I really tried to find something hopeful to write about in the news. I wanted to (I'm not always an Angry Poet, I promise!) But after seeing some of my students in other countries posting about how they're afraid to go out now because they've been verbally assaulted and harrassed simply for being Asian, and reading a couple of news reports about the surge of racism going on - I got angry. Again.
I lived overseas for over a decade, and their experiences resonated even across the years.
I'll try not to be angry tomorrow.
This is the news article I used:
https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/05/covid-19-and-xenophobia-why-outbreaks-are-often-accompanied-by-racism
i was 22 in america when a veteran walking down the street
screamed GO HOME YOU FUCKING JAP in my small college town (i am not japanese
even though i have been mistaken for one even by japanese people // when i worked in a hospital years later japanese patients always addressed me in their native language and all i could do was smile and direct them to the interpreter's desk in rudimentary japanese)
23 when police stopped me at a gas station when i
walked past because ‘there was a robbery earlier and the suspect was described
as being short, and dressed in a green overcoat like yours’ (perhaps my hair
marine-short and spiky made me look suspicious-bad-attitude-suspect i don’t
know ((they let me go after the owner said no not this one – this one / what
one / how many ones of us are there that look like me or do we all look the
same to you / ahh that’s the answer all asians
look alike one / can be mistaken for the other no big deal they’re all the same))
the same year a trucker stopped beside me as i was
walking home and asked HEY ARE YOU WORKING TONIGHT as if all asian girls walking
in the evening are prostitutes and hookers not daughters or mothers or wives going home
from work
the same summer the police trailed me as i walked the
2.5 miles to school in the blazing afternoon sun (if i were about to ply my
trade afternoon would not be the time to do it / nor would a large backpack
almost as big as my five-foot-frame be my choice of accessory) / they only
stopped when i crossed the road into the university (do asian girls not walk at
all unless we are soliciting customers / what do we do then if we need to go
somewhere bicycle bus ((but the buses are non-existent here)) drive but what if
we’re too poor to get a car / or fly)
welcome to america they tell you
what they mean is / welcome to america so that in
future
there is someone to blame
there is someone to blame
if something goes wrong (first the yellow peril now
this virus / china is a country a people a virus
((all of asia is china so these virus-people should be
eradicated))on immigration forms we are 'resident aliens'
not even the dignity of personhood
merely something foreign / another planet / to be conquered and subdued)
not even the dignity of personhood
merely something foreign / another planet / to be conquered and subdued)
welcome to america (the scapegoats are here rejoice
the whites will never
need to take responsibility again / not when there are people of colour to blame to stone to kill)
need to take responsibility again / not when there are people of colour to blame to stone to kill)
but first (before the gunfire the media crucifixion the xenophobia)
appropriate everything of the culture and call it [trendy
/ new / amazing // choose your own adjectives]
glorify the [exotic looks / submissive women / anime / food // take your pick]
i am a cultural accessory dangling from lips and arms
and twitter feeds instagram posts
here in malaysia where my ancestors settled they scream at us
GO HOME TO CHINA
GO HOME TO CHINA
but i have never been back to the village of my
ancestors in guangzhou
(there would not be a home for me there either ((unmarried
childless over forty / that’s what failures
are made of))
i am a virus but there were viruses before me
((that took over asian countries and people (my country
my people too))
but instead of a virus named after country of origin
(people argue that coronavirus should be china virus after all)
(people argue that coronavirus should be china virus after all)
it was named
(settle infect multiply take over in colonies)
colonization
10 comments:
Angry and rightly so. There were the Blacks, the Catholics, the Jews, the Asians. All had quotas, all were more or less despised. No welcome, just, get to work. Not brotherly love, welcoming of huddled masses, just bringing in poor sods to set to work and kick in the teeth when someone needed to let off steam.
Jane! I've felt that way a lot recently, more so when I see formerly confident students now all apprehensive and scared to just leave their dorms or their apartments. But it does remind me to be kind to others as well...
Really powerful, Shuku. A lot of lines stood out--here's one: "i am a cultural accessory dangling from lips and arms and twitter feeds." Memorable. You have a right to be angry, no apology necessary. Let it rip!
Thank you Romana! I think that's one thing I am trying to learn - that there's no apologies necessary in writing Angry Poetry, because for so long I wasn't comfortable with being outspoken (it used to land me in a lot of trouble irl!) I'm still finding my way there but I AM getting a little more unapologetic about it!
I blame patriarchy. It's not only individuals of color being mistreated, it's women and children as well of all colors, not to mention LGBTIA+. Not to say that white women of a particular ilk don't collude in the campaign of malignancy and willful lifelong indenturement that simultaneously destroys Mother Gaia in the process. I'm sick of the status quo, where white men own, control, exploit, and destroy at-will. I'm tired of soft-mindedness where orange despots have trauma bonds with rednecks who harass and kill. I'm tired of scapegoat mentality, yet here I am scapegoating the old white goats. Where will it all end?
Shuku sorry for the rant, but reading what you wrote has gotten me stirred up.
Jade, no apologies necessary! It's an Angry Poem, it's got strong things in it to be reacted to. I don't know that any of it will end anywhere, but at least for right now, perhaps if we're kind to each other, it might spread a chain reaction in these times when we need it so. <3
You are right to be angry. We should all be angry about such things. And everything has gotten worse since that horror became president.
I get so upset when I read the news--and hear people defend him. Despots like to find scapegoats to rally the masses--blacks, Jews, Asians, LGBTQ people, and on and on.
Merril, I worry a lot because my brother and sister-in-law are over there right now, and my cousins and a few family members. So far they are ok, thankfully, but it's always heart in mouth every time something happens in the news that's near them.
It's true that many Americans lump Asians into one big mass of alienness. One of my daughter's friends is always being asked where she is from. "Long Island". "No, where are you REALLY from?". Many people see only stereotypes. For all who don't look white enough.
And how even our president doesn't know that Puerto Ricans are Americans, just like Texans. He is spreading even more of this disease, the one that will really destroy the world.
Yeah! You're in such fine form. All that you say needs to be said again and again. And I don't know even a quarter of it.
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