Be Bold, Be Proud, Speak Up: Raising Asian American Daughters Now
BY ELLEN OH | March 21, 2021
This piece was originally published in TIME.
I hesitated to write about the tragic events of the last few days and the swell of racist attacks on Asian Americans over the last year. Being biracial, maybe I’m not Asian enough. Why would people want to hear what I have to say? I’m not a writer. I should do what I always do — stay in the background, create platforms to uplift others, keep my head down, but how Asian is that?! I’m fighting decades of ingrained impulses to write this, but here goes.
Both of my daughters had birthdays this week. One turned eleven, the other seven. I’ve been focused on ordering cupcakes, prepping for a zoom party, and thinking of all the ways I can make their days extra special after a long, strange year. Everything felt extra hard — like I was slogging through a swamp with an invisible weight on my back.
But I didn’t have time to stop and think about the heaviness or the dark clouds overhead. I needed to deliver Birthday Happiness for my girls!
Now that the parties are over, I recognize that weight as sadness for our country, for fellow Asian Americans, for my daughters.
What does it mean to grow up as an Asian American woman now? How do I teach my girls to be strong and bold and proud when Asian-fetishizing misogynists or white supremacists could gun them down just because they are having a bad day? When our elders are getting pushed and punched on the street just for being Asian? How can I protect them? How can they protect themselves?
But even as I wonder how I’m going to save my daughters, I’m starting to realize that it is my girls and their generation who will save me, save us. They are growing up amid a cultural awakening that will disrupt the toxic norms of the past before they sink too deeply into my girls’ subconsciousness.
Their generation is the most diverse in U.S. history. They are coming into this with their eyes wide open. My children recognize discrimination and racism for what it is and are learning to speak out. I am both teaching and learning from them, and they embolden me to be better and do better. My oldest daughter defines herself as an activist. For her birthday, she organized a beach cleanup and fundraiser for the Environmental Defense Fund. This was so far from my consciousness at her age.
Our life in the Bay Area, where identity politics and social activism are the norm, is so unlike the small Midwestern town where I grew up in the 80s.
I was trained at a young age to keep my head down, to fit in. This meant not inviting friends over when my mom made kimchee, and the house smelled of fermentation, laughing when my high school boyfriend called me ‘ornamental’ and just rolling my eyes when a college friend set ‘the Oriental riff’ as my ringtone on her phone.
Is it enough of an excuse that it was a different time and place? They meant no malice, and I am still friends with these people. We are all learning as the world changes around us, as all of the fear and darkness and hate that has been hiding under the surface comes to stare us in the face. We realize we can no longer laugh it off; we have to confront it head-on.
That college friend is now a much more outspoken racial justice advocate than I am. And I watch in awe as so many other friends and colleagues speak, organize, and rally for our community.
I’m also so thankful for the inspiration and solace I am finding in art and artists. I watched this beautiful animated meditation by Jess X Snow over and over again. I learned about this gorgeous poster series by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya. I revisited Christine Wong Yap’s recent project in S.F. Chinatown and asked myself, How do I keep my heart open?
It’s not easy to stay open and hopeful in the face of hatred and tragedy. But I will pick myself up day after day and keep fighting. I’ll continue to carry this invisible weight in hopes that we can lighten the load for my kids and our collective future.
Ellen Oh is an arts program director, mother, and Midwest-transplant living in the Bay Area. She has worked in the arts & social justice space for years but is still learning to find her voice.
