Dedication
I spend the day gathering courage.
Courage in the form of information, of history, of other people’s words.
Trapped by the cool air inside and the relentless heat outside, I linger in the adobe cave until late in the afternoon. The head starts spinning from reading. Taking in too much is violence. I step outside into the sun and there is nothing happening. This is what it is like living in this part of New Mexico. The land is peaceful, quiet. A stray plane pollutes the clear blue sky. Rows of clouds wait in the distance. The goats sneeze, they dig with their hooves in the sandy soil to find a cool place to lie down. First, they kneel on their front legs, as if in humility to the Earth Mother, then slowly, with dignity, their full weight descends.
A dove lands on the Chinese elm standing nearby. She is home to all sorts of traveling creatures — delicate hummingbirds, buzzing flies, large ravens. This particular grey dove lands on a high branch with surprising agility, and starts to groom, ruffling feathers as she digs underneath her wing. One stray feather escapes and alights in the breeze, flying horizontally. One white feather. It is a call to action. I must write. I must speak. Or I will die.
This morning I thought of the 6 year old daughter of my college friend and her husband. Like all my nieces and nephews, is half white, half Chinese. She is a force — she has a vitality that all of Silicon Valley would kill for. Girlfriend calls it like it is, with brutal honesty and no hit of shame. I babysat when her parents were out of town for a few days. How was your day, I asked after school. Well, it was rough there for awhile. I cried, I was real shakyyyy, she draws out the word, her eyes growing wide. But now, she explodes with power, her fists shooting towards the sky, her hips shimming left, then right, I’m great!
Isn’t that the truth? This is the human experience. Things are shit, things are amazing. Everything keeps changing.
I want to write about racism, and I think about this vibrant 6 year old. One day, maybe already, she will grapple with what it means to be Chinese and white in this highly racial culture, particularly because she lives in Montana.
I think about my three white brother-in-laws, whose children are carrying on the family lineage, who are not awake to the complexity of racism (as far as I know). My Chinese American best friend’s white husband. All my Chinese American friends who have white husbands, nearly all the Asian women I know. I write for my beloved family.
