Category: Written Pieces

by A. Liu

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Honey milk. Only now as a working adult have I heard of the supposed wonders of a cup of warm milk with honey at bedtime. Insomnia? Indigestion? Cough? No problem. A cup of warm milk with honey at bedtime will cure all, my patients tell me.

This initially baffled me. Growing up in a Chinese family, I have always associated healing remedies with bitterness. After all, we have a saying “ku kou liang yao,” which quite literally means “good medicine is bitter to the taste.” Even now, years later, I still remember being subjected to bitter concoctions whenever I had a cough. “It’s good for you. Ku kou liang yao,” I was always told. I endured it. Maybe it helped. Maybe it didn’t.

But now as a medical professional, I know that it likely did help. The Chinese view of medicine is different from the American view of medicine and even the bitterest of American medicine cannot compare to the simple Chinese brew for cough and cold. But it is not only a difference in taste; it is a difference in ideology. Chinese medicines focus on healing the cause; American medicines focus on healing the symptom. Despite their differences, though, they can work together, as they did in me.

I was not one of those children blessed with a strong constitution at birth. My lungs were weak, resulting in frequent bouts of coughing, wheezing, and general lethargy. My American pediatrician diagnosed me with asthma, provided me with the standard slew of inhalers for asthmatics, and sent me on my way. Back then, rescue inhalers possibly saved my life more than once. But thinking that those were not a permanent solution, my mother introduced me to Chinese herbs. They were, to say the least, the least favorite part of my daily life. I can’t say what was in those bitter concoctions, only that they did eventually work. My use of inhalers decreased precipitously and soon, I was playing dodgeball and kickball with no problems. Nowadays, I still carry my inhaler with me and faithfully renew it every year, but other than during seasons of cold and flu, I thankfully haven’t had problems with my lungs since grade school.

I have been fortunate to experience the best of both worlds. True, American medicines and Chinese medicines work differently. The effects of Chinese medicines might not be seen for weeks to months, whereas American medicines can work in minutes to days. American medicines can be honeyed milk, sweet and soothing; Chinese medicines are frequently bitter to the point of nausea. But despite the differences, they can work together, meld together in a person. Am I American? Or am I Chinese? Honey milk? Or bitter medicine? Does it matter? I’ll take them both.

by Ushrayinee Sarker

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In the story of the Mahabharata, there was a young archer named Ekalavya who went to the great master Dronacharya to become his disciple. Drona refused, as he had a duty to teach only the royal princes and this boy was of lower caste.

Not to be dissuaded, Ekalavya built a clay idol of Drona and treated it as if it was actually his mentor, and practiced archery until he was a master at it.

One day one of the crown princes, Arjuna, was in the forest hunting when he came across proof of Ekalavya’s skill: Ekalavya had come across a dog and irritated with its barking, quieted it by stuffing its mouth with many arrows; enough to quiet it but not enough to hurt it.

Arjuna sees the dog and is intrigued, seeking out Ekalavya and asking him his secret. Ekalavya says his master is Drona, surprising and infuriating Arjuna. Arjuna angrily demands answers from Drona, asking why a more talented archer claims to be his student.

Dronacharya approaches Ekalavya out of curiosity. When he sees Ekalavya’s skill as well as dedication to him through the clay idol, he believes Ekalavya is a superior archer to Arjuna. He asks Ekalavya for his thumb for Guru- Dakshina, the mentorship fee. Though complying would rob Ekalavya of his ability to use a bow, he obeys without question.

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four fingers and a stump, always bleeding

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pinky: was i born a stillborn, ma? because that’s all i feel like nowadays

cold and small

my lungs are full of fluid and my mouth full of arrows and i don’t know how i can ever scream again.

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ring: he asked for your thumb and you gave it to him, didn’t you

you tried to slice it clean but the knife always sinks down jagged, doesn’t it

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middle: call me the bitch by the side of the road

mouth forced agape with sharp headed points embedded in my

blaspheming tongue

heavy heart

but not a drop of blood to show.

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index: senseless death: the drought never seems to end

parched brown soil

curled upwards in thirst

inwards in shame

an archer without a thumb

an artist with no beating heart

a girl with no sense

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thumb: i put myself out of my own misery

by Stephanie Tran Rojas

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There was a game I played when I was young. Only at night. Only with my brother.

We watched the cars go by our house and listened to their engines—waiting, for the one coming home to us. It was a game where we pretended we were asleep by curfew. It was a game where we could see when our dad came home from work. I could hear his loud sighs. I smelled the lingering grease of the kitchen and strong smell of alcohol on his breath as he came to give us good-night kisses without fail, even though he thought we were asleep.

“Daddy, tell me a bedtime story?” is not something I asked my father growing up. Leisure time for fantasies were reserved for those who can afford to daydream. Instead, our family fought and conquered in the concrete jungles of urban America.

Working until ten o’ clock, his black kitchen uniform hid the sweat and grease, but not the alcohol taken as soon as work ended. Coming home with new burns and cuts on his hand and recurring pain in his back, he still starts everyday over like clockwork. We are not a family to pass down physical trinkets, but loaded histories. Through our heavy sighs, enraged family fights, or financial hardships, our daily lives become a clear transcription of tribulation. We pass down grief and anger through the generations, but also the intense vitality and inventiveness of survivors. We also share the pride and strength of a mighty people.

Someone once told me, “You’re Vietnamese? They’re an angry people.” And my tongue caught in my mouth as I tried to say, “you don’t know anything” while I kept hearing the old sound of the couch screeching as my father dragged my grandma out of the house. She clutched onto the furniture for dear life. His voice vibrated up through the walls to my second-floor room as I cowered on the ground. I wanted to defend my father’s integrity, but couldn’t deny the injustices he committed under the influence of anger. This total stranger hit the nail on the head. In ignorance, he had voiced a dangerously accurate statement on the emotional baggage of the family in my memories. The waves of anger kept swelling up in my memories and poured out into the crevices of me until I drowned in them.

But it has become a part of the family tree. The poisoned water fed the rotted roots. The foundation unstable and creaking with every passing gust of wind, but after so many years those signs of self-destruction became all I could attach to. This home defined the boundaries of what I knew existed, so I embraced it wholeheartedly. It started in Vietnam, maybe earlier, but festered again and again when my father’s family had to flee during the war. They ended up in a refugee island in Malaysia, and then the United States.

Originally, my dad wanted to risk his life. He wanted to join the military and fight for a cause he believed in. He grew up surrounded by lush, green rice paddies that stretched across the land. He was an active, bright child and this scene was part of “home.” To allow those fields to continue stretching without end or interruption from the war, he wanted to fight. But he was never given the chance. My grandfather had prevented him from enlisting because he was the youngest, even if he could be the bravest. Instead, he had to run to the U.S. It was a time new to Vietnamese people, where everyone was delegated Chinese for convenience, and racial slurs and tensions where palpable in the streets of Philadelphia. It was when my father had friends who went to jump people of different races in the streets for violence’s sake. In Pittsburgh, his hopeful college degree in Engineering was traded in short of his senior year to help the family in the West Coast. He gave up chasing his dreams for raising a nephew and working for the family. He didn’t know—couldn’t know—better as a young twenty-something year old.

They say war is fought twice: once in the battlefield and once in the mind. I see that battle in my father’s heart. I have seen him crawl through the trudges of bombshells after the divorce and watched the premature deaths surrounding him during graduation. Now, he stands solemnly at the service of the fallen without the spoils of war.

What does it mean to be the daughter to this history of pain?

Talking about his once opportunity-laden past, I sense the seas of sorrow he is drifting within and want to throw over a life jacket. I want to pull him out of the past and the regret, remove the yearning for a better life. But my arms could never span the decades or continents of regrets that haunt him. How could I reach him on his island of resignation?

So instead of talking about his past, I hoped to give him my future. I decided to build a bridge between our lives that gives him another quest for glory and the excitement of ripe opportunity.

I could give him my life, I thought. Use my future as my token of gratitude for his sacrifice, feeling that it was my duty as his daughter to at least give him this. I would bring home every achievement I thought he could yearn for and hoped he would one day be satisfied.

But eventually, I felt the full weight of that price. It was more than a straight A’s, extracurricular groups, or a great university and career track. It was waiting for a fulfillment that never arrived.

The bridge to his heart was built offering my own, not any certificates, plaques, or acceptance letters. Who knew a day together could outweigh a stack of annual achievements? On drives for groceries, the long highways stretch out before us and nostalgic music we both know fill the air. We sing, we critique, and we silently enjoy. He holds the steering wheel casually, with only his left hand and sits back into the seat. On the drives home, my left hand reaches for his free right hand, and I feel his sense of peace. His palms are large with muscular fingers and countless scars. True working hands. From chemical burns, to knife cuts, to machinery accidents, his hands show a full account of injuries. Regardless of the soot and soil collecting, his hands remained warm and steady. They are a childhood com- fort of mine. Our hands together are a worn piece of leather wrapped around a new piece of plastic. Within that mix is comfort and guilt, value and privilege packaged simultaneously and now at peace.

With each moment we shared together, his wall crumbled and his softness peeked through. I saw pieces of a once sensitive, emotional boy, the once hopeless romantic, the once cocky upstart, and the now tired man regaining vitality.

His healing became my salvation. I could lay down the black smoke pressing down on my shoulders, and it became my foundation to stand, transferring me from weighted to weightless. As I progress, I can straighten my back, relax my shoulders, puff out my chest, and look up.

by Samantha Fu

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there’s a family, somewhere– a mother and a father and their children, two brothers who roughhouse and tease each other but never seriously mean it. the father still throws football with his children in the yard and their mother still leaves notes in their lunches. there’s a family. they still have dinner together. the father says pass the salt, honey and the mother asks her children how they’re doing. after, the father sends them off with a clap on the back and ruffling of hair and the mother kisses them on the top of the head. and because they’re children they complain about being too old for that but they still say i love you, and good night.

my father cooks. he’s not a verbal man, prefers the weight of action to the spoken word. it’s just the two of us, swallowed by the expanse of this empty house but every night he fills it with paprika and cayenne, thyme and basil, scents that weave in the air and color our house. clever hands dice vegetables in a blur of motion– traditional zhá jiàng miàn and dàn căo fàn, tāng yuán when i’m feeling down and my favorite xiăo lóng bāo on my birthdays. i don’t see him in the mornings but there’s always something left on the counter for me– xiăo m ̆i, or clementines (but only three, because he knows i’d eat all of them). small gestures, but ones that speak just as clearly.

by Alice Shen

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My cousin drives me to the train station; the surrounding area blurs into one ambiguous color while the wind whips my hair. Behind us, the sun is rising, illuminating something new.

***

I want to cry when I find out that I’m going back to China.

And it’s not because I have something personal against Communism or the culture-rich history—it’s more like I don’t like the heat, and not to mention the fact that air-conditioning is almost as rare as iced-water, which is all I want after liquifying into a puddle of sweat and cells in this unfamiliar place.

Americans think of China as Mao Zedong’s face. The Bird’s Nest, the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Great Wall of Chi- na—powerful and iconic. As quaint villages with dirt roads bordering rice paddies—peaceful and idyllic. All of which are featured in the photoshopped pictures of the glossy travel China guides depicting a place that I’m sup- posed to know like the back of my hand. The reality is that I only know three words in Chinese: “hello,” “thank you,” and the classic nod. Simple things. Little things. Enough to get around.

But, it’s not enough when I visit all the family in the lao jia with the traditional houses without any air-condition- ing or running water where they feed me zong zi because I’m too skinny and say things to me in a language that is incomprehensible; and it’s not enough when I see my aunt for the first time in ten years and my aunt is crying and even my dad is crying (and he never cries) and when she holds my face, I can only stand there and study the soft wrinkles adorning her skin, unable to say anything back; and it’s really not enough when I’m spending my last night in the lao jia and I’m about to leave and never see my relatives again for another ten years or so and while they’re saying that this is my “home,” that they will always have a spot for me, and that they love me, I’m fighting back tears while I just do the classic nod and smile and think…

About America. I think about the movie theatre where I went on my first date and the park where I spent my Sum- mer nights. I think about the mall that my mom takes me to and the mountains in Colorado where my sister lives. Despite all the love China has to give to me, I don’t return it because it’s not America, and it’s all too unfamiliar. Maybe that’s why I want to cry.

***

And for a moment, on this desolate road in a village that gentrification has not yet claimed a victim, I close my eyes and escape from existing in a place, and, instead, I exist in the enclave between noise and quietness, speed and still- ness, America and China, and I’m lost in that moment of feeling—really feeling that familiar feeling—of home.

When I open my eyes, the sun is shining on my home.

I hug my cousin one last time before I get on the train and leave it all behind, except not really because I have souve- nirs and memories—the distinct scent of camphor wood, the bite of burning incense, the tender love of family. And there’s one more thing.

With stars in her eyes and stripes lodged in her throat, she says in her best English, “I’m going to America. Next time we meet, let’s meet in America.”

I nod and hug her tight one more time. “Come home soon.”

by Rachel Feinberg

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On a toasty summer afternoon, Dad’s side of the family makes an hour-long drive to my house for a small BBQ. Uncle, Mom’s only relative in attendance, and two of Dad’s sisters huddle around the corner of the kitchen counter, heads bent together as though in conspiracy. A Filipino man and two Jewish women, two halves of my life that are disconnected, like a crossover episode between a sitcom and political thriller. It doesn’t seem like it’ll work, but it somehow it does, because I am here and my sister is here and we’re okay. I am nineteen, fresh into college, and my sister is fifteen, neck-deep in high school politics.

My sister is biking through the quiet neighborhood with our cousin, and I’m watching the Hernaez-Feinberg crossover episode from a sofa in the living room. From my vantage point, I can only make out the centerpiece of their murmured conversation: a plastic container and the dark, cloudy liquid inside. Uncle gestures to the container, probably describing the leftovers of a Filipino dish he made in the afternoon. Curiosity glows on my aunties’ faces. Whatever’s inside, they’ve probably never seen it, and I’ve grown up with it. I don’t know all the names of the Filipi- no recipes that populated my childhood, and if Mom or Uncle ever told me, I’ve forgotten.

Then I overhear one of my aunties say, “That’s a huge egg,” and the low chuckle of my Uncle. He almost sounds evil.

I wander over, unfamiliar with huge eggs in Filipino culture, except for a particular egg, and I don’t think this is that egg because America doesn’t sell it. Or…maybe it does. Surely Asian supermarkets have it.

Uncle withdraws a dark shelled egg from the murky liquid and holds it over a plate. It’s dripping water, and something about its largeness strikes me. I can sense its fullness, like there’s life inside and if he cracks it open, a chick will fall out.

“Is that the pregnant egg thing Mom talked about?” I say, my gut starting to crawl. Confusion spreads on my aunties’ faces.
“It’s balut,” Uncle says.
“The pregnant egg thing.” Oh no.

“Fertilized duck egg.” Uncle cracks the shell it’s not what I expect. Years ago, when I looked up balut on the internet, the photos showed an embryo, a mass of slimy goop in the shape of a baby duck. Gray, sightless eyes. What comes out the egg is something feathery.

A tsunami rises in my stomach. The aunties lunge backward, hands flying to their pale faces. I can’t hear anything as I stare at the thing that Uncle puts onto the plate. My brain rejects it, refuses to form a memory around this.

“Oh my gosh,” an auntie says. I can’t tell which one. Maybe it’s me.

My aunties stare for several horrified seconds as Uncle talks about how balut is a street food in the Philip- pines and how it can be prepared in different ways and how he prefers to eat it. In voices light as helium, my aunties ask about animal welfare and diseases. As Uncle answers, they get paler and paler, and then they excuse themselves to use the restroom.

“You’re going to eat that?” I say. The tsunami hasn’t quite settled in my stomach. I tell myself this is Mom’s culture. This is my culture. I shouldn’t be repulsed.

“It’s very good,” Uncle says. “Pregnant women eat it to make their babies smart.” “Are you pregnant?” I say.
Uncle laughs and throws away the egg shell pieces.

Dad comes over, smiling casually, and confronts Uncle about scaring the crap out of my aunties. He wrinkles his nose at the sight of the…duck thing, and though his face is calm, I know he’s pissed by the tension in his gait. In kinder words, Dad tells Uncle to quit screwing around. Uncle smiles, and I have to wonder if he whipped out the dead birdy on purpose.

While Uncle apologizes, his words interspersed with low laughter, I go to the backyard where Mom hangs out with another of Dad’s sisters and her husband. They’re BBQing chicken and steak on the grill.

I wait for a gap in their conversation about my cousin’s middle school pursuits, then tell Mom, “Uncle’s eating balut.”

She sighs. “I told him to wait.”
“Well, he did it and Dad’s pissed. Did you eat balut when you were pregnant with me?” I say.
“No.” Mom smiles.
“Good, ‘cause I was going to say it didn’t work.”
Mom pushes on my head, making me tilt my chin to my chest. It’s her way of playfully scolding me.

Years later, when I ask if she ate balut while pregnant with me, she says, “only the outside part. The liquid, not the duck,” and I will be disappointed. And years from then, I will ask a Filipino exchange student if she had ever eaten balut, she will say she tried but it was too disgusting, and I will be happy.

by Valerie Wu

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Start from 0:00, “How I Grew Up as an Asian American.” I realize that there are “visuals” in this world, roles for the individual in a society based on aesthetics. I recognize that I do not fit into any of them.

Advertisements on the television screen say that I need to lose weight, be whiter, have harder edges. When relatives speak to me at family dinners, their voices are acidic. Lose some weight. You’re not pretty enough. You’re not tall enough. My skin soaks all of it up like a sponge, except there’s no cotton pad to dilute it. They tell me to use an ex- foliator. I want to peel away the bits of me that aren’t good enough, or that appear like they aren’t necessary. I scrub and scrub and think that someday I can be beautiful too.

At home, I read articles on “How to Achieve K-Beauty Blogger’s ‘Glass Skin,’” and then I borrow bottles of foundation and BB cream from Korea. I keep hydrated. I wash my face twice daily, try to pinch the fat parts off. The girl on the screen says that if I follow all the instructions, then I can have glass skin too. You can see right through it; it’ll be transparent.

Every day, I see videos of beautiful Asian girls online, at least five inches taller and with better skin. I see beauty that comes from how smooth your skin is, or whether part of your jawline is reduced. I plaster tape on my eyelids to create folds. I buy a face roller, become devoted to it with an almost alarming intensity, just like the girls on my screen do. I start thinking that if I work hard enough, I can be like them too.

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At sixteen, I come home and listen to my playlist, a combination of beauty videos and K-Pop songs. I paint my nails over my biology textbook. I start learning about yellow fever and fetishization; I wonder if I can only be attractive in the white gaze. My friend Carolyn comes over on Friday nights, and we talk about the girls in SM Entertainment, whether Taeyeon is really prettier than Yoona or how much better Seulgi would look if she would just cut her eyelids, or at least sew the folds together. We watch beauty videos, thinking about whether we’re “Asian” attractive or “American” attractive. We pour tanning oil down the sink as a way of “deconstructing” beauty ideals, but we talk about aesthetics as if they aren’t mere judgements of beauty, but judgements of ourselves.

“I wish my mom had let me go to Korea when I was twelve or something,” I tell her, “then I wouldn’t have to study for the bio test. Or I wouldn’t have to study at all. I could just look pretty and be on ads and stuff.”

Carolyn laughs. “You’d still have to lose weight and get plastic surgery.”

by Mika Rao Kalapatapu

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In her book, An American Marriage, author Tayari Jones says, “My story may begin the day I was born, but the story goes back further.” My American story began with my father. He immigrated to America in 1968 as part of the wave of students and professionals from India and other Asian countries after President Johnson signed the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. This law marked a major break with previous policy by eliminating quotas based on national origins. After he married my mother four years later, she joined him here, becoming the first member of her own family to cross the ocean to the great American unknown.

Like most of their peers, my parents gravitated towards other families who had also emigrated from India and our weekends were spent mainly with them at picnics or cultural shows. Most often, we’d gather in a family friend’s house – kids playing ping pong or watching The Love Boat in someone’s basement, coming up to join the adults only when they called us for the steaming, elaborate Indian meal. You could see how the adults relaxed in each others’ company, a welcome break from the norms of American rigidity and a solid replacement for their parents and sib- lings thousands of miles away.

But my own life was marked by fitting in to my American experience. I was a chatterbox with a “terrible American accent,” as relatives remarked. I attended a Baptist pre-school and in the absence of much orientation to my family’s Hindu traditions, took to discussing the story of Baby Jesus with visitors to our home. I didn’t bring up my culture or religion with my friends and neighbors and was able to blend seamlessly into their family lives. Occasionally, par- ents or teachers would ask me questions about what a typical Indian meal was like or something about our customs. Most of the time, their reactions led me to avoid these conversations in the future. It was better to be American, not to emphasize difference. I attended bar mitzvahs, had a date to the prom, and tried to extend my curfew – just like all the other teens I knew.

But college life brought with it a shift. By now, I was attending a school with a large South Asian American popula- tion. Like my parents discovered as immigrants who sought out those who shared their background; I found myself drawn towards those whose parents had come from India and grew up American. As a freshman in college at the University of Pennsylvania, I participated in my first candlelight vigil. The vigil was organized by the campus South Asia Society in solidarity with Dr. Kaushal Sharan who was beaten by a gang known as the “dot-busters” in Jersey City, just because he was from India. I identified with this group of South Asian Americans who were asserting an emerging option for our community. You didn’t have to be Indian or American. You could be both. We were both. But – in my heart – I felt we were mainly Americans, with all the privilege, opportunity and value that held.

Over the next 20 years, I made many choices that proved that assertion. I was part of a student group that helped to found the Asian American studies program at my University. I formed a non profit organization dedicated to getting out the vote among South Asian Americans and highlighting the contributions of this community in the United States. I prioritized marrying someone American, but of Indian heritage. I continued to emphasize my American identity, believing that it was clear to others that I was not an immigrant but an established part of this nation. I bought into the false choice about the value of that distinction.

Meanwhile, around me, the demographics of the South Asian community in the US had shifted – almost without my realizing. The 1990 Immigration Act updated the 1965 law and made it possible for a new wave of immigration among highly skilled workers (mostly in the Information Technology field from India). From the late 1990s through the 2000s, communities saw a rise in new immigrants from South Asia. As I was raising my own children in subur- ban Houston, our neighborhood was experiencing an influx of immigrants and the distinctions between this group and us seemed stark. As this population grew, I found myself asserting the American side of my identity.

And then, the 2016 election took place after a season of anti-immigrant rhetoric. I can’t say I was unaware of the comments or biases about these new American communities, but the results of the election came as a shock. In 2017, three Indian Americans were shot based on their country of origin. First, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an immigrant in Kansas City, who was spending time at a bar with a friend – was murdered by a man who thought he was Middle Eastern and told him to go back to his country. Next, Deep Rai who was shot in his own driveway by a man who reportedly also told him to go back to his country. Then, the murder of Harnish Patel, a well-loved shop owner in South Carolina – ironically in the same state that elected second-generation Indian American Nikki Haley as their Governor.

These words, “go back to your country” come as a knife in the heart to any immigrant who gave up so much and worked hard to enter and build a successful life in the American world of freedom, opportunity and democracy. But that phrase, “go back to your country” cuts differently to those of us who cannot go back to our country. Because, brown as we may look, and while we try to cook the dishes our grandmothers taught us or dress up in saris and take pictures– to my generation, we were American at our core. As the child of those who immigrated, I did not come – I started out here. American born and/ or raised, this is the only country I considered home. And then there were my children– third generation Americans by this point – for whom India is a mythical, storied place their grandpar- ents tell them about, but for whom there is no dual nationality, just pride and comfort in the American way.

As my children grew in leaps from babes to tweens and teens, the country had too. Regardless of the xenophobic sentiment we were experiencing, it seemed like South Asian Americans were forging ahead nonetheless. Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal – Indian Americans from very Southern states – were elected Governor and appointed to national cabinet roles. Sanjay Gupta was on CNN every night, and the CEOs of Microsoft and Google had hard to pronounce Indian names like we did. To top it all off, a 2020 Presidential candidate named Kamala Harris, with a mother who immigrated from India, just as mine had. Surely, my kids –growing up in the same Houston neighbor- hood their grandparents had moved to 40 years ago, could not be considered outsiders by any stretch.

And yet, to some they were. In the wake of the divisiveness and anti-immigrant mentality, distancing myself from the new Americans targeted by the President’s proposed laws and values no longer felt okay. How many years a per- son had spent building the American dream or how many generations ago the seeds were planted for their American identity were immaterial facts to perpetrators of hate crimes. Author Brene Brown wrote, “You either walk inside your story and own it, or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” Consciously or unconscious- ly, I had been engaging in a lifetime of hustling to demonstrate my American worth.

It was time to own my story instead.

I am the daughter of immigrants. My family was among many immigrants that came here in the 1960s and 1970s and we stand in solidarity with today’s new Americans. It’s been 50 years since my father entered America. It’s been 24 years since I first stood up against hate crimes towards South Asian Americans. In the time since, I’ve mobilized, I’ve celebrated, I’ve fought, I’ve blended in, I’ve stood out, I’ve spoken up and I’ve sometimes stayed silent. I’ve championed and volunteered to support low-income communities, immigrants and refugees. I’ve learned to become proud of the pieces that make me who I am. Not just the American upbringing that’s just like everyone else, but also the deep and complex Indian identity that informed it, the scrappy immigrant mentality that echoes in the deepest portions of my mind, and that union with others who are new, and eager and hopeful.

by Meghana Nallajerla

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When I was six years old, I would hide under the bed in our house in Cyprus, waiting for Appa to come home from work. It was our daily game of hide and seek — he would walk into the house with a loud “helloooo!” and I would quietly giggle in my hiding place until he could find me. Sometimes I would fall asleep waiting, and Appa would pick me up and tuck me into bed without waking me.

Amma always says that when I was a baby, Appa was so concerned with my safety that he would temperature-test my milk. At times he would even taste it, an act simultaneously laughable and disgusting to my mother, to make sure I could drink it.

My earliest memories of my father are happy. They are filled with the sunshine of Cyprus, of playing on seesaws and learning to tie my shoes.

When I was sixteen, long after we left Cyprus and moved to the United States, I co-organized a protest against rape and sexual violence. It was following the 2012 gang rape in Delhi, which received attention in both the Indian media and diasporic circles. Structural gender-based violence, particularly against Dalit, Muslim and trans women, is an issue that is still not acknowledged in mainstream Indian media or international networks. The attention and outrage the 2012 case received was thus unique, and informed by many factors including the brutality of violence and the caste, religious, and class positionalities of both the victim and the perpetrators. In my own journey of coming into my feminism as a teenager, the 2012 incident marked the first time in my life that I saw, in the South Asian-American communities that surrounded me specifically, an acknowledgement of sexual violence.

But these discussions were incomplete at best, and oppressive at worst. Among other things, there was an “othering” of the violence, an assumption that sexual violence existed far away in South Asia and not in our very own diaspora. As if brown children in our communities or brown relatives in our homes were never capable of being perpetrators. It was in this context that a small group of high school South Asian-American girls, including myself, decided to hold a vigil and protest.

Amma was extremely supportive from the moment I discussed the idea with her. I had run into her room with a great urgency, knocking so rapidly that she opened her door with a towel hastily wrapped around her, hair dripping and face fresh from the shower. “Whatever you need, I’m here,” she said. “Let me know how I can support you.”

In contrast, Appa posed questions. “Do you need to do this? Do you need to organize a protest on this issue of all?” He was not pleased. I requested he attend, if not to support the cause, at least to support me, although supporting the cause meant supporting me and supporting me meant supporting the cause. But we did not discuss this.

How could the same father, who wouldn’t even let his child drink milk without testing it, become apathetic when it came to the issue of patriarchy, an issue that so deeply affects my existence on a daily basis? This is a question that puzzled me back then, in the weeks following the event.

After school ended and as I prepared to leave for college, Appa sat me down for a chat, to tell me that I could always call home. “We would rather you call us if you need something. Even if you think you did something wrong, you can tell us,” he told me. “You can always tell us anything.”

Last fall, I watched as the name “Kavanaugh” became a news headline. I watched my world burn with rage from survivors, with their trauma, with compassion and pain and grief all mixed together. It was a world that I had known existed for a very long time. A club I too was, and am a part of. It came alive in a way I had never seen before, and I watched on with both trepidation and relief. A world that I had known existed, that many people had known existed, revealed itself for the first time to the larger, outside, privileged world that was ignorant of it. Many of the men in my life, including Appa, were a part of this privileged world.

Sitting on a plane to Colombo that week, where I now live as part of a 9-month fellowship, I came across an article on my newsfeed about survivors who disclosed sexual assault to various people around them long before they considered disclosing to their own fathers. It was a way that children carry a sense of responsibility towards fathers, the article claimed, protecting them from their own children’s experiences with patriarchy.

I sent Appa the article before the plane took off. “I have been watching the news…” he replied back, almost immediately. “But is there anything I need to worry about?”

“Nope, nothing to worry about” I told him. “Let’s talk later, maybe.”

But we didn’t talk about it again.

I love my dad. He loves me. He remains one of my biggest supporters — he reinforces my work and my choices, and encourages me to look at the bright side. He always, always tries to give me access to things he never had growing up. But that doesn’t mean he has been the best ally or shown up for “the movement” in ways I had hoped he would. In fact, he has been far from it, more than I care to and am able to admit.

The complexity of loving my father but feeling like he is a bad ally is hard to vocalize, especially as a brown woman in the diaspora. South Asian experiences of gender are diverse and in no way a monolith, varying across caste, class and religion. But in my personal experiences of South Asian culture, we are not meant to name our experiences with violence or the shortcomings of our own parents.

My father comes from a family that erased our names off of the family tree after my parents had only a daughter and no sons. A family that believes women taking a cab alone at night invites sexual violence. As much as he may try, I fear that deep down Appa’s notions of gender are still rooted in these narratives.

Additionally, as the diasporic daughter of immigrant parents, I carry a constant expectation to embody gratitude for their sacrifices. And when our South Asian community is already marginalized by white supremacy, would I be adding another burden for my parents to carry by exposing them, not to things they didn’t imagine existed, but perhaps things they never thought I would experience? Would I be disappointing them, because the promised safe haven they thought they would find for themselves and their child, is actually nonexistent? Because even after all of that struggle and sacrifice, their daughter still somehow experienced violence.

But perhaps the most frightening part of having this conversation is not only cultural but also personal. When I think back to organizing my first protest at 16, I was really doing it for myself, because I was already a survivor at that time. If I were to disclose this experience to Appa, would he be supportive of me? If he didn’t even want to come to a vigil for a survivor of violence, how would he respond to my having experienced it? Could he even take a perspective sympathetic to my perpetrator — because as a man, at the end of the day, that would be easier for him? Even the thought of this, in addition to an already difficult and painful experience, is one that I do not have the strength to endure.

What does it mean for a parent to love their child, but not be an ally? For families to profess love for their children while simultaneously rejecting our politics and struggles? Can a bad ally still be a good parent?

These are questions that I grapple with constantly. Part of me is still like my six year old self, waiting for Appa to find this side of me, to hold me and comfort me about what was undoubtedly one of the most difficult experiences of my life. But unlike my six year old self, that was so incredibly sure that Appa would come home and find me, I am not so sure this truth that has shaped a majority of my life is something he would take so gently into his arms.

by Melissa Tolentino

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What it’s like to find your identity through food, and the experience of being a hungry and confused third culture kid.

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i

We begin where it always does: with the mother.

My mother makes chicken adobo most of the time because I don’t like the spareribs kind. Over the years, the recipe has changed a bit. Recently, she’s started to mix tamari gluten-free soy sauce with the aggressive Filipino soy sauce – a light with a dark to create a twilight sort of dressing. It has a good sheen to it and tastes even better.

Sometimes, she uses just the wings. Sometimes, it’s thighs and drumsticks. The onions are always soft, translucent. The longer you leave it, the more the flavors mix – it’s the dish that keeps on giving, right up until the day you can no longer eat it.

Adobo goes fast on my plate. It taught me to remember where my stomach calls home, no matter how many places it has been to.

For me, a home-cooked meal is less about whether or not it feels homey and more about where the tastes of my life have led me. Adobo, my mother’s flavor, has always brought me the knowledge that I’m purely a child of the diaspora. I only know the Philippines through her and my father and my aunts and uncles who immigrated and the collective experiences of my American-born cousins, and our dream of the country is wildly different than how it actually exists in real life.

Ours is milder, brewed with spices and sauces of a different nature. Ours knows where it came from, but sings differently on the tongue. Ours is quiet but tangy. Ours gives us a language that isn’t quite English or Tagalog. Ours knows it can never go home in quite the same way.

ii

In my late twenties, I am plagued by the fear that I have celiac disease, because why have just regular run-of-the-mill anxiety when you can have health anxiety?

At night, I lie awake and think of all the things I’d never be able to eat again. Bread, which means sandwiches and subs. Pasta, which means lasagna and literally half of everything good in this world. Breaded things, which means the majority of my diet. Soy sauce. Eel sauce. Panko. Pastries. Cakes. Pies. Love. Dreams. Happiness.

I think about all of that, and I think about having to start my life over, and how suddenly my past would not only consist of fond memories of people and places, but also food I could never eat again. How much my life would change and how I would have to re-forge my relationships: my brother and I, bonded through hot wings and whiskey. My wholehearted dedication to my dad’s ketchup-slathered fried Spam and eggs with rice, which is now the only way I can eat eggs, Spam, and rice. My childhood in New Jersey, framed by Capri Suns and Rita’s strawberry ice. My entire life, peppered with my overwhelming love of Japanese food.

Japan is where I truly discovered that my taste buds were meant for glory, or perhaps where my adolescence convinced me of that. I grew up with Japanese food more than any other kind of cuisine and it has always been my comfort food. From the first time I moved to Japan when I was eight to the fourth time I moved there when I was twenty-two, I have always felt closer to the flavors of Japanese cooking than I have to anything else. Adobo reminds me of my family; Japanese food constantly reminds me of all the myriad ways I’ve changed amid all the little ways I’ve remained the same.

Most of my recipe repertoire consists of Japanese food, because life led me to Japan, and I dug a hole there and laid a part of myself in it to rest for eternity. Tonjiru, pork bone broth, reminds me of every time I wanted a hug from a person but couldn’t, so I got one in a bowl instead. Tempura (real tempura) brings me back to that alleyway restaurant in Sasebo that I went to almost every weekend, where the chef dipped shrimp in batter and then dropped it into a river of oil, all right in front of me. Onigiri rice balls remind me of slugging through grad school in Tokyo, as does a plate piled high of karaage chicken and fried curry bread with a half-cooked egg in the middle.

Some people say that their lives are a storybook, filled with chapters they haven’t yet written and chapters that can never be revisited again. That’s nice. But my life is a kitchen full of stacks of plates and bowls, towering high to hold me up above the tables where the memories of my well-eaten, well-loved life simmer and nourish.

iii

My least favorite kind of food is naked food, especially naked meat. I don’t enjoy roasted or grilled chicken that is skinless, boneless, and spiceless, because you could just as easily fry it or stew it and it would be juicier and tastier. I prefer my pork chops breaded and then put to bed over Japanese-style curry and rice. I don’t like plain burger or chicken patties, because that just screams “I was too lazy to make this into a proper meal.” Even steak has to be dressed in some way, though I’d never stoop so low as to eat it with ketchup. Give me a nice chimichurri sauce or some horseradish.

The bottom line: give me color. Aside from the fact that I just don’t find the taste of the meat alone appealing, it seems so lonely to me. Why have just a patty or an isolated slab of grilled chicken when you can give it friends? It could be a party. Why not make it a party?

Maybe I missed the mark on roast chicken the way I missed the mark on many “American” things growing up: getting a driver’s license at sixteen, drinking in high school, not being raised for the majority of my adolescence overseas on a naval base in the Pacific.

Roast chicken is dry and flavorless, which is often how I feel about being American – in the context of white-centric America. The way I see it, the United States is more about all the things we are other than just being “from” here or being born here. I’m all about hyphens and mash-ups and knowing your history because my America is all about other peoples’ histories coming together in a mashed-up, hyphenated state of being. Which is also the way I feel like chicken should be: glittered and jazzy, not naked and pale.

I will never understand how people can throw away chicken drippings when it’s the best part of the dish. America is the chicken and everything else we are—everything else I am—is the savory goodness. Filipina, yes. Navy brat, yes. Third culture kid, definitely yes. Gimme a whole bowl of that.

iv

When people ask me where I’m really from, it’s not just annoying and rude and racist and exhausting, it’s also a long story that I don’t feel like telling. Any part of it has to follow with an explanation:

Oh, I grew up in Japan. Are you Japanese then? No, I’m Filipino. So you were born in the Philippines. No, I’m American. I don’t get it.

I speak Japanese. So you’re Japanese. No, I’m Filipino. And born in America. Then why don’t you speak Tagalog? I was mostly raised in Japan. Uh, okay.

It has always been easier for me to build my bridges with food, whether it was talking to people about the Filipino dishes I based my childhood on or the Japanese cuisine I embraced in my most formative years. Everyone understands the connection we have with what we put in our mouths, how we seek certain flavors so much they become an integral part of our lives. It’s evident in our language, in the words we say: that is the bread and butter, the beans and rice. He’s a snack. She’s as sweet as honey. I’m as sour as vinegar.

So let me say this instead to the eternal damned question of where are you from: regardless of whatever else I am, I am definitely full. I’m constantly full of life and of gratitude, because of all the rice I’ve eaten that has come from my loving parents, from the too-salty adobo my brother makes, from all the embutido my grandmother puts on my plate after she carefully peels off all the foil. I’m full of all the hey-remember-whens that my best friend and I share about Japan and food: remember when we ate 20 pieces of gyoza before going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, remember when we baked a cake with four pounds of chocolate in it, remember when our entire four months of study abroad in Nagoya revolved mostly around an izakaya that had only meat skewers served by cute boys. I’m full of the joy of discovery from my senior year of college, one of the best years of my life, because I had a job and discovered restaurant week and duck confit and how my friends that year were going to be my friends for life. I am full of the joke I share with everyone that someday, I hope someone proposes to me with a chicken nugget.

The only identity I’ve ever been able to fully accept, one hundred percent, is that of being a third culture kid – someone who grows up between, and among, cultures without ever really belonging to any of them with any true certainty. I could never, would never, call myself Japanese, but my heart, my stomach, will live and die in that country. I am Filipino, but only in the way my family has taught me to be so – in our food, which has always been the lifeline of any diaspora. And I am American, because I’m confused, and I eat too much, and I love it.

v

The kare-kare goes very, very fast at Tolentino holiday parties.

My cousins and I eat it like we are never going to eat anything again as long as we live, which may be true, as karekare has a lot of fat. You can even see it when you stir the stew: glistening slices of pork fat, so juicy the light makes it look like they’re winking at you. We eat it until our hands are sticky and the pork bones are dry.

I used to hate kare-kare. I thought it was gross. It’s a stew of peanut butter and pork, for God’s sake, and I assure you that if God ever went to a Filipino party He would have it out of politeness, but still wonder where He went wrong. Even the vegetables in it – the squash, the green beans – turn brown. The whole thing is literally brown sludge.

But you eat it – you take a piece of jiggling, winking pork in your hands, and you slide it into your mouth, and the fat and the peanut buttery sauce slides down your chin – and everything changes.

It’s not sludge. It’s manna.

And at the end of the Filipino party, after God has had His fill of the stuff, He does not resist when your tita hands him a Tupperware of it. He blesses her. He says, salamat po. He goes home and He does not share with the angels. He eats it in one sitting.

(On the eighth day, God created the best cuisines of the world, and made sure only those whose ears He whispered into knew the recipes.)

vi

For a long time I used to hate having to explain who I was. I thought I was gross.

I was a stew of unrelated countries, for God’s sake, and I assure you that if God ever had to look back on what He’d done with me, He would have been like, “I don’t really know what happened there.”

What happened is that I found that my love for food spilled over into a realization that I knew exactly who I was, I just hadn’t been digesting it. The magic I’d found in simple ingredients and ingesting different cultures through spices and leaves and batters and broths had transformed into my identity in a way I wasn’t expecting. To me, eating is some kind of unabashed and joyful experience that goes beyond nutrients. To me, it’s finding a place in the world. It’s connecting all the parts of me I didn’t think had a common thread for.

Eating kare-kare is all about my cousins – Angelie and Regina and Erika and Andrew and Derick – and me sitting around a table, our hands slick and greasy, quiet but for the mad chewing as our moms and dads, our aunties and uncles, talk around us, about us. Every nabe-style hot pot I put together reminds me of surviving razor-sharp Tokyo cold snaps with Massiel and how we have been tightly bound together for the past eight years with nothing but memories of eating and drinking and planning our lives around food. Avocados, heavy in my hands, bring me the lightness of remembering college, of the time Lucy and I tried to ripen one in an oven when we had just become friends.

I try to plan for the future, too. I ask my parents how to make adobo so that my someday-children will know the taste of a home that I don’t really know myself, but have still come to cherish.

Every meal I have is just another grain added to my food pyramid of a lifetime decorated with bowls and spoons and peppers, culture and bay leaves, chopsticks and rice cookers, people and places and names and hearts and hands and hearths.

vii

We end where it always does: with the child. I’m twenty-eight now and still hungry. I eat less to survive and more to figure out how to get my tongue to send a message to my heart, one that says whatever is on my plate at that moment is a keeper. My eating habits are not so much about nutrition, as they are a representation of my history and all the places that I’ve chosen to call home.

The Philippines I know exists on a plate, and in my family. The Japan I know exists on a plate, and in my heart. The America I know is a long supper table with many chairs, all immigrants and children of immigrants, with the most dressed-up, glittery, jazzy roasted chicken for everyone.

This is my life. It’s brewed with spices and sauces of a different nature. Knows where it comes from, but sings differently on the tongue. Is quiet, but tangy, with a language that isn’t quite English, Japanese, or Tagalog. It knows it can never go home in quite the same way, but that’s fine. I’m already at the table, eating my mother’s adobo and all the other food I love, and so I am already home.

by Samreena Farooqui

**may contain sensitive or graphic content

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Three vignettes about unknowability and displacement.

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stranger

I am standing there waiting for the train when he walks up, and when I see him next to me, the red stain on my lips seeps first across my mind as I reflexively take account of myself. That’s what I get for not having headphones in. That’s what I get for wearing makeup. That’s what I get for looking happy and forgetting entirely to put my bitch face on. The first thing out of his mouth is a question about whether I speak Spanish. They always think I speak Spanish. They barely ever know my true native tongue even exists.

I can’t leave, not with the big sign overhead blinking imminent (not imminent enough) arrival, and it is impossible to ignore him while I wait here. I could ask him to leave me alone but somehow that seems riskiest of all. He hasn’t been disrespectful at all though, so I decide that I should try to engage. The realization immediately strikes me that underneath everything, I feel like I owe him my time for simply not demeaning me right off the bat. That bludgeon is swiftly followed by all the faint attendant shame of feeling this sentiment at all. What an affliction. And so, for the rest of these uneasy moments, I am pinned with sharp, icy tacks to the air in that space, while I attempt to carry out my decision.

When I confirm that I can speak English, he asks me what my name is, and I refuse to answer. I tell him I don’t give out my personal information to strangers. The refusal feels like a transgression. He says he’s no stranger, and I dis – agree; and when I disagree, he argues, for several moments of back and forth as I insist in return. But that’s why he’s a stranger. A person who knew me would know better. He is a stranger and so am I. Stranger and stranger. His line of questioning then deviates to where I’m going, and when I nod in negation, he starts throwing out guesses. Am I coming back from work? Am I going home? Am I going to meet a friend? He retracts that guess as he thinks a little harder: no, you’re not going to meet a friend, you look too nice for that. My boyfriend? I contradict every conjecture and offer no other positive clue. I did not ask to be deduced, not in front of this dangerous chasm and in fact, not at all.

A low rumble rapidly crawls on its metal legs east towards my pinned form and culminates in a piercing gust of wind as train car after train car slides into its proper place in front of us. I step into the car immediately in front of me, hoping he isn’t going the same way as I am, but of course, I am not so fortunate.

Taking the seat directly across from me, he inquires about where I’m from. El Salvador? Guatemala? Always the Cen – tral American countries first. I’ve heard that before and I tell him so. He asks if I’ve ever been to New York, if I’m from the Bronx, and I, in turn, ask him why he thinks I might be from the Bronx. He tells me I look like I’m from the Bronx. Like my name is Crystal. When I inform him that neither is the case, he asks me if I am Latina. I tell him I am not, and he is skeptical, but he stops asking me anything, as if he couldn’t possibly think of another race I could possibly be. He doesn’t ask me anything for the duration of the trip, which fortunately has only one more stop remaining for me.

I turn all of this over and over again in my head for weeks. I think: my god, I should have let him believe I couldn’t speak English. No, no, of course not – you could have opened yourself up to a hate crime, if not from him, then from another bystander. I become a scale, built to weigh the possibility of gender-based street harassment against the possibility of a racially-motivated hate crime. This is the case despite the fact that he could not figure out my race. I have found that that is when people are most prone to this kind of thing, to reflexive nativism, to clutching their land while my own has slipped out from under my feet. For them, the unknown has become even more unknown. Even still, there is a distinct comfort in knowing that the divination of myself must be earned. I try to balance my relief with my alarm with my disdain with my unease. It takes up what is probably hours of my life, far longer than the initial interaction itself, to divine what I owe strangers on the street in the future.

And when my stop arrives, I leave a stranger.

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sever

That’s the thing about unknowability and the subsequent falling through the cracks. The

universality, despite the contradiction. When I am

walking through the world, I am

unknown and unknowable.

A contemporary translucent and opaque.

I invite inquiry without opening my mouth; my existence

a question without interaction;

immiscible.

No seeking necessary.

But when I seek – oh, when I seek :

it’s the fucking same.

And as I tell you,

they will presume you are the cracks themselves.

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cw: violence, hate crime, lynching, mass shooting

compactor

I decide when I’m 14 that I am not a Muslim anymore. It doesn’t fit and I don’t know that I ever truly believed. I always feared there might be a god, but that’s no way to live. I hide it from my family for seven years. In 2010, I hear about Asia Bibi, the non-Muslim woman accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death by hanging. I hear about the assassinations of two public officials, Shahbaz Bhatti and Salmaan Taseer, following their support for Asia and public opposition to the blasphemy laws. I hear about Salman Taseer’s murderer gaining the public support of 500 imams for his murder, and about the shower of rose petals his supporters rained on him on his way to court. I hear about the protests that rise up when this man is sentenced to death for the crime of murdering a governor, and I hear about his funeral being attended by 25,000 Pakistanis, and I hear about his grave being turned into a pilgrimage site. I hear about Mashal Khan, suspected of blasphemy and consequently stripped naked, lynched, thrown from the second floor of a building, and shot by a mob under the eyes of 20 policemen present at the scene who managed to intervene only before his body was set on fire. I fear these people, who were supposed to be my people, more than I ever feared god.

I find myself in leftist spaces. I need these spaces, and desperately. But it is difficult to get these people to understand. They don’t truly know the wave upon wave of colonialism that my homelands have gone through. The only kind they recognize is European. I think about how adults would pinch my wide nose as a child to make it look less South Asian and more Arab. I think about the time I was told my eyes looked Arab, and all the other times a feature of mine was called Arab as a way to compliment it. I think about how Pakistanis boast about and uphold supposed Arab ancestry, even when they have no evidence, because they think it makes their lineage closer to the prophet and therefore to god. The way our sense of racial inferiority and distance from divinity sits upon our shoulders when we bow our heads west, the mandated five times a day. When I bring up the various predicaments of non-Muslims in Muslim-majority countries, the people in these spaces wave my concerns away even as they proclaim their attempts to be more cognizant of the world outside the West. Or they argue back blindly, as if I don’t already know all of their objections. They think even turning their heads to look will make them complicit with white supremacy and white conservatives. They don’t want to believe or admit that this is a problem. My people are dying. These were supposed to be my people.

I find myself in atheist spaces. I need these spaces, and desperately. Again and again, I find animosity directed with great focus on Muslims. The people in these spaces don’t understand the conditions that have led us here. They don’t truly understand the poverty, the daily violence you get acclimated to, the history of being subjugated again and again until you’ve been erased. I see their unworthy idols advocate for racial profiling and frame our struggles as some sort of war with the civilized West on one side and Muslims globally on the other. I think about the drone strikes the country of my birth has been subjected to for upwards of a decade now, about all the different geopolitical pestles it has been mortar for. I think about the fact that, where I was born, there has been a military coup every 20 years since the first coup, which was 10 years after it was formed. So many of the people in these spaces refuse to see any of this. They don’t want to believe or admit that this is a problem. On Friday, the world watches a live-streamed video of a gunman murdering more than four dozen Muslims inside their mosque. My people are dying. These were supposed to be my people.

I find myself in Desi spaces again, the ones I’d all but left out of fear and alienation. I need these spaces, and desperately. I go to brunch with some other South Asians. I’ve been dying to be around other brown people, to be seen and understood as the kind of brown I really am. The conversation turns to the current tensions between India and Pakistan. Hindutva nationalists, now in power, have been inciting violence against Muslims, with the result being gruesome and unimaginable horrors. They spend several minutes commiserating about how their parents talk about Muslims and the supposed dangers they pose. My friends make sure to express their disapproval. I don’t know what they tell their parents. I become extremely conscious, very suddenly, that I am the only person at the table whose family is Muslim, whose name is Muslim, even as the ummah disowns me. My people are dying. These were supposed to be my people.

by Idris Grey

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On otherness and the search for belonging.

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The first time the tiger found her, Holly was utterly unprepared. It announced its arrival with a roar that made her blood run cold, her heart hammering in her chest as she turned to face it. Despite the many years she’d waited– despite her ever-expanding doubts– it was here. It had finally come for her.

“Took you long enough,” she managed, painfully aware of the strain in her voice. English, she was speaking English, but it was the only language she knew, and… and the tiger would understand (probably) (she hoped). It kept its body low as it stalked forward, seemingly undeterred, each delicate footstep winding her nerves even tighter.

“So, you’ve… brought me something, right? A gift, from my mom’s legacy?”

Its jaw slackened, watching her every move with glowing eyes, a low rumble in its throat.

Holly faltered. “My mom said you brought her a sword. A sword would be nice. Or a ring, or. Or anything, really. I’m not picky. But you’re supposed to have something, and–.” She swallowed. “… you’re definitely not supposed to kill me.”

The tiger bared its teeth, drawing her attention to its snarl. There was no gift; and if it wasn’t here to accept her into the family, then why was it here? What did it want from her?

It was close enough to pounce now. She tried not to think about how she must look, pale and ignorant, with her distinct lack of tiger-words. She tried not to think about how it would feel to be torn apart by its claws, skin peeled away by its sandpaper tongue. She tried. But its stare pierced straight through her.

“It’s just a dream,” she whispered, as its vicious grin widened in anticipation. “You don’t need to run.”

She ran nonetheless.

She had known about the tiger for as long as she could remember. Ti-girl, they called her, splaying their fingers over their cheeks like whiskers and snickering. The boldest among them asked what it was like, coming from a tiger family, but she never knew how to answer. She didn’t feel like a tiger; she barely knew anything about them. Her mother was the only true tiger of the family, marrying into a western bloodline and passing her genes to her child. They had always lived in the West, far from the jungles that the cats called home.

They’d visited the jungle once or twice, when Holly was young. The tiger family was pleasant enough, but it was clear that she didn’t belong among them, with their dark-striped skin and foreign tongues. Sometimes they would crowd around her, staring, and her mother would ask gently, “Have you seen the tiger?”

“That’s okay,” she reassured her daughter each time, “it’s not important. You still belong.” It was true, if belonging meant hovering in a corner on the outside of their conversations, a stranger in a land that the western world insisted she was a part of. Sometimes her mother would talk about the dream, and the gift the tiger would bring when she was ready, but the years passed, and the tiger didn’t come. For a while, that was a relief. She didn’t want to be called ti-girl, she wanted to fit in, and some part of her hoped that the tiger’s absence would convince her peers that she belonged among them.

Time crushed that hope into resigned acceptance. It didn’t matter that the tiger had forgotten her; no one cared that she had lived among them, tiger-less, from the time she was born. All the West saw when it looked at her was a tiger, dream or no dream. But when she had long accepted that she would never see the tiger, it began haunting her.

“Holly? Are you still there?”

She hadn’t realized she was dozing off until her mom’s voice pulled her back into wakefulness. “Yeah. Sorry. What were you saying?”

The motherly scorn radiating from the phone was palpable. “Have you been staying up late again?”

“Not… exactly. I’ve just been…” Jolted awake every few hours by the tiger– clearly unworthy of the family legacy– a disappointment to her mother– “… having trouble sleeping.” The dreams were getting worse. The question dangling on the tip of her tongue slipped out before she could bite it back. “Um… so, you know the tiger dreams you used to tell stories about? I was wondering– no one’s ever been, like… mauled in their dream, have they?”

“Eh? Of course not! Nothing is more important to a tiger than their family, and the tiger is our family– we would never turn on each other like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely! I hope you’re not worrying about this again. You are a tiger woman, whether you have the dream or not.”

Holly had her doubts.

The tiger had become part of her nightly routine. She would sleep; and when she slept, she dreamt; and when she dreamt, the tiger tracked her. Terrifying though it was, the more you studied a monster, the less power it held over you. Routines were familiar, and familiarity stifled fear. Each night she focused on her mother’s certainty as she drifted off to sleep, reciting her words like a mantra to summon lost courage. Eventually, it worked.

That night, the tiger came for her like it always did. Its presence seared the back of her neck until she met its gaze, the rest of her dream blurring to insignificance in its looming shadow. There, its massive paws; there, its swaying tail; there, its lips pulled back to reveal its teeth. Except this time, with clenched, shaking hands, she stood her ground, even as it loped lazily towards her. Each deliberate footfall marked a syllable of her prayer: It. Won’t. Hurt. You. It. Won’t. Hurt. You. She knew she was dreaming, and she remembered what her mother said, but her muscles twitched with fight or flight all the same. It. WON’T. Hurt. You. Don’t. Run. Don’t! Run!

“You won’t hurt me,” she stammered as it came within striking distance, “because you… y-you’re family.”

The tiger stopped.

It considered her for what felt like an eternity through its blazing, unknowable eyes, watching with intent. They were closer now than they had ever been, but the fatal rejection she had feared never came.

The moment stretched. The tiger exhaled. Eventually Holly did too, releasing a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. The beast didn’t budge. It seemed her mother was right: the tiger wasn’t here to harm her.

“Am I–” her voice splintered in her throat. She swallowed the shrapnel, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, and tried again. “Is it true? Am I really…?”

This time, it was the voice in the back of her head that stopped her. This was too good to be true. It had to be. The absence of rejection wasn’t acceptance, and the tiger bore no gift. It was her fault. She had once prayed that the tiger would forget her; how could she expect it to welcome her after she had hidden from it for so long, after she had fled when it finally found her?

She awakened with tears in her eyes, and a knot in her chest.

Holly spent the day telling herself she could accept being doomed to exist in the sliver between her family and the rest of the world. The tiger had made its point– she was seen, not accepted. It was done, and it hurt, but she would stuff the wound with time until it stopped aching. She could learn to stomach it if the tiger stopped stalking her. But when sleep came, her stubborn trespasser was close behind.

“It’s just a dream,” she whispered, as the tiger marched closer. “You’re just a dream!”

The tiger stopped just as it had before, close enough to touch. Not simply a dream, but her dream; without her, it wouldn’t exist. What if it wasn’t just a family tradition, but a piece of her subconscious making itself known? That thought gave strength to the trembling hand she reached towards its massive head, closing the distance a hair at a time.

Part of her still feared the tiger, but it remained motionless in front of her, radiating warmth. Its head was solid beneath her touch, its fur rough and familiar. She splayed her fingers over its cheek, combing through its whiskers, realizing that she was right. “My tiger. My dream. This whole time I’ve been asking what you wanted from me, when I should have been asking what I want from you.”

The tiger’s mouth hung open as always, its gleaming fangs exposed. Holly knelt beside it, her fingertips still tangled in the scruff of its cheek.

She thought of standing uncomfortably with the tiger-family, a washed-out ghost in a sea of stripes.
She thought of their eyes on her, and the meager handful of broken sentences she could offer them.
She thought of the dissonance between her mother’s words and what she felt, an outsider in both worlds.
But most of all, she thought of the gift that she was too scared to ask for.

There was a rumble in the tiger’s throat, soft and low, as its teeth parted. She stared into its cavernous maw, past rows of lethal enamel, and dreamt that she saw something waiting for her.

Holly closed her eyes; took a deep breath; and reached.

by Yisa

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A wholesome take on Asian familial love and how the way I express my own love connects me to my heritage

For Mom, Dad, Sofie-An, Jonas, & Ash

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A couple years ago, my mom wanted the entire household to try something new: say “I love you” after any and every goodbye. She had been inspired by one of those clichéd hypotheticals that one would see in a movie: a character dies (tragically), prompting another character to lament and cry, “but I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” or, “I never told them I loved them!” To prepare for the instance in which an unexpected tragedy might befall any one of us, Mom insisted that we couldn’t end up like those characters, who forever regretted the words left unsaid and the feelings never conveyed. For this action to become a truly meaningful habit, Mom emphasized that it was in the especially trying times—when we were frustrated with each other or “too busy” with our daily lives—that taking the time to say “I love you” and affirm each other was essential.

And so, we all tried to implement what we thought would be a “slight” change into our daily routines.

As it turned out, saying “I love you” –whether it was at the end of a phone call, in person, or via text–was more awkward than we had anticipated, and I began to wonder why it wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. The task was easy for me to remember, but actually following through and saying it was somewhat of a challenge. As whatever conversation we were having approached the end, I would mentally recite the short phrase in my head, and I could feel my heart rate increase. I would take a breath and give myself a little mental shove: ~“I love you,” I would offer, weakly, as if I feared the response. Pathetic, I would think to myself.

On the other hand, saying “love you!” or using the word “love” with friends or objects–“I love you so much!!” or “Oh, I LOVE this and that!”–rolled right off the tongue and required little to no deliberation, so why did saying “I love you” to my family feel strange? After all, this was my family! Did my discomfort at expressing affection and saying that little phrase mean that I didn’t care enough for my family members? What did that say about me as a daughter? I was frustrated. This issue would unsettle me whenever I thought about it, and I wondered how I could let them know I loved them if I couldn’t say it to their faces…

Right then, a thought occurred to me: When did I start focusing so intently on love that could only be expressed in words?

Only after reminding myself that saying “I love you” was not the only way to convey love did I remember that there are countless ways to show love, and I had already experienced many of the ways in which my family had already done so in such subtle yet also such magnanimous ways.

 The Bible’s timeless definition of love came to mind:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, 

it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,

it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)

I framed my parents within this context, and everything became so much clearer. Sure, they don’t literally say “I love you” to my face a whole lot, but they prove their love to me and my siblings through their actions and the way in which they live. Every day, they devote themselves to their livelihoods as doctors who take care of their patients, as tireless guardians who watch over their children, and as inspiring role models who never fail to demonstrate what it means to be selfless, loving, and strong people in a world that could use a little more intentional kindness and love. Maybe the devil works hard, but I know my parents work harder.

For my parents, who immigrated to the United States and have Asian parents of their own, I know that this more conservative way of showing love didn’t start with them. It reaches so much farther back, to the times before their parents, and to that of their parents’ parents before them. There’s nothing wrong with saying “I love you,” but simply saying it is not enough. If there’s no action behind that love, is it true? Is it genuine? Can it stand the test of time? In this day and age, the phrase, “I love you,” is simultaneously used too much and too little; “too much” in the sense that it is directed toward who or what doesn’t deserve it, and “too little” toward the people who do. Perhaps that’s why this more active form of love across Asian cultures is so beautiful.

Though it’s not verbally affirmed all the time, I know that love is always there. There’s no pressure for me or the people I love to say “I love you” to each other because I can see that they love me, whether it’s when my mom calls me from home to tell me the latest family news, through the Statistics for Dummies book that my dad sent me when I told him I was struggling to understand the concepts, or in my family’s intermittent care packages filled with snacks and various items I forgot to bring to college from home. If I were to substitute a phrase from my parents that I value perhaps even more so than “I love you,” I would say that the phrase would be “I am proud of you.” Hearing that means–at least in some way–that I have made good use of their sacrifices to become someone whom they can be proud of.

Personally, I don’t like to spend time explaining myself to other people: I like to demonstrate who I am and what I stand for every day through my actions. I refrain from saying “I love you” as a standalone phrase unless I truly mean it. That phrase is reserved for people to whom I can prove I love. That’s how I was raised by my parents, and that’s how they were raised by theirs. Every kind favor, warm hug, or check-in about my well-being reveals the beauty of our kind of love that isn’t just through words, but also through action and sacrifice.

As personal as this piece is, I know this isn’t just something that happens to me. While writing this piece, I thought about all the YouTube videos like “Asian Parents React to I Love You,” as well as the social media pages like “Subtle Asian Traits” that sometimes delve into the ways Asian parents convey love. I’ve discussed the topic with my Asian friends, and I’ve seen texts and heard stories about how their parents don’t often use “I love you.” Instead, their love often comes across as an inquiry or request:

“Are you hungry?”

“Text me when you get home.”

“It’s cold outside! Take a jacket.”

“Do you have enough money?”

“Don’t drive too fast.”

Now, I’m a first-year student at UC San Diego, a university that lies eight hours away by car from my hometown. Though life is busy, I try to call home or message my family about my day when I can. Whenever I feel stressed or overwhelmed by life, I keep my head down and get to work with the knowledge that I can get through whatever I’m currently facing, and that my family is behind me, supporting me from home. I can’t see them every day, nor can they see me, but I know that I couldn’t have gotten to where I am without their love and support. In the moments leading up to our goodbyes at the end of each call or text, I still think about when and how I want to say those three words. Honestly, even after all this time, I feel some awkwardness when expressing my love and gratitude to them in that way.

“I love you,” I say.

I hold my breath.

“I love you too!” They reply.

I smile.

by Jae Young Park

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A letter from a mother, conveying the deep impact of western religion on her life as both a source of bias and a source of hope.

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딸아.

I had a dream when you were still a whisper of life, a small, gleaming light in the darkness of my belly. Everyone laughed when I told them my dream. They said I needed to stop going to church before I started seeing Jesus at the supermarket, or getting scammed into buying million dollar holy water that can cure lepers. Your father looks at me with pity and disgust. Your siblings do not look at me. They tell me more and more that I am too old, that I must be stupid, that I would make a mistake.

But no matter what anyone says of me, I know. I am not stupid, and I am not crazy. For the first time in my life, I could see the path before me.

너는 실수가 아니다.

In my dream, I saw the Virgin Mary. She loomed over me, saw the swelling of my stomach, saw you. She looked west. Her vast arm reached across the earth and pointed to America. Her eyes twinkled. What the Virgin Mary knew, I realized then. Korea would be too small for you, just as your own family insists on constricting you into nothingness. The intolerance of the people here is toxic, and you would grow up with poison in your lungs. You did not belong here but in the safety and opportunities of America, where you would flourish into a brilliant woman.

The Virgin Mary bathed us in a warm light. All my worries and burdens felt childish. And I decided to keep you.

은총이 가득하신 마리아님, 기뻐하소서!
주님께서 함께 계시니 여인 중에 복되시며
태중의 아들 예수님 또한 복되시나이다.
천주의 성모 마리아님,
이제와 저희 죽을 때에
저희 죄인을 위하여 빌어주소서.
아멘

by Victoria Hang

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A brief monologue involving names, expectations, and the irony that can come from putting them in the same room and forcing them to talk.

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When I was born, my parents had the forethought to prepare two names to choose from. Being born as a girl meant that the name Victoria was what stuck around, but if I had been a boy, it could have easily have been Nicholas. The reasoning behind choosing the names is about as expected as it could be, for a baby name; both were names that my parents enjoyed, and both owe their meanings to the word “victory” if only to slightly different contexts. It was a meaning they had wanted to give me, in the hopes that I would be a “victorious person” in this life. To this day, I still can’t say how much of it actually worked—I always believe it to be something I’ll only finally learn through hindsight—but I have a feeling that it will all catch up with me sometime later. Because in the end, what’s in a name?

Quite a few things, in fact. And even more, when you’ve been given more than one.

And that’s the thing here: I have a second name. An entire name, given to me after one fateful meeting with the monks when I was still an infant. One with a meaning chosen to help balance the qualities I already had, with the ones I lacked. They said I was too cold, laid up with too many chances to be isolated and alone as I grew up. Not enough fire, not enough passion. So they gave it to me, when they gave me the name Fèngyìng, using the characters 鳯 (lit. [male] phoenix, firebird) and 映 (lit. to reflect [light], to shine) to spell it. A decent name with a straight meaning and in many ways, very indicative of the person it belongs to. At least, in a symbolic sense.

There’s a certain significance in a name. Names have power. Names are power. And having two doesn’t change that fact. I’d even go as far as to say that, to some extent, it could even become a problem. It doesn’t change the fact that I have it, but neither does that change the fact that I believe in its influence and I intend to live with that in mind.

But if I’m being honest, my mother seemed to have different intentions in mind when she was raising the younger me. I was taught the virtue of respecting my elders, growing up. To be good by and to my parents; to take care of them and engage in good conduct (the kind that brings a good name to the family) amongst other things. And it’s far from an uncommon lesson—within the Asian-American community, the lessons of filial piety are hardly ever not seen, and the expectations of following such a thing are even stronger back in the East than they are here in the United States. And it’s even more difficult to ignore it when the roof over your head belongs to the people who have been teaching you this mindset your whole life, because that’s just the way they know life to be.

Case in point, the classic “How are you going to act when you have a family to take care of too?” question, and all of its lovely variations.

See, the thing about filial piety is that you’re expected to do as your family expects of you. For sons, it’s to carry on the family legacy by passing down the family name to the next generation. For daughters, much of the core remains the same; to bring the family honor through a family of their own. But with the rise of the most recent generation trends, that expectation becomes difficult to meet. The practice of raising a family upon entering adulthood has become more of an ideal than a reality, but it’s also the result of the shifting dynamics in today’s society.

It’s enough to make me wonder why my mother still holds onto the expectation, and why she acts as if she expects me to allow her to make my choices for me.

Maybe it’s a need to cling to the familiarity of the past, or some innate desire to control what isn’t entirely understood. Maybe it’s something entirely different from what I think it to be. But despite the uncertainty, I find that to be the least of my worries, because my expectations for her lean in a different direction; Why?

Why does she still hold all these expectations? Why does she expect me to follow them? Why doesn’t she consider the possibility that I may not want the same things for my life that she does? Why did she choose my name and its meaning, when nothing in life has guaranteed that it will work in her favor the way she may have expected it to? Why won’t she listen to the things I’m trying to say?

These questions and more—they’re what I often find myself wondering in the aftermath of our arguments. Sometimes things work out, and we compromise. Most times, we continue to clash until we’re at each other’s throats. In hindsight, it’s an unhealthy relationship. In practice, it’s a vicious exchange. I can only imagine how things will continue to escalate in the future, if we continue down this path.

But hopefully one day, it’ll get better. After all, if it takes losing the battle to win the war, I know which victory I would rather enjoy.

by Kai Chuan

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by Kienna Shaw

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一 (jat1, yut; one)

I don’t remember when my grandmother started teaching me Cantonese. But first thing every morning I stayed with her, when I would wake up to the smell of blueberry pancakes and perfumed hand cream in her small apartment, she would greet me.

“Zou san. Good morning.”

I’d repeat after her, sleep-tied tongue tripping over the intonations. Gently, she’d repeat it again and I would respond again, a morning ritual of call and response until the words settled in my mouth again. And she would smile, serve me a plate of blueberry pancakes, and we would have our quiet morning together.

二 (ji6, yee; two)

Second generation Chinese-Canadian, two generations of removal from speaking Cantonese.

My grandmother raised my dad and aunts and uncles in a mining town in Northern Ontario, one of two Chinese families in the entire area. Even if it wasn’t written into the law, English was the language that was demanded of them.

It was the same in the large cities that my dad and grandmother eventually moved to, even the ones that boasted of being multicultural. And so I grew up with English as my first language, and Cantonese was never really my second.

三 (saam1/saam3, sam; three)

My grandmother never spoke much about her life back in China. I can only remember three times that she ever told me stories of her sisters and her mother, of their life before and during the war. Always in fragments or in passing, she seemed to focus on the stories of my aunts and uncles and cousins before she ever told her own.

Studies have shown that our memories are tied to the language that we experienced them. Sometimes I wonder how many stories she could have told in her own words, her mother tongue, that I never got to learn about because I didn’t know the right words to understand them.

四 (sei3, say; four)

“Four is unlucky,” my grandmother told me one day while I was practicing my numbers. “It sounds like the word for death.”

The same way that intonations flowed from character to character, so did the small lessons of traditions and culture flowed from the words. From learning how to say Gung hei fat choi, I learned what to eat on New Year’s for long life and fortune and how to avoid sweeping out the good luck. From learning how to say lai-see, I learned the significance of the colour red and familial connections and structure.

Like the Cantonese words merging into my vocabulary, the Chinese traditions merged with my Canadian life. My words weren’t fluent and my understanding of the traditions were never truly traditional, but they were my family’s.

And every time I saw that an apartment building didn’t have a fourth or thirteenth floor, I would smile because I knew why.

五 (ng5, mm; five)

Food became a way to share traditions. Within each dish is a story of recipes passed through generations and an expression of love. These dishes and ingredients with their Cantonese names became the food that I shared with my family at the dining room table.

Even now there are foods that I don’t have English words for because the Cantonese names are so integral to what they are. I may not be able to read the menu at a Chinese restaurant, but I can safely order five different menu items in the only words I know how to.

六 (luk6, look; six)

“But you’re not really Chinese.”

I was six the first time I heard someone challenge my identity, and it was certainly not the last. It confused me why someone would, especially when they knew my family was Chinese.

They always listed the same reasons. I was second-generation, I didn’t have the same values, I wasn’t fluent in Cantonese. Each time it felt like it was an affront to the things that my grandmother had carefully passed down to me, the family traditions and heritage that were tied to the few words I knew. But I don’t know how to explain the importance of a language that wasn’t my mother tongue, and so I stayed quiet.

七 (cat1, chut; seven)

When ALS slowly took away my grandmother’s strength, one of the first things to go was her ability to speak. The small language lessons became mine to teach as I helped her learn sign language so that she would still be able to communicate with us. We used seven signs the most.

Yes. No. Hungry. Thirsty. Full. Thank you. I love you.
And when it was my turn to teach her the numbers, I went through them in sign language and Cantonese. Yut, yee, sam, say…

八 (baat3, baht; eight)

She passed away in the spring, a few months after her 80th birthday. Eight is supposed to be a lucky number, sounding similar to the word for good fortune. The irony felt heavy on my tongue when I remembered that lesson and muttered it under my breath.

For a moment I looked over to see if my grandmother had heard, if she would be proud of me for remembering. Although I hadn’t heard her voice or had a lesson in such a long time, it was only then that everything felt so quiet.

九 (gau2, gow; nine)

Over the years, my other relatives tried to teach me small bits and pieces of Cantonese, but it never felt right.

Eventually, I only used the words for the traditions and the foods when I didn’t know the English word.

Nine years later, I’m in university, giving my friends chocolate coin lai-see and having a small potluck of secreted snacks and mooncakes. It’s close to midnight in the residence dining hall and we’re having a lively discussion about traditions and food, about being Asian diaspora. In a moment of quiet, my friend turned to me.

“How do you say good morning in Canto?”

For a moment I smelled blueberry pancakes and perfumed hand-cream. Then I smiled, and with my grandmother’s voice guiding me, I spoke.

十 (sap6, sup; ten)

It’s been just over ten years since my grandmother passed away. Every few months, we visit where her ashes are scattered and we bow three times in front of her nameplate. As I stand between the trees and I look up to the skies, I think about all of the small things she taught me, woven into those language lessons.

Cantonese will never be my mother tongue. I accepted that fact before I even truly understood what it meant. But the word for mother and the word for paternal grandmother are only one intonation away from each other, so perhaps it’s my grandmother tongue.

It’s the language of the history and the heritage.
It’s the language of the food and the traditions.
It’s the language of my grandmother’s story and mine.

by Petrana Radulovic

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中秋快乐

There is a full moon tonight. When we were children, we would light lanterns.

There is a legend that goes with this tradition, though depending on who you ask, it changes. There are some that say the lady in the moon was selfish, that she drank the potion of immortality and was banished. There are others that say she loved her husband and drank the poison to spare him, and as a reward for her love, she did not die but was sent to the moon instead.

Those are just two – there are many variations.

(I forget which one I heard first; I think like the one where she is in love the most)

The lanterns are lit – if I remember correctly – so that she may find her way home.

---

There is no place in all of the city I feel more at home than in Chinatown.

There is no place in all of the city I feel more out of place than in Chinatown.

If you do not understand, it is odd to hear.

(Some of you do understand; some of you will know)

Let me try to explain.

You walk through the street and the voices you hear are familiar, but they are always just out of reach, always talking too fast for you to understand.

You walk through the stores and the items are familiar, but when you smile, someone asks your companion why you are here. You only understand their response, only the words 她的 妈妈.

On one hand, this is what you know – these are the voices you grew up with, these are the foods you eat, the smells you know, the colors, the tastes, the sounds.

On the other hand – without your mother to guide you, you will always be lost.

---

My mother calls me. She’s sorry, she says, that she didn’t remind us what day it was before this morning. I’m at a restaurant, I tell her. Celebrating.
It had slipped her mind, she says. Since we are not in the house anymore.
(We used to light lanterns; I can’t remember the last time we did)
中秋快乐 she says.

Say it again, slowly, I tell her.

She does. Once. Twice. I repeat it, trying to get each syllable right on my tongue.

I can’t remember what it sounds like now.

---

I go to the grocery store on a mission. I want to find lanterns. I want to find mooncakes. If I have time, I want to find dumpling skins and bottles of yogurt drink and tins of chocolate powder.

I stare too long at the mooncakes, trying to figure out which kind is the one I like. I stare too long at the noodles and the rice, trying to figure out where the dumpling skins are hidden. I stare too long at the labels, trying to figure out which ones will evoke a deep childhood memory.

A woman asks me if I need help finding something, as if I don’t know what I’m looking for. (I do need help; I won’t admit it)

---

There is a full moon tonight. There were no lanterns in the store, but I bought a tin of mooncakes. I spent too much money on them, probably. But I cut one with the plastic knife, into half, into quarters, and pluck a slice between two fingers and take slow bites. It is always dense, always sticks in your mouth, always sweet.

(I do not light a lantern; I am still finding my way home)

by Quinn Hsu

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i. a girl you see right through
she’s full of holes. you see her and you see right through her. look close enough and you’ll see how her insides work.

watch as she swallows shards of mirrors. watch as the shards shred her insides. watch as your own face reflects back from them even as she is ripped apart.

she doesn’t know how to sew, but still she stitches everything together. badly, and she knows she couldn’t fix it all. even so, sometimes she doesn’t know what she’s missing.

ii. a boy you can’t ignore

he still doesn’t know how to sew, but once he stitched himself together. badly, and he still doesn’t know what he’s missing. you can still see the holes through him, too.

look at the mirrors still embedded in his insides. look how he’s learned to live with the pain. but look: it’s his face you see now when you peer into the mirrors.

when you saw her, he was the one you saw right through. he’s been with her all this time. he was her, she was him.

iii. a truth you can’t swallow

sometimes you think about the filth filling the spaces between his ribs. the sediment of his experiences weighing him down. how he starts to feel so polluted and maybe he thinks it’s his own damn fault.

other times you think of the silt of his tears accumulating deep in his veins. nothing pure to rid his body of the grime. how he finally finds himself in the gut twisting pain of her mirrors.

but at what cost? his mind is a broken record player, scratching at his memories. what can he do to move on but change the record – yet any attempts to change the record would only be a bastardization of the truth.

by Angela Huang

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“She looks just like you!”

My father and I have the same eyes. They are large and double-lidded, a sign of beauty in Asian culture. My father claps me on the back. I look away.

My father picks his nose while he drives. He picks his nose chronically, but there are usually more square feet be- tween us so that I can ignore it. I picked up the habit when I was younger, before training myself not to.

“Don’t pick your nose,” I say in Chinese.

His right hand, the nose-picking one, jerks back onto the steering wheel. He keeps his eyes on the road; we’ve per- formed this routine before. We continue driving in silence.

I bring a friend home in the seventh grade. My father brings us a bowl of watermelon that he has sliced into cubes. “Hi. Okay, eat this, okay?”

His English is viscous with his Chinese accent. The “okay” is a verbal tic – a common phrase in Chinese that trans- lates poorly. My friend isn’t sure what to do with the customary offering. I seize the fruit bowl.

“Thanks, dad! We’re going to go upstairs now! Bye!”
I pull my friend away. What will happen when I take a significant other home?

My father’s teeth protrude, which causes his mouth to flare out. I inherit these teeth. I beg to get braces in the eighth grade. He tells me I am too thin. My father grew up in communist China, where eating an egg was a luxury reserved for birthdays. I announce my diet to the family. I bleach my hair blonde like the white girls I see in fashion magazines. My father doesn’t understand why I do it.
“You don’t look like my daughter anymore,” he complains. I’ve succeeded.

“You treat me like an eight-year-old. I’m twenty now. I’ve grown up. You need to stop baby-ing me!”

I don’t speak much of my father tongue: I have the linguistic control of a Chinese kindergartener. My staccatoed Chinese monologue crescendos into English. My father lingers in the doorway.

“Speak in Chinese!”
My father doesn’t speak my native English. “Whatever.”

“Eat more.”

My father pours more rice into my bowl. His chopsticks clang against porcelain. He chews with his mouth open. His noises reverberate within the house. I fork the food into my mouth. I make a show of eating with my mouth closed.

My father thinks I should not be a businesswoman.
“It’s too much stress. I want you to be happy, not stressed. It’s unhealthy for a woman to have too much ambition.” “Dad, that’s –,” I pull out my phone to Google Translate, “–sexist.”
“That’s an American idea. One day, when you’re older, you’ll realize.”

My father drove me thirty minutes each way to piano lessons. He disciplined my hands with a chopstick whenever I sabotaged a sonata.

My father FaceTimes me sometimes. His face overwhelms my phone screen: he is holding his phone too close to his face. I lower the volume so that the voice coming out of my earbuds isn’t deafening.

“You should be more like Annie. Annie’s Chinese is good, and she always helps her family with the chores.”

My father is lecturing me again. This is how we converse: he in Confucian nags, I in grunts. Today, the target of his sermon is my filial duty.

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not Annie.”

He asks if I am eating well. I am. He asks if I am sleeping well. At least eight hours a night. He asks if I have been exercising. Not as much as I’d like to. He clucks at me. I glance at the phone screen: four minutes and twenty sec- onds. Longer than usual.

My father takes me shopping.
“I would not buy you these clothes if you went to community college. But you are my Ivy League girl!” He swells with pride. I swallow mine. He means it out of love, I tell myself.
“Thank you.”

I stop before leaving my father at airport security.
“Bye bye, An An (my Chinese name).” He pauses. “I love you.”

“Bye Baba. Love you too.”

My father has never told me he loves me in Chinese. He reserves the term for English. Likewise, I call him “baba,” not “dad.” They mean the same thing, anyway.

by Danielle Du

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A reflection on the impossible-possible things we are, as the walking legacy of our ancestors.

---

还 、海

《 hai 》

【零】

This is how it feels:

a foot in both doors,

so the saying goes—

but no one never warned you

and never did you imagine

that these doors stand

as shorelines on opposite ends 

of the very

earth

you walk

(poles in their own right: north, south

no;
east, west)

—and you, the 

ocean

between them:

a paradox inherent,

only ever close enough to 

touch either shore,

(a body of water by grace only)

churning with the runoff 

tears of both. 

What are you then?

impossible

【一】

This is how it feels:

The first time you step

through that east pole door,

this is the world you glimpse:

graveyards, tombstones

filling the spaces between

these arcing highways and skyscraping towers—

death, between every breath life takes

past, between every step present makes

and neither, neither feel like yours

It feels wrong:

the ocean turns.

“Pay your respects,” your parents insist,

“Say hello to your great-grandparents.”

But you do not know them,

never knew them,

never will know them

and these headstones gleam too smooth;

so you refuse, and watch

as your parents bow in front of

this one tomb in a forest of tombs.

(a world of blood and lives and family

you have never, never known)

“Just try it,” they say, standing now,

one final beseeching lifeline:

“there’s nothing to be scared of.

It’s just three bows, then you’re done.”

But there is more than one kind of fear

that scorches this ocean floor—

you turn away,

fix your eyes to the 

sky instead;

only half wondering if your great-grandparents 

(and their grandparents, and their parents, and theirs,

and theirs and theirs and theirs)

can see 

you,

this paradox child of two shores 

torn.

【二】 

This is how it feels:

How deeply you mourn that now,

enough to quench the heedless flames

that once roared through your own heart.

You know now,

now

you would kowtow a thousand times
to seize this lifeline

that, at least,

means one shore is willing

to claim you as its own.

the ocean, the ocean, ah

how it cries, longing for just one land to call

home

【三】 

This is how it feels:

Even the sight of a clothes tag

makes you hear the voices

of your ancestors’ ghosts

whispering at the edges of your jacket,

snagging winter branches for hands

unerringly certain in 

their own inquiry, 

nonetheless afraid of your answer:

Did you forget us?

Don’t forget to remember us, now

(“made in _________,”

after all)

The cloth flaps in the breeze

of your ancestors’ rearing sorrow—

each crease and fold a sculpture

breathing,

the living image of your own regret.

You can’t help but think:

this is the real tombstone

marking that final death of memory and myth.

and oh,

how the ocean weeps

【四】 

But.

This is also how it feels:

The next time you step

through that east pole door,

bearing the rains of years gone by

(years enough for 

this ocean

to calm, to settle, to fill)

you watch as the quiltwork fields and glass-sleek towers

roll past, reflected to a watery blur

against the window of 

your own wide-eyed longing.

Exist, exist,

you hear your ancestors cry

in this wind that pulls even the 

heavens westward

as you stand, stature straightened to bow again,

returned once more: 

back to this soil of your grandparents’ parents’ bones.

You wonder if they are proud:

if you have done well

at being this impossible thing—

you, 

their paradox child of two shores 

both.

The ghosts of your ancestors

whisper at the edges of your jacket,

drifting spring petals for hands

unerringly certain in 

their own inquiry, 

nonetheless awaiting your answer:

We are not forgotten, because

you still stand strong,

child of ours:

somehow, you do. Somehow, somehow,

despite it all 

between it all—

and is that not the most we can ask?

You can’t help but think:

this is the first lifeline,

(and you can’t help but hope:

the first of many more)

pulling you back towards 

this neglected eastern shore.

(And somehow then, you realize:

the ocean 

is so, so 

still.)

【五】

In the end,

this is how it feels:

Two shores,

rising on opposite ends of 

the very 

earth 

you walk

(poles in their own right)

and you, the glittering surging

ocean

between them, somehow

holding shorelines both:

a

bridge

inherent

(between two ends

of this earth you walk,

poles in their own right:

east, west, east, west)

ever turning, yearning, astorm, aflame

ever calming, settling, stilling at last

paradoxical perhaps

impossible perhaps

This is how it feels:

still nonetheless
standing 

(still, still)

between it all.

---

Endnotes: 

• What on earth are you doing with the subtitle there? Without the accent marks, hai can refer to multiple Mandarin characters by the Pinyin system (which is used to romanize Mandarin Chinese and as a system for learning/typing the language). In this case, I picked two: 还 (hái) and 海 (hǎi). The first character, 还, is an adverb that translates to “still,” or “yet,” or “also/too.” The second character, 海, refers to the ocean. However, it should be noted that these two characters are not exact homonyms in their pronunciation: Mandarin, being a tonal language, has four distinct tones and these two characters are spoken with very different tones; hence the accent marks.
• What does it mean put together then? Essentially, “still: the ocean.”
• So, just to be sure—are the random divider thingies in Mandarin too? Definitely. They’re just numbers; the very first brackets contain the Mandarin character for “zero,” and the next goes to “one,” then “two,” so on and so forth.
• Fun fact! The major turn in the poem occurs at 四 (four, sì), which traditionally is associated with bad luck due to the fact that it sounds like the character for death, 死 (sǐ). Interpret that as you please!

by Ryan Phung

---

me and my mom, 3 acts

---

what is your nest made of

Friday was always the worst day of the week in middle school, since the library closed early and I had to sit at the curb of the empty parking lot for an hour, waiting for someone to pick me up. During winter trimester I probably looked homeless to any passerby, with the sky being a pale shade of black at only 6 P.M. and the only light shining on me coming from a single orange streetlight. I hated her. I hated how I always had to lie to my concerned friends that she would come in just a few minutes, how I had to sit in anticipation of a familiar pair of headlights, continuously on edge about the menacing stranger that would rest on a bench a few yards from me, how she wouldn’t leave her job early to pick me up as the rest of the library kids were leaving. I hated how alone I was in that parking lot, how neglected I felt, and how cold it illogically seemed on the outskirts of L.A.  

It was only an hour, though.

is it grass, twigs, leaves? perhaps phở noodles, or bits of apple pie

The first step in solving a problem is to identify the issues. For years, I didn’t. I knew that I was miserable in that house, but never bothered searching for the source, mindlessly gliding on the frigid wind. I weakly accepted that she wouldn’t be the confidante for my emotional troubles, without realizing that I could at least urge her to try. So it was a glacial burn, the descent into dysfunction. Maybe I could have salvaged our relationship if I had gained clarity sooner. But why should a kid be the one to hold a family together? Where was her clarity?  

The second step in solving a problem is to…

it could be crumbling mahogany brick, sturdy american steel, or even pure gold

Ignorance kept me spiteful. But even now, with the window right beside me and the clear sky outside, the ability to forgive is a virtue I don’t possess. Instead, I constantly reflect on the person I could have been. A person confident enough to start conversations with people instead of nervously waiting for someone to talk to him, who looks in the mirror and sees someone that wide-eyed middle schooler would look up to, who knows how to say sorry—he learned that from her. A person I’m not, yet one that I keep fixating on. Why?

whatever it is

If I forget the fire, would that make me him? If I pretend we were the perfect family of a Norman Rockwell painting, would that make me him? Even if I wanted to, I’ve dwelled on the dark for so long that I’ve forgotten so many of the bright memories. So how, then, will I remember her? What will her legacy be? Who is she?

it has always been your choice

---

Best for me, best for her.

We were on the way to band practice, me sitting shotgun in her Toyota SUV, when she suddenly asked me what career I wanted to pursue in the future. I responded with the “I don’t know” of any normal 16-year old. She then told me that she wanted me to support her financially later on in life; she even had the figure: $2000 a month. I kind of chuckled, unsure of whether this was some rare joke of hers, until I glanced over and saw a look of restrained apprehension in her dark, baggy eyes. The rest of the car ride was silent.

I didn’t think much of that incident until maybe a week later, when I noticed that she wasn’t yelling at me for things that she normally would, like playing video games for a few minutes which she assumed had actually been six hours, or not finishing a dinner plate to the very last rice pellet. At that point it slapped me across the face, a feeling that shouldn’t have felt so foreign. My future was determined, by forces out of my control. Choice was stripped from me.

I didn’t know then what I wanted to do in life, nor do I know now, but I knew what I couldn’t do. I couldn’t be a novelist. I couldn’t be a playwright. I couldn’t be a film director. I couldn’t book a flight to New York and subsist on the raw creative energy of the city like some white girl in a rom-com. Not unless I wanted my parents to suffer working their 9-5’s for the rest of eternity. Not unless I threw away every last shred of my legacy and became reborn as some lost, heartless, plucked phoenix. So I was chained, wings not clipped but shattered, because “family matters.” She fed me, changed me, housed me for years, dealt with my horrendous mistreatment of my elders, worked tirelessly year-round to ensure that I had a nice bed and a nice computer and nice clothes, poured all her hard-earned money into me, for me, because of me. Me. Everything I had was from her generous, loving hands. Far too generous for a wild beast like me. Everything she did was the best for me, everything she did was for my sake, so of course she should get a return on her investment.

Best for me, best for her.

Maybe it would have been easier to swallow if I hadn’t grown up on the pristine ideal of the white, middle-class family, of parents that raise their children with an idea of love that involves affection or anything that remotely resembles positive reinforcement, of parents that would watch bittersweetly from their freshly-trimmed lawn as their son slowly reverses out of the driveway in his newly inherited beat-up sedan, with the dad’s arm wrapped around the mom as she leans her head on his shoulder, all while some cheesy uplifting music is playing like the end of The Breakfast Club.

But I had grown up on that. They hadn’t.

Maybe she wasn’t a bad mother, just not the one I envisioned, rather one that treated affection as a luxury to be saved for a special occasion like a bottle of expensive Chardonnay. Sometimes I wonder if I was mad at her, or the fact that she worked her fingers to the marrow six days a week and barely made enough money to support her family, the fact that this was the best the supposedly greatest country in the world could muster for a poor immigrant reaching towards The Dream™. She cared about me, I think, so that’s already better than some mothers out there. But the notion that Asian love is simply a different kind of love, one that says “I love you” in a myriad of different, silent ways is utter bullshit. Looking back and realizing that she had been telling me she loved me all my life in ways I didn’t understand does not undo the trauma. At the very most, it makes the idea of shelling out $2,000 a month for the rest of her life slightly easier to stomach. A verbal “I love you” once in a while might’ve been enough to save me from years of teenage dejection, because even if I needed it not to at the time, family matters. And there’s nothing good that can come out of not knowing your family cares about you.

I wish that at some point throughout all the clashes, throughout all the screaming and misunderstandings and crying, we just sat down and talked.  Maybe we would have both realized that we weren’t who the other wanted us to be, and maybe we could have both changed for the better.

Best for me, best for her.

---

Every Sunday at 9 P.M., my phone lights up with a notification, “CALL PARENTS.” Often I’ll ignore it, too exhausted to deal with any scolding or interrogating. The times I do find the willpower to call her, I quiver, as if the possibility of yet another verbal brawl transforms me into a recovering alcoholic. Whenever she picks up, there is, without fail, that one question.

“Why don’t you want to come back home?”

To say she cried when I moved into my college dorm would be an understatement. Tears were streaming down her face when we got in the car, and they were pouring even harder when we arrived. By the time we had finished unpacking and I was trying to free myself from her grasp to explore my new world, she was a sobbing mess. Even a few hours later when she got back and fully registered her nest as empty, she was still crying, at least according to our brief phone conversation when she reminded me yet again to call every week. My face was dry.

I thought I would feel electrified about the prospect of living without the constant fear of her barging into my room and berating me for some meaningless atrocity I committed. Yet as I laid on my new mattress, staring at a new white stucco wall, it seemed like I was still caged in that decrepit house.

Her home always felt foreign to me, even though I spent by far the most time there out of anyone in our family. Her home was the stronghold of my most cherished memories, like drowning out their aimless arguments with video games and music, or the blaring silence of yet another afternoon with no one to greet me at the door. Her home was small, far too small to hold my soaring dreams and starry-eyed fantasies. Her home was a perpetual reminder of a childhood gone to waste, of teenage years wrought with frustration and uncertainty, of two adulthoods with nothing but endless toil and weary hope. Her home was everything she had worked for, so I could lead a far better life than she would ever be able to, yet it wasn’t enough.

Her home never felt like mine. I’m not sure any place has.

Forgive and forget. It’s probably easier to do when your little brother cries and frames you for physical assault, or when your friend “accidentally” tells your crush that you like her. But how do you even begin to forgive someone who molded you into a mess of a person, someone who shattered your wings and ordered you to fly? Despite how many times I’ve tried to console myself, “She tried her best. She couldn’t be there for you, but she tried her best,” the bitterness always remains. Even when we’re on good terms, it still feels as though so much is missing, as though the stars and planets could have formed between us. Part of me always wants to push her away, as if to remind her that I molted into a decent person not simply without her, but in spite of her. But I always come back, for I grew up because of her.

No matter how much I may covet that pristine white ideal, I cannot and should not forget the helpless hours. But I should pretend I can, for her sake. The journey to the person I am today was not a ship smoothly sailing off from the harbor, but neither was hers. Every single time she and I fought, it killed her just as painfully as it did me. She suffered, in her aching bones, her baggy eyes, her tired spirit. She knows she was far from perfect, and she’s trying desperately to make up for that now. I have to at least let her try. Maybe as the clock ticks by, we can begin to balance the dark memories with new, pleasant ones, picking up the forgotten and reimagining the old along the way.

I want to come home, but first I have to find it. For now, I wait by the window, gazing out at the open sky from a nest of pale-green jade, by my own choice. 

It has always been my choice.