OPINION
September 1, 2014
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
My awesome
afternoon on The Hill
was invited to speak on The Hill. To
OHSU.
“I’m headed up The Hill,” I breath-
lessly called our mom across our deep blue
sea. I told familia and friends as speedily
as I could dial.
“Yup, I’m speaking up on The Hill,” I told
two nice nodding Korean ladies on the
T.J.Maxx up-escalator. I told a grumpy
Anglito, next urinal over at Irvington
Applebee’s. The ladies smiled, the guapo
grunted. So proud I was.
Ja tentu, I was telling the world because,
you know, not everyone gets invited up
there, up to OHSU. That’s Oregon Health
& Science UNI-VERS-sit-tee — for all our
FOB ricepicker cousins. For those not yet
in the know.
OHSU is packed with nationally envied
teachers, with internationally linked
researchers and really smart docs, with
nurses as practical as any immigrant
mom, as patient as Lord Buddha.
Adduh’illaah (OMG) the president of our
IRCO board of directors — Dr. Valerie
Palmer — works up there. Up on that hill.
That staid institution, was asking me to
speak. I kid you not.
Pero un momentito. Before you and me
and my asthmatic Taiwanese motorbike go
up there, allow me a small explanatory
digression, to account for my unwashed
generation’s propensity to shamelessly
overstate the size of any welcome mat into
America’s mainstream.
I
What anxious New Americans do
I am a child of a folk living between giant
warring nations, each believing they
owned our soil, our oil, our women. Our
parents raised us during the dark years
that follow every nascent nation’s first
few decades, during the dirty years of
terrible, tightly contained bitterness
breaking out, devouring simple villages,
pretty towns, and tall cities, like a disease.
We fled.
Our parents picked up, raising us again
in the Netherlands. Then again in Salem,
Oregon. They made the most of everything
they worked and worked for, for us. For we
had no next place to go.
We settled into chaotic 1960s America.
The U.S. was warring in Viet Nam. When
the Selective Service drew my draft
number, I dashed for the door. I did not
graduate from high school. Our pop would
not send any of his boys back into all that
rage.
In short, for readers who’ve never lived
like a bird on a wire — a sparrow never
sure how soon a bigger and badder bird
will chase you away, again — let me tell
you how much it means to tell an easily
startled mom that my miserable
motorbike and me are heading up The Hill.
It is huge. Acceptance is the highest high of
all.
Having said aaall that, ma’af ma’af, let
me start my real story, the one about my
hour at the top of curvy and leafy Sam
Jackson Park Road. At OHSU. I was
asked to address Asian Pacific American
Heritage Month. It’s that time of year we
set aside to examine how we’re doing here.
So, as I was settling into a voice most
likely to reach our audience’s ethnic,
generational, and occupational mix, it
suddenly struck me how predictable
(boring) I would be for the next hour if I
stuck to text.
What American Asians need now do
High school history hardbacks have
already laid out how long Asians and
Pacific Island pioneers have lived and
loved here — falling Doug firs, growing
apples, running grocery and dry-goods
stores. We’ve already read how, with the
regularity of capitalism’s manic mood
swings, America has expelled our
Hawaiian, Filipino, Punjabi, Chinese, and
Japanese families. A hundred and fifty
years of that. Who doesn’t already
understand that it’s the same mean
business for our hardworking Latinos.
Unhappy history needs no recitation.
Moreover,
that
well-educated
and
well-dressed audience was trusting me
with a full hour of their well-compensated
time. They needed to get something they
didn’t already own. Critique was out. Their
moms would not appreciate me biting the
hand that feeds us, rather well. America’s
mainstream may just yank away the
welcome mat. As our history would have
it.
So instead of taking out that stale
oppressed-minority narrative (as if, in
addition to 150 years of uncertainty here,
we’re no wiser for 300 years of European
nastiness back there), I thought it best to
stay in our room. To stay with who we are.
With here and now.
And there we were — inside that fine
auditorium, on top of that prestigious hill
— moving rather determinedly into
America’s fast lane. Lexus, Nordstrom,
Stanford, and certainly some OHSU
building directories, are all doing well by
us. Because of us. Our moms and grand-
mas should be proud. Kasihan’illaah.
Our problem is, while we’re doing well
for Oregon’s mainstream, we’re not doing
so much for our own Asian and Islander
ethnic streams. The problem is the
giddiness I couldn’t contain, call after
phone call, while riding T.J.’s escalator,
while standing in Applebee’s boys’ room.
Our parental generation’s intense need
for settled Americans’ approval, and of
course for other New Americans’ envy, has
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
driven us farther and farther from our
communities’ elders and ancestors. It has
distanced us from the cultural and
spiritual capital that has always sustained
us — laughing like babies, crying like
children, loving like confident adults — no
matter how angry those colonial bosses, or
how ugly those American mobs.
Our parents’ generation’s anxious
commitment to tightly disciplining, tidily
dressing, and intensely educating their
kids, must be understood for what it is —
an adaptive strategy for a hostile
environment. A successful one to be sure,
but nonetheless a situational strategy
based on most newly arrived families’
socio-economic marginality. On our
relative powerlessness. Our fear.
Our younger brothers, for example,
speak only English because our pediatri-
cian said, with our mom earnestly nodding
— that speaking two languages only
confuses and slows little guys. Our abbre-
viated or absent American manners,
though they raised our pop’s blood
pressure through our suburban rancher’s
roof, were code for our inclusion into Salem
culture.
Asian as an asset, not a racial minority
Every good immigrant parent makes
these practical calculations, though in the
aggregate they amount to erasing our
elegant and muscular past. The erosion is
permanent. The eventuality is “Asian” or
“Pacific Islander” as a check box, on census
surveys, school forms, job applications,
driver licenses, voter registrations. As if
Asian were a race. As if we weren’t
hundreds and hundreds of distinct
histories and dignified cultures.
All these considerations suddenly
paralyzed me, for one very long pause in
front of all those very smart Asians. Those
of us in that room, on top of our professions,
have done well in Oregon’s mainstream,
but not so well for our communities of
nurture. The data confirms the former.
The data doesn’t touch the latter.
Now, about medical professionals I don’t
know a lot, but if an analogy to Oregon’s
lawyers is valid, I can say with some
certainty that Asians are making it into
government practice and into downtown
corporate practice, but we are failing to
deliver law in our own neighborhoods. I’ll
bet the same is true for the delivery of
medicine.
Now’s a good time to evolve us into a new
level of play. For Oregon’s pioneering
Asians and for our post-1975 arrivals, it
may be time to relax our focus on getting
ahead. If we don’t turn around, we’re at
risk of losing our precious past. If we don’t
reaffirm our enormous social and spiritual
capital, we will lose what mainstream
America actually longs for. Our sacrifices
will amount to a racialized check box. And
minorities, history texts say, are always
losers when the majority rules.
Lucky for our more-settled Asians that
newly arriving Asians, also children and
grandchildren of Mother India’s or Mother
China’s deep cultural wellsprings, daily
unpack their bags here. They come as
exhausted and bewildered as we did, and
they’re as rich with cultural integrity as we
were. Let’s trade.
Newcomers can and they will
reinvigorate our shared social and cultural
bank accounts, if in return we protect
Lexus, Nordstrom,
Stanford, and certainly
some OHSU building
directories, are all
doing well by us.
Because of us.
Our problem is, while
we’re doing well for
Oregon’s mainstream,
we’re not doing so
much for our own
Asian and Islander
ethic streams.
moms as anxious as ours from their
acceptance anxieties. Everyone will
benefit from Old Worlders not giving up
quite so much to become American.
We begin this turnaround by doing as
well for Oregon’s ethnic streams as we’re
doing for our mainstream, and we start
this trip by getting as giddy about getting
out to east Portland as I did about my
appearance up on that hill.
Me and my asthmatic Taiwanese
motorbike came down from OHSU easier,
much easier than our ride up. Of course it
was because we coasted easily between
those tall Doug firs and ancient maple; of
course it was on account of our elders’
awful sacrifices getting us up there.
But really we breathed easier because
we’re turning a corner on what we can
contribute to America. Our America. And
I don’t mean making bigger earnings
quarters for Acura or Banana Republic.
Nota: In truth, I did not get to OHSU on an
esteemed academic’s invitation. My boost came
from an ethnic streamer, another Asian Reporter
and APANO contributor, a proud mom of a lovely
St. Mary’s Academy high schooler. In short:
I got there by her coming down here. The point,
the trade, of this story. Salamat po, Maileen binti.
w
The Asian Reporter’s
Expanding American Lexicon
APANO: Asian Pacific American Network of
Oregon. Statewide advocacy organization
founded by local Viet Kieu elder Thach
Nguyen.
Binti (Passar Bahasa): Baby sister.
Draft number: When I was a teen, America
sent kids to war by lottery. Government guys
drew my draft number.
FOB: Fresh Off da Boat. Often, we settled
Asians make fun of newly arrived one’s dress
and behavior because we see in them what we’ve
lost — simplicity and sincerity.
IRCO: Immigrant and Refugee Community
Organization. Our nationally envied newcomer
integration agency.
Ja tentu (Passar Bahasa): Yes, certainly.
Kasihan’illaah (Passar Bahasa): Oh God
loves you.
Ma’af ma’af (Bahasa Indonesia): Sorry, so
sorry.
Momentito (Spanish and Passar Bahasa): A
tiny moment. An excellent code-switch word.
Pero (Spanish and Tagalog): But. Except
that —. Another code transition.
Salamat po (Tagalog): Thank you. May yours
be peace.
Pope leaves South Korea after urging peace
Continued from page 2
Yeom Soo-jung dedicated a “crown of thorns” to the pope
made from barbed wire taken from the heavily fortified
demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. “Ut unum
sint” reads the inscription “That they may be one” — a
phrase usually invoked when praying for unity among
Catholics, Orthodox, and other Christians, but given an
entirely new meaning in the Korean context.
In his homily, Francis said the Korean people knew well
the pain of division and conflict and urged them to reflect
on how they individually and as a people could work to
reconcile.
He challenged them to “firmly reject a mindset shaped
by suspicion, confrontation, and competition, and instead
to shape a culture formed by the teaching of the gospel and
the noblest traditional values of the Korean people.”
When he was a young Jesuit, the Argentine-born
Francis had wanted to be a missionary in Asia but was
kept home because of poor health. He used his trip to
South Korea to rally young Asians in particular to take up
the missionary call to spread the faith.
He also used the trip to console Koreans: He met on
several occasions with relatives of victims of the Sewol
ferry sinking, in which 300 people were killed in April.
Throughout his trip, he wore a yellow pin on his cassock
that was given to him by the families.
Pope Francis received the butterfly pin from Kim
Bok-dong, one of the “comfort women” who attended his
mass. These elderly South Koreans, many of whom
regularly appear at rallies and other high-profile events,
are looking for greater global attention as they push
Japan for a new apology and compensation.
In an interview with The Associated Press before the
mass, another one of the women, Lee Yong-soo, who often
speaks to the media, said she hoped the meeting would
provide some solace for the pain she and others still feel
more than seven decades after they were violated.
AP writer Foster Klug and video editor Kiko
Rosario contributed to this story from Seoul.