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.

I Belong Here

I woke this morning in the dark; I wish my kids understood the beauty of "falling back" for daylight savings time. My body left warmth on the sheets of my bed, my lungs breathed in some autumn chill, and I thought to myself, I belong here. It's the same autumn morning I woke to as a child, when my father, wearing a tie, would kiss me goodbye before going to work at Ford Motor Company, his silhouette appearing  and the hallway light drawing a long bright triangle into my dark room. This morning, my children ran through the hallway, creaking the 100-year-old floors, their feet bap-bap-bapping, echoing in our dear neighbor's hallway on the floor below. Our neighbor was still in bed, where she would remain for a couple more hours. She smiled sleepily at the bap-bap-bapping, in the way only an 89-year-old woman who misses her own great-grandchildren can. She heard my children's tiny feet, and I thought, I belong here.

My son and I took a walk to Lake Michigan, just 2 blocks from our home. The water sprayed against the large rocks as we made a loop along Promontory Point. It shot high into the air making a sparkling wall. "I see water!" my son said. It's the same water I swam in as a child, camping in Michigan state parks along the Great Lakes. It's the same water my college friends and I dipped our feet into, as we watched the sun set late on summer nights in Western Michigan. My son and I scrunched our noses as the lake misted our faces. I belong here.

Promontory Point, Hyde Park, Chicago

Earlier this year, in the summer, I spent a few hours on a warm day with my children on the beaches of St. Joseph, meeting a dear friend who was visiting her family in Grand Rapids. The sun kissed my skin the way it kissed the skin of those around me, it left it pink and warm and tender to touch. The fresh water splashed and wrapped around my daughter and me, and we squealed. I belonged here then. I belonged in the sun, the way the sand belongs between our toes, the way it settles in and remains in your pockets for days, in the rug of your car as seasons come and go. I belonged that way.

Late last Wednesday night, I held my breath and my heart beat faster with millions of fans in my city and around the world as the Chicago Cubs opened the 10th inning and it started to rain in Cleveland. When they won game 7, clinching the World Series, something inside me erupted with joy, just as the car horns, hooting, and singing outside our windows erupted with joy. And I felt, I belong here.

Recently, I walked down Michigan Avenue, leaving a voice lesson in the Fine Arts Building, the oldest place for musical study in the City of Chicago. I rode the rickety elevators. I belonged as I shook back and forth, watching the different floors go by quickly.

I walked down Michigan Avenue and watched as every person in front of me dodged the pamphleters and signature gatherers and petitioners and election ballot-ers and grassroots movement-ers. I watched them sway away, pretend to be on their phones, shake their heads sorry, I don't have time right now.

I slowed my walk, attempted to make eye contact with three different eager grassroots millennials ready to change the world. I smiled their way, I welcomed them with my body language.

"Do you have time for equal rights?"
"I do!" I practiced my cheery response.

But they don't talk to me. They raise their gazes above my head, to some potentially supportive ally behind me. I slow, I wait a moment. They don't talk to me. I didn't feel like I belonged then.

We went to our neighborhood farmers' market. I sat at a table eating a pizza. I wasn't looking at my phone, I'd left it in the car. My husband had brought our kids down the row to another stand for ice cream with sprinkles.

I was surrounded by tables of people, a young white college couple, a group of elderly black women, a black man and a white woman with their two children, and a lone white man in his twenties, dressed in black with painted nails, and me, an Asian-American woman, eating a pizza with an empty double stroller parked next to me.

A woman approached each table, with a flyer advertising her art show. "It's for art and social justice," she said; "there will be live jazz music," she said; "activities for kids," she said; "it's a free event," she said. She approached every table, to every person, to every single table, except mine. My best phone free-ing, pizza eating, eye contacting, didn't convince her that I was worth a flyer. The empty double stroller next to me didn't signal to her that I belonged here.

My face, like the faces of Michael Luo, Tiffany Martínez, Adam Crapser, and Tammy Duckworth, signals to some that I don't belong.

Where do I belong?

Not in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Xiamen, where I trip over words, where my sun-tanned skin signals that I must be poor or uneducated. Not on the streets of Chicago's Chinatown, where, hugging my elbows into my body, grasping the broken handles of a shopping basket, I am jostled by Chinese folks both young and old. I hold my breath in the smaller circles of personal space, and the American in me feels violated by the jabs and nudges. I can't bring myself to offer a lower price than the one advertised. I say over and over in my mediocre Mandarin, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I use the phrase in an American way, like "excuse me, pardon me." But it doesn't translate. There is nothing to say in Mandarin when you bump into people in public. I don't belong here.

Do I belong in California, where I lived for seven years, where there are "more people like me"? More Asian Americans, both children of immigrants and those whose families have been here for three, four, five generations. They would ask about growing up in the Midwest. Were there other Asians in your town? Did you feel alone? I thought back to that first day in my freshman year in Kalamazoo, MI, when I walked into a vocal jazz ensemble rehearsal. I remember when someone giggled nervously because she thought I'd sing with an accent. I remember when I was told that singing might not be for me because wasn't it true that my parents would prefer I study something more academic. I remember when a music director said to me, "hey stand up, and open your eyes!" when I was already standing and my eyes were already open. And when I didn't laugh, "Lighten up, Lynnette, it's a joke." I remember a high school boyfriend's grandmother who thought I was "just ugly." And another boyfriend's dad who joked he should have ordered egg rolls before having me over.

I remember the people who said things that hurt and made me feel like I don't belong here. There are more than I could ever count or completely recall. Sometimes they were mentors, classmates, colleagues, friends that became like family. People say things that hurt me in California too. Where do I belong?

I belong here. I belong here in the Midwest, where my mother birthed me, where I grew up to be me. I belong in the Great Lakes that bathed me and that now bathe my children. I belong in the parks where my family went camping, in the rivers where we went canoeing. I belong in the cities where we helped build some houses, where we watched fireworks glowing over the water, where we helped served soup on Thanksgiving morning. I belong in the grass where we played soccer, where we burst water balloons, on the hills where we sledded, in the yards where we built snowmen and igloos, on the streets where we learned to ride our bikes. I belong here, my children belong here.

I will continue smiling as I walk down the street, as we American Midwesterners do. I will say good morning. I will thank those who tell me my English is good. If I have time, I will explain why my English is good. I was born in Dearborn. I will kindly respond in English to men who try to flirt by saying "konichiwa" or "ni hao." I will attempt to talk in mediocre Mandarin when I encounter a person who feels more comfortable speaking in Chinese. I'll continue planting my feet in this earth, stomping around, leaving parts of me where I go, because I belong here.

On Tuesday, I'm going to cast my ballot for the next President of the United States. I will vote because I belong here. My vote is one small step toward making this a place where fewer Americans have to feel like they do not belong. I belong here today, I will belong here tomorrow.

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."

[Miss] America

Musing on how to combat the hateful ignorant tweets...

Uh, you guys, why is Miss America green??? 

Today's news stories were filled with reports on Nina Davuluri's Miss America win, as well as the aftermath explosion of unspeakably hateful and embarrassingly grammatically incorrect, ignorant tweets.  I am mad.  I am sad.  I want to meet one of these tweeters, and then I want to punch him/her in the face.  I have had a lot of dark thoughts in response to these tweets, not the least of which was imagining a beautiful day in the future, on which the last of these hateful, stupid people dies out. 

I let myself go to that comfy dark place, where I vigorously spew out equally hateful energy back at the tweeters, for a good 10 minutes.  But then, I stop.  Because if any of this is ever going to stop, it has to stop with me. 

And I’m inviting you to join me, all you people like me - all you loving, thoughtful, open-minded, progressive citizens of this beautiful country we call the United States of America.  I'm inviting you to first spend whatever time you need to punch a pillow, scream atop a mountain, stab a few needles into an ignorant racist doll... and then I'm inviting you to stop, lose the hatred, let go of the anger, and instead use all the energy to fuel something better.  Because if it is even possible for a time to come when a good day for a non-white American doesn’t result in an explosion of hateful tweets, it has to begin with us.  We have to change the way we think and act in reaction to this kind of ignorance and hatred.

I don't blame the news for reporting on the tweets.  I'm grateful that they are shining a light upon the darkness, and I'm glad it’s given me the opportunity to see how there are so many people who are infuriated just like I am. 

But I believe for every sad story, there’s a happy one.  For every hateful ignorant tweeter, there is another kind of person.  A person who after watching Miss America may have chosen not to tweet his/her thoughts, but who came to see America in a new light.  Maybe it was a little white girl who saw for the first time that beautiful American women come in all different colors from all different backgrounds.  Maybe it was a little Asian American girl who got to see an American who looks like her on television.  

If this story has a happy ending, it has to start with us, and our children.  The only way to reduce the number of ignorant hateful people, is to increase the number of well-informed loving people.  It means we don't just pass on this anger we feel to our kids, we pass on our love for all people.  It means we share our history, good and bad, and we talk about how we're a country made up of people from all over the world.  It means we have a globe or a map in our homes, and our families grow up knowing the names of different countries, but seeing that we’re all a part of the same world.  It means that we choose not to only surround ourselves with people who look just like us.  We stop using words like "us and them."  We stop calling people who are not like us “weird.”  We stop rolling our eyes when we talk about the importance of diversity, and we seek it out.  We seek out people who are unlike ourselves; we acknowledge and celebrate our differences, and allow beautiful friendships to grow out of our commonalities. 

We stop the people we love when they say things that are fueled by hatred or ignorance, and we lovingly correct them, we let them know humbly, that we don’t have room for statements of ill will in our homes.  We stop laughing at hateful jokes; we clarify misunderstandings.

And I'm not just talking to my white friends right now.  I'm calling upon my friends of color to stop the cycle.  I'm calling on you, my Asian American friends, because you know that our parents are culprits.  I’m picking on you because I can only speak from my own experience.  Let’s not sacrifice our children and the future of our country by allowing hatred to perpetuate, for the sake of “saving face” and “respecting elders.” 

I am going to put these hurtful tweets behind me, and I am going to move forward firmly in love.  If my daughter has any chance of growing up in an America where "our children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" (thank you Dr. King, I realized that what I was trying to say, you had already said perfectly), then it has to begin again with me.  I hope you'll join me.
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America - today's blogpost title is a song from the musical West Side Story, the lyrics of which may be apropos.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

Musing on why my minority family loves the great outdoors...

Glacier National Park - from our trip there in 2010

Last week, I read about how The National Parks Service is trying to make themselves more appealing to non-white Americans.  And I thought to myself "Hm, for as long as I (non-white American) can remember, I have found National Parks to be quite appealing."

Then a couple days after that I read about why outdoor activities are appealing to white people and not to minorities.  And I thought to myself, "Hm, why are outdoor activities appealing to me?

And so today I find myself reflecting on the circumstances that lead my own family to become the nature-loving, yearly-camping, National Park visiting, mountain hiking, despite being non-white Americans that we are today.

My family is ethnically Chinese, but my parents immigrated here to the United States via the Philippines.  Ethnically Chinese people make up about 1.6% of the Philippine population, and about 15% if you include people of mixed Chinese/Filipino decent.  I didn't know that before, I just learned it from a wikipedia page about Chinese Filipinos.  I have more to say about being Chinese from the Philippines, but maybe I'll save some of it for another blog on another day.  For now, I'll just muse on how I think it played a part in how my family came to love the great outdoors.

I think it began with my dad, who moved Iowa to begin grad school in 1972.  He was 23 years old.  The thing about Iowa in the early 70s is... there were not a lot of Chinese guys from the Philippines.  Actually, there probably still aren't very many.  But back then, my early-20s-dad landed in Iowa and was immediately surrounded by people unlike himself. 

I note this because it seems like basic human nature to notice when you feel out of place.  If you're used to being around people who look like you, you notice when you're surrounded by people who do not.  The NYT article opens with this implication, that few minorities choose to visit National Parks because they don't perceive it as something that minorities do. 

But what happens when you aren't used to being surrounded by people who look like you in your daily life?  What if, like my dad in 1972, you're the "only one," the only person from where you're from, who speaks your native language?  At first, I think you start to find the similarities you have with the people around you, similarities beyond your background and language.  And second, I think you begin to acclimate to a new status quo.  You no longer need to be surrounded by people who look like you in order to feel comfortable.  And so, I think it was this ability of my dad's, to find comfort in uncomfortable situations, that led him, and the rest of my family into the mountains.

And it didn't stop with our nuclear family.  When my grandparents came to live with us in the mid 80s, we acquired an additional tent, and an air mattress to accommodate their elderly backs.  When our aunts and uncles and cousins visited from the Philippines, we borrowed a family friend's Dodge Ram Van, piled in, and hit the State Parks of Michigan.  And in the following years, we acquired a canoe, a kerosine lamp, a bug zapping lantern, a portable stove top, better flashlights.   We figured out how to put tarps underneath our tents so we didn't get wet during the night.

And it's this quality in my dad that kept us going back each year.  He's genuinely curious to try new things, and stubbornly patient when trying to figure something out.  There might have been times when a tent was unruly, or was missing an important piece.  There were times when it rained the entire day and he had to set up our tents and start a fire while getting completely drenched.  He never got discouraged; never hinted that something couldn't be done.  He looked at each problem and calmly found a solution.  And we kids internalized that.  We've all grown up to look for solutions, to never assume that something can't be done.  I don't think this was even intentional on his part.  He didn't create "teaching moments."  He never sat us down and said, "when there's a problem, look for a solution."  We just watched him figure out how to do stuff, and one day found ourselves doing the same thing. 

We love National Parks.  We've visited nearly 40 of the United States, as well as much of Canada, all by car.  Traveling to our country's most beautiful spots, and standing and staring in wonder and awe, is something we've been doing for as long as I can remember.  And there's no question in my mind, that it's something our family will continue to do, for generations to come.  

So I guess if I were going to share my two cents with The National Parks service, I would say... try to appeal to people's innate curiosity and sense of adventure.  This curiosity can be found in people of all colors and backgrounds, universally.  Get kids (all-the-colors-of-the-rainbow kids) into a national park to witness something mind-blowing, and those kids, whatever race they are, will want to pass on the experience to their own families and friends.  The truth is, there are also plenty of white people who are completely intimidated at first (my husband may or may not fall into this category) by traveling in the great outdoors.  How do we make National Parks more appealing to them?  I think if there's an answer to that question, it will likely increase the number of people, from majority and minority backgrounds, to climb mountains, ford streams, follow rainbows, 'til they find their dreams.  ;-)
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Climb Ev'ry Mountain - today's blogpost title song encourages a young and curious Maria (pre-Von Trapp) to follow her dreams in The Sound of Music.