home than the bodies of people. Yet quietly, the people sit upright, or they squat on the floor. Cigarette smoke floats, instant noodle bowls trash the tracks, and a pregnant woman rocks. If she had known the voice, she might have told her husband. Maybe. Then he might have known, at a train station near Wuhan, to get off, to find some water. To ask for a doctor.

She rocks and rocks and rocks to sleep. A forever kind of sleep, the kind that forces her husband to grasp her body, more than just her elbow, her waist, her neck, her head as they swing low toward the ground. Her belly compressed and flattened in a way no pregnant woman folds. He wails. A cry for help? No. No one hears you, invisible one. We cannot see you, and we cannot hear you either. We cannot smell you or the urine in your wife's dress. We cannot feel your bodies even as they splay across your neighbors' laps, and across our own.

The man wails, not to God, not to his ancestors, they are no longer here. He wails. Not to his wife, she is no longer here. Not to the fellow passengers, who don't look his way, who shift and compress more tightly to adjoining train cars, sitting among the chickens. Not to anyone, just the small fetus, its sex still unknown. He wails to that fetus, who is still fighting the way all life fights.

If they were in a different country, if they had more money, if she had told him where she was going, maybe he would have held that almost-baby. It would be a girl. Conflicted though he might be, he'd still love her. And he'd raise her to be invisible, like her mother. Invincible. If you cannot see me, you cannot hurt me either. Invincible?

One in five people is Chinese, even more are Asian. But we cannot imagine one of these people could carry a major Hollywood film. That's why, we say, we found the best actor for the role, regardless of race, we say. 

My four-year-old daughter is hilarious, curious, imaginative, and talks circles around kids two years older. And she has not a performative bone in her body. She could care less if you know her powers. She's happy to hold them quietly and let the dumb kid sitting next to her get wowed and oohed for his hammy over-the-top participation.

My almost-two-year-old son is equal parts goofy and serious. He understands jokes. He is protective of his sister and mother. He also talks circles around some kids twice his age. If he doesn't feel like doing something, he doesn't do it. He doesn't care if the anonymous grown-up claps and laughs.

For their mother, this is a difficult thing to watch. Because the dark secret behind years of invisibility is wanting nothing more than to be praised for accomplishments. My culture values keeping the embarrassing parts invisible at all costs, and showing only the praiseworthy parts.

Look at how good I am, and tell me, and then I will shake my head, no. It's nothing, I am nothing. Compliment my children, and I will say, He is nothing. She is nothing.

I promised I would not let my children hear me say these things. She will know when I'm proud of her. He will hear me say it aloud. And I'll be curious about what things make them feel proud of themselves.

They are little tiny balls of truth. All babies and toddlers are, aren't they? Everything they do and feel is real and unfiltered. Can I get out of her way? Can I just observe him grow? Can I hold my tongue, my impulses for long enough to let them be invincible their way?

Hyde Park, Chicago

She's doing a tiny dance with her feet under the table, Dance for us! I don't want to right now, she says. He's singing to himself, Sing for us! I no want to sing, he says. The three-year-old me is dancing and singing, but for whom? She is smiling, but for whom?

For God? The voice of my great-great-grandmother? For swarms of adoring fans?

For grown-ups, husbands, boyfriends, cool kids, poor kids, unpopular kids, for boys and girls, who might like me more, if they only knew the praiseworthy me? I dance for everyone but me. Was there a time when it was only for me?

Do it for you, my daughter. Little, big, powerful you. Do it for you, my son. Little, big, powerful you. And I'll try to do it too. As long as you can see you. Invincible you. You will never be invisible.

Chris Rock Made an Asian Joke: A Confession, and My Thoughts

On Monday morning my husband and I were very romantically hovering over the bathroom sink, sonicare-ing our teeth, and simultaneously scrolling through Facebook on our phones. He paused the vibration of his toothbrush to say, "looks like people are pretty upset over Chris Rock's Asian joke?" He was asking me, because while he was busy prepping for a week of classes on Sunday evening, I will confess that I was watching the #OscarsSoWhite with a dear friend. I admit this sheepishly, as despite my quiet outrage at the fact that no actors of color had been nominated, I looked forward to passive night of viewing awards for movies I haven't seen with a glass of wine and the treat of female friendship post-children-in-bed time.

I'll admit something else. I wasn't paying enough attention at that point during the show to recall what the bad Asian joke was. So, I had no answer for my husband as his toothbrush resumed buzzing.

But I wanted to have an answer. I wanted to have an Asian American answer. I immediately started to ask myself if I had been a bad Asian. Where was my outrage? How did I miss that moment? Am I offended? Should I be? I am an Asian artist. I am a writer. I should have an opinion. This is precisely the moment I need to chime in.

I went back and watched the clip of the joke. If you know me well, it won't surprise you to hear that I have been Asian my entire life. I have encountered racism in various forms over the course of 36 years. Sometimes the form was a joke. Some made me laugh, some did not. Sometimes it was a comment, a situation, a declaration. Sometimes I felt angry, blood-boiling, fire-in-my-face mad in the moment. Sometimes it took years for me to realize the sting. Sometimes it came from a dear and close friend. Sometimes from a stranger on a bus. Sometimes the form was flirtation. Sometimes it came from the parent or grandparent of a friend, of a boyfriend. Sometimes it came from a superior, a teacher, a director.

I watched Chris Rock's joke again. And in the midst of trying to formulate my perfect Asian answer to what I ultimately consider a poor choice that hurt rather than furthered the cause for actors of color, it hit me what I was feeling. And what I was feeling wasn't anger at a racist joke. What I was feeling can more accurately be classified as protective mama-bear horror as I witnessed the faces of three young children, who I have a strong sense did not understand why they were on stage.

Do you think they know why the grown ups are laughing?

I imagined my daughter in their shoes, dressing up, being quiet, hitting her mark (or missing it in the case of the little boy in the middle), and standing still in a Dolby-Theatre-sized room as the laughter of grown-ups creeps up from the audience. My heart is saddened, and there's anger behind my eyes. In addition to seeing and hearing our children, I believe it's our job to protect them, not only from physical harm, but from the psychological and emotional harm that being the butt of a joke they don’t understand can harness. 

I’m saddened and angry because we live in a society where the lure of 15 seconds of fame is stronger than parents' protective instinct against exploiting our kids. And laughing at kids' expense, when they have no agency in the matter, while their brains think concretely and they don't yet perceive the difference between the nuance of a joke and real life, that's exploitation. While we're asking how such a joke got past so many people, based on its racist content, I'd also like to ask how it got past so many parents, how it got past these kids' own parents, based on its exploitation of children.

Those are my thoughts. Today I'm furthering the cause of artists of color by giving myself not just the (per)mission, but "the mission" to use my voice. I am an artist. That I am also "of color" is an added descriptor due to where and when I happen to exist in history (a predominantly white country in the 21st century). Today I contribute to the conversation, which I'll argue is the only way to combat any “fill-in-the-blank so white" situation. I join the conversation even though today I was moved more by my mother identity than by my Asian identity. Alternatively, I don’t need to wait until something happens that involves Asian Americans, to lend my voice. I can lend it anytime, whenever I have something to say. Maybe the more I, and other people like me, join the conversation, and wake up our quiet outrage, the less likely our society will be to allow, or even imagine a joke that relies on the cooperation of silent, obedient, Asian kids. Let's make it so that silent Asians aren't even "a thing."