Year of the Ox
Happy Lunar New Year!
When I was ten, I probably wouldn’t have worn traditional Chinese clothing to school unless it was heritage day. Despite the fact that I went to school that wore uniforms, I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable in my own skin anyway. I went to a school that was primarily white with a few Asians (us plus two Vietnamese families) and a slightly larger group of Latinos, mostly Mexican. Would I have been teased? Maybe, maybe not. Would I have been accepted? Maybe, maybe not. Would I have been understood? Likely not.
While I could have explained myself, it was a different time and place to the one in which my kids are growing up now.
Little Lion has always been able to express herself through clothing. There have been many first days of school in which she decided to wear her Halloween costume early. She has always rocked red, then black flame cowgirl boots and has now moved onto purple combat boots and dragon-embroidered docs. She has been known to wear all sorts of cloaks and capes on an every day basis and this year, for fifth grade, she’s been rocking her leather jackets in rotation. She is Little Lion—brave, creative, and unabashedly herself.
She also has grown up in a world where she has seen herself in picture books, novels, tv shows, and movies. She’s grown up with a knowledge of her Fiilpino and Chinese heritage as well as her mixed European (Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Irish, German, and, we recently discovered, French) heritage. She knows she’s mixed, but it doesn’t necessarily define her.
We judge books by their covers. We do it all the time. As I grew older—into junior high, high school and beyond—I came to realize that everyone would see me as Chinese first. And have certain judgements placed upon me. (I say Chinese because most people don’t realize that I’m half-Filipino.) That’s what we instinctively do, right?
But what if we see the person first? What if instead of attacking the elderly Chinese/Vietnamese/Korean person on the street, we see our grandfather or grandmother?
There’s been a rise in Asian American hate crimes this year. A 1900% percent rise. I’ve heard it over and over again since the start of pandemic, since an administration continually called Sars-CoV-2 the “China virus” even though it had a scientific name.
I have been lucky—I haven’t experienced that kind of racism this year. But I think about the many young people who are volunteering to walk elderly Asians to their cars to protect them. I think about the frustrations of the pandemic—the loneliness, the hunger, the decreased social interaction, the stress of losing a job. And I wonder if it’s time that we start thinking harder about the judgements we make on a day to day basis.
I’m trying harder every day. And I wish health and safety and happiness to you today, along with the hope that our country will continue with its healing process.
Side note: Little Lion is holding a copy of Erin Entrada Kelly’s We Dream of Space, which takes place when I was in 6th grade. I distinctly remember watching as a class as the Challenger launched and then exploded. I remember the feeling of shock and confusion. And I can’t wait to read Kelly’s fictional middle grade accounting of the events from three different seventh graders’ points of view.
