Making sense of minor feelings

my experience as an Asian woman the last few weeks

It hasn’t been an easy few weeks for me. It started off with the devastating news from Atlanta. I’m ok, but let me clear my calendar for the next day or two and take it easy.

People beat me to the punch of my emotions. Texts from friends, “I’ve been thinking about you this week. Sending you love,” that made me consider, am I not reacting enough to what’s going on? I felt slightly uncomfortable being singled out like that, and also grateful for their sweet thoughtfulness.

As the barrage of posts about attacks on elderly asians, the rising hate crimes, and more continued, memories floated back into my attention, memories I hadn’t thought about for many years.

—

“Ni hao!” proclaimed the middle-aged white man proudly, standing in his front yard, making me feel rude for not responding, as I stomped angrily by. But that’s not what I remember most from that encounter. It was saying “that guy just said ni hao to me, what an asshole” to my ex and his mom, who had been walking behind me, and their confusion as to why I was so upset, wasn’t that man just being friendly?

When we had our post-wedding reception in the mid-west a decade ago, and a great-uncle walked into the door, greeting me jovially, “Welcome to America!” And we all laughed it off, because old people, and it was just easier. Years later, a middle-aged man stared at me across their family reunion venue, the only non-white person there — and approached us multiple times, rambling incoherently about concubines and foot-licking.

The Lyft driver who took once glance at me in the rearview mirror, and confidently switched the music selection to Chinese pop — “I really like listening to Chinese songs,” he offered. My grunts of non-engagement did little to dissuade him from continuing to eye me in his mirror, asking me about whether or not I liked Chinese music, and did I speak Chinese. “No,” I lied uncomfortably, eager to leave his car, rattled. I felt guilty about giving him less than a five-star review.

—

It’s about Asian women murdered in Atlanta, and it’s about the uptick in horrific attacks on elderly Asians, but it’s about much more than that too.

It’s about a lifetime of walking a tightrope between invisibility and object of fetishization.

The invisibility I felt, now clearer in hindsight, at Princeton. I didn’t see the point of joining Asian associations where what we had in common was our race, so instead, I cobbled together friendships but mostly kept to myself, invisible.

I recently realized that I can easily categorize the white people I’ve known into people I could imagine being friends with, and people I absolutely could not, not due to a lack of shared interests, but of a feeling of invisibility — a wall standing between us, of friendly interactions via the groups or classes we co-existed in, but not really being seen. People who saw Asian people, and people who did not.

But even in writing that, I feel unsure. How can I disentangle and attribute anything to my experience of being me (were we just not compatible as friends?), to my experience of being a woman, to my experience of being an Asian woman?

Invisibility transformed into uncomfortable attention when I started my internship at Google in NYC. Going from invisible to so many eyes on me, watching my every move. I wore a longer-than-knee-length flow-y skirt one of the first days of my internship — and wore pants the rest of the summer, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself. Suddenly, lots of friendly people wanted to talk to me. Another intern found out that I was also staying in FiDi — “We should go home together sometime,” innocently, so he could deny any unprofessional motivations. When I brushed him off many times that summer, and then at the end of summer picnic, he sought me out away from the crowds, pulling someone towards me, to proudly announce, “this is my girlfriend” — her race absolutely not a surprise to me.

The oh-so-many vibes I got from people — TAs, graduate students, classmates — whose later Facebook statuses “In a Relationship” or “Married” featured them with an Asian woman. Of course, I thought.

My 7 year-old snuck into my bed last week, way past her bedtime. I explained that I’d had a hard week and needed to go to sleep. We talked about the increased attacks on Asian people, and that I was scared because I’m Asian. “Really?! I thought you were Chinese.” In learning that she’s half-Asian (I swear we’ve had these conversations before…), “Aw shucks, I don’t want to get attacked. Well at least no one will attack daddy, no one attacks white people.” She said she was afraid to sleep in her bed because she didn’t want to die in bed like that woman, so we talked about Breonna Taylor. And as she finally stumbled back to her bed, I wondered, how do I even begin to prepare her for the life ahead of her?

“From invisible girlhood, the Asian American woman will blossom into a fetish object,” writes Cathy Hong Park.

I realize I diminish my experience. I didn’t have it as bad as almost everyone else, I tell myself. I wasn’t out at bars or in big cities in my 20s, so I bypassed the overt harassment I’ve heard about from many of my peers.

—

It’s been a lifetime of diminishing and not looking directly — and these last few weeks, I’ve been forced to confront these memories — and the hardest part is perhaps that it’s all at a time that wasn’t of my choosing.

I want to — I bought and read Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong, but I admit I skimmed it mostly, a little afraid to really read it for its full effect. I bought Know My Name by Chanel Miller, but I haven’t dared to read it yet. Her beautifully heart-wrenching art on Instagram made me weep — if you haven’t already, take a look at these two.

I want to look at the ways my race and my identity as Asian American has played a role in, well, everything. And I’m afraid — I don’t feel like I have the time to unpack all of that at a time not of my choosing. We’re a year into a global pandemic. I’m a working divorced mom with kids in distance learning. I’m afraid to really read these books, to really look at these memories, afraid of what it will unearth because frankly I don’t have it in me right now to unpack it and disentangle it and put it back in all neat and tidy. 

I feel unsafe to walk around at night by myself, which is too bad, because when my kids are here, that is the only time I have to myself.

These past few years, I’ve felt a shift in myself — of showing up more fully, of letting my walls down, and letting people in. I used to have my walls up, layers of armor, even with people I would consider close friends. But the past few weeks, like many Asian Americans, I haven’t felt safe. And I’m not sure how to reconcile these two feelings.

So it’s about the recent attacks and murders, and it’s about so much more. It’s about confronting a lifetime of minor feelings of being a member of a “model minority,” of giving myself permission to make sense of my race, and give myself permission to not process it all before I’m ready.