(It’s heartbreaking that when I remember this, I remember our conversations in English.)

I think back now to the two weeks I spent with my father’s family, the way love can rise up like that in a body and overwhelm you, love received and given. Everything becomes consumed in that: the searing heat of high morn on skin and under clothes, blinding you to your bones; the stars; the sound of the ocean; the language; fried fish and shrimp with rice; the power outages; milktea so thick with Ovaltine I couldn’t drink it; the wells; the government sedan too big for the village streets; the language; the stories. And the war, ebbing and waning in the background, history contained in the absences I’d never known as people, deaths I learned of children and teenagers, and shootings and disappearances and wedding buses set on fire. Love becomes a palpable presence within you, something your body knows and accepts into itself like an organ, pulsing alongside and separate of your heart, forming its own memory, devouring everything it encountered: the silences between adult sisters; the graveyard in the afternoon; TV antennas in the post-tsunami rehabilation camps; the children in class; the traces your parents left here; the smell of the sunlight; still water under the tallest palm trees you would ever see; the rice fields darkening as the sun set, mud and water seeping up your shalwar; the words aching.

I’m not sure what to tell you. Some of part of my heart snagged on the sight of those paddy fields, and I’ll never move again without feeling it tear.

None of that made me any less oblivous than I always am to the people around me. So when they told me that it would have made them happy to give me something, I thought they were merely being polite and refused in turn, impolitely. But it wasn’t about politeness for them. It really would have made them happy in some way no other way could have. Which transforms my rudeness into cruelty.

I should say Yes to people more often. Smile while I’m at it.

But on the last night, spent and bemused, I let my cousin empty a closet into my lap. I pulled a set of three interlinked bangles out of the riot of ballpoint pens and scarves.
“Those were your mother’s,” she said, and then paused, trying to remember. “She gave them to me before you born and said she’d come back to get them. But she never did.”

So I put on the bracelets and I didn’t take them off for the next two months, not until I moved to Vancouver.

In Toronto, in the living room of our still cramped apartment, as I unpacked my bags, I showed the bangles, dulling glintly against skin darker than anyone could remember it, to my father. “Jaysha gave me this,” I said. (And there was no need any more for internal translations, slow migrations between one language and another.) “She said it was Ummah’s and that she forgot them in Pottuvil.”

My father laughed, a soft exhalation of breath, and he looked at the three rings of metal like he couldn’t see my arm contained within them, like he was seeing something else on the other side of his eyes. He slid the bangles off my wrist and held them for a moment in his hand, callouses grey and peeling along the inside of his palms, and then he gave them back to me, saying nothing, an impossible distance lying soft on his mouth. So I watched my father leave me for a moment for some past I could never know, this story of my parents together, the convoluted meanderings of love between them, and I clung to the silver like its touch proved something to me, like if I watched my father’s face closely enough I could memorise that part of their history that had preceded me, the part that could explain to me why I had been so loved in that village almost wholly for having been their firstborn.

My mother, when I showed the bangles to her, laughed and said she had no memory of them.

I wore those bangles nearly every day of my last weeks in Toronto. Occasionally they’d be flanked and obscured by other shinier and prettier bracelets. They’re a dull silver, either tarnished or cheap, unimpressive and thin. I took them off when the babel of immediate life made them seem like a cop-out — a tokenistic peace offering worth nothing, an escape from the fact that I had learned from my parents all the traits that made being their daughter most difficult: a harshness around our edges; a certain dissatisfaction with the world, learned as fury from my father and intransigence from my mother; a commitment to goals often difficult to explain, let alone justify; the kind of love that turns futures into promises. Other lessons got warped. Courage became recklessness in me, and honesty self-obsession.

The other day I called home and my mother wanted to know if I had H1N1 and my father asked if I had any curry left, and I realised that when I had lived with them I’d never let myself notice the kinds of hours my parents worked. I put the bangles back on.

© fathima for run.ltw, 2009. | No comments
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No Regrets Blog #4
by Grandpa Dinosaur

I am now bench-pressing 40 pounds. That in itself makes me smile.

I’m looking into a women’s boxing gym that give free lessons to victims of abuse, I’d really like the peer support more than the training. Thanks to my training regime, I can tackle depression head on and vent via exercise.

I’m growing tired of turning to friends who aren’t there and now I have a better peace of mind that I don’t have to. I’ve been slowly working out my inadequacy and no longer put up with people criticising my life, with a “help or back off policy.” Because god, if they don’t back off I will back away and walk out the back door. I don’t have to deal with this anymore. I can leave because I’m getting tired of confronting everything and having nothing happen.

Exercise has given me a sense of agency, being fat has given me great pride in myself and who I am. No matter how thin I get, deep down I will always remember what it was like to be treated like shit for being myself, even if that was being a fat person.

Recently I’ve been getting fatigue in other places, like when I talk to people about race, being a lesbian, being a Cambodian, being a woman. I get a lot of grief from feminists who ignore me due to my skin colour, gay people who sneer at me because I am not “gay enough,” Cambodians that don’t think I’m Cambodian, Coloured people who don’t always stand in solidarity with me because I am not their race, it’s very exhausting. Especially the last one, I try my best to address the problems and be inclusive of other races as possible. These few days I’ve been noticing that people keep asking me to address their race issues, but don’t care about the things I go through as a Cambodian person.

All of this is very stressful.

More and more, I feel the pressure of not the media, not ads in the paper but from my friends and family telling me that I’m worthless because I’m “fat” and “stupid.” I’m fat of heart and stupid ripped, I refuse to let people belittle and criticize my life. But then it made me confront the truth: I have body issues only when I talk to other women my age who have body issues. It’s the only time I realize that other people do not think my body type is abnormal.

It’s then that I realize the world is incredibly shallow, and not only that, they act as if they own your body and your mind.

I have never been shallow in that I decide to be friends with people based on appearance, but apparently people have been friends with me based on mine. I don’t know how I feel about that.

I’m feeling increasingly isolated from “womanhood” and my community.

I am an educated and determined lesbian, Canadian-born Cambodian artist.

From the Cambodian community‘s perspective I am a White-washed Asian who has no identity and is not welcome in their community. I am “fat” and “ugly” and will become a spinster because I am unmarried.

From my female peers, I am uncouth and inarticulate. (TRUE!!! XD) I “cause problems” and “create drama.”

From the gay community, I do not even register. I am not gay enough.

From the White perspective I am too foreign and my traditional Cambodian upbringing conflicts with Western mindset too much adjust to Canadian life.

From the artists perspective my work is too localized or too foreign, never “homely” or exotic enough to be wanted.

In their eyes, my body is theirs to label and their labels mine to carry and bear.

In my eyes, that is the mind of the world and their perception of me. This is how I feel, how much is this is true, I do not know.

The world being my “friends” and “family” who buy the stereotypes and lifestyles will give them “better lives.”

“Friend” and “family” in name alone, I am alone in this world in so many ways. Whenever I seek help, I end up getting criticism from other women. I know that I’m not a 100% perfect person, I’m not a perfectionist and do not aim to be. I am aware I have flaws, but it is hurtful when people would rather yell and pick at my flaws rather than help me improve upon them.

I find a lot of people, from my mother, to my sister-in-law, to my friends, to my teachers.

I try to reach out and admit I need help and get the community I need, only to be slapped, told to stop crying and be strong until I actually AM crying.

I’m getting A’s in my grad school… Like literal straight A’s, but I’m burning out and dying in my eyes. People respect my tenacity and fire, but it’s all stifling. I am a student in trouble too. I am glad that my teacher is giving breaks as well as my team partner in my group. It feels like the closest thing to support I have had in a while.

Criticism isn’t going to help me when I need people to stay with me and support me and be there to work through my problems. Because I have problems, I AM very self-aware. I don’t try to ignore my faults of fancy them up to be redeeming qualities. I DO have prejudices and I OWN them, when many do not. Again I am not a perfect person nor am I a perfectionist.

I am extremely worn down because I am so isolated and do not receive help when I ASK for it or seek it. In the end, I chose to isolate myself rather than have people pick at my flaws instead of being there when I have problems or just am having a bad day.

I’m not someone who has ever come home to a happy family BUT I do not want to be a victim, I try my best not to be a victim and always try to pull myself up and be a role model despite my past and having no support from anyone. As you have noticed, this is the first blog post where I have mention of having an abusive childhood. I try my best not to let it hold me back, it is hard and I think I am doing a good job.

If you would like me to write about the abuse in my childhood, I will. I don’t mind, I will put myself out there if it will help people feel as they are not alone. Much like being a lesbian, I keep things to myself a lot because I like to keep my own business my business but I understand the importance of a community.

I also believe that is why I write for PDDP, because I know what it is like to be isolated do to sexuality and race and try to create a sense of community by saying “it’s okay to be yourself as long as it makes you happy.” Because I am happy and I would like to be THIS type of person, instead of a negative person who cries. I want to channel and challenge myself, rather than hate and hurt myself which is not always easy.

I hope I can bench-press 50 pounds by the next blog post.

Cue racial hysteria.

Interestingly, Whites have been the racial minority in NYC for the last several years.

Speaking of people of colour who don’t get the appropriate kudos they deserve for a job well done, at least some folks are breaking the race barrier and getting the spotlight they deserve.

I don’t follow sports, but thankfully my Google! Alerts do. Seems that Yankees player Hideki Matsui, who is playing his last season with the team this year, helped score six runs to lead the Yankees’s first World Series victory since 2000. No small feat, even for a talented player like Matsui; his performance earned him the first World Series MVP honour to be awarded to an Asian or Asian American player. Congrats, Hideki!

Also, a post office in San Francisco’s Chinatown may be renamed for Lim Poon Lee, who was postmaster for the area since 1966. During his tenure, Lee established the post office that will likely bear his name, and worked tirelessly to increase the representation of Chinese Americans in the postal service. This article has a full biography of Lee, who passed away in 2002, but sufficed to say, being postmaster was only part of Lee’s great accomplishments during his life.

Lee enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943, and after training as a counterintelligence specialist, he served in the Philippines and then Japan. Lee used to recount, Chan said, his company’s dispatch to Hokkaido, where they found that Chinese war prisoners in Japanese labor camps had launched a revolt against the Japanese.

The Army asked Lee to stop the riots because he was the only soldier who spoke Japanese and Chinese. His solution, as a representative of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, was to swear in the Chinese troops as members of the U.S. Army with their same ranks.

After World War II, Lee entered college and received his law degree in 1954 from Lincoln University. He continued his community advocacy while working in court systems in San Francisco, and in 1959, he helped found the Chinese American Democratic Club.

“He was ahead of his time and was very influential,” said former state Sen. John Burton. “He was one of those that encouraged the Chinese community to stand up for their rights and not be intimidated by the government.”

Chan said naming the Chinatown post office after Lee “will remind people of my children’s generation that there were Chinese Americans who, when called upon, made a difference.”

No, that’s not a Jeopardy question.

According to CNBC sports reporter, Darren Rovell, there’s a distinction between “American” and “technically American”. Why? Because Rovell believes that naturalized immigrants aren’t really American.

Apparently, Meb Keflezighi, a marathon runner who immigrated and naturalized more than a decade ago, won the NYC marathon recently, prompting a newspaper headline to read “American Wins Men’s NYC Marathon For First Time Since ‘82″. Rovell took exception to that headline because Keflezighi, who is an American citizen, simply isn’t American enough. He writes:

Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.

No. No, he’s not.

Keflezighi isn’t “technically” American. He’s American. There are two ways to be American: 1) get lucky and be born on the right soil, or 2) state your allegiance and affiliation to America. Often, naturalized Americans have done more to establish their “American-ness” than those who are American by accident of birth. Which isn’t to say that naturalized Americans are more American than domestically-born Americans; being American isn’t a question of degrees. Instead, it’s simple math: one is or one isn’t American.

Rovell’s opinion piece reeks of the kind of xenophobia that remains all-too-common in parts of America, including here in Arizona where immigration is a local as well as a federal issue. The kind of nationalist zeal that would encourage distinction between “real Americans” and naturalized Americans is the same misguided bigotry that would defend racial profiling of illegal immigrants as “crime suppression”; they are both rooted in the pretense that “real Americans” are White Americans, and everyone else must be ”ringers” (to borrow Rovell’s analogy). How often have brown-skinned Americans faced harassment here in Arizona at road-side stops by Border Patrol, while Whites drive casually through?

As the child of first-generation immigrants, I find it revolting that naturalized citizens still face suspicion and skepticism. Chinese immigrants are still stereotyped as perpetual foreigners despite having worked hard to naturalize, while no one questions the fealty of domestic-born American citizens. I can’t help but remember that less than 150 years ago, Asian immigrants of all ethnicities were denied the right to naturalize as Americans based exclusively on our race; are we really so far from that mentality even now? Americans are still perceived to be White, while people of colour have their nationality questioned or outright denied. Who can forget the infamous headline when Tara Lipinski beat fellow American Michelle Kwan to win an Olympic figure-skating gold? The MSNBC headline read: “American beats out Kwan” — implying that Kwan was not American, or at least not as American as Lipinski.

Just 24 hours after posting his anti-immigrant ranting, Rovell posted an apology. Sort of. He admitted he hadn’t fact-checked his piece, and that Keflezighi had been an American throughout his formative running experience.

But, he still insisted that we should only celebrate an American winning the NYC marathon when that American had been “brought up in the American system”.

All I was saying was that we should celebrate an American marathon champion who has completely been brought up through the American system.

This is where, I must admit, my critics made their best point. It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

Sounds like it’s all “technically” a re-packaging of the same ‘ol xenophobia to me.