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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 2018)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER December 3, 2018 Volume 28 Number 23 December 3, 2018 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2018. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA n Polo Correspondence: The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. Please send all correspondence to: Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com When Grandma Kia passes away July 10, 1936 to September 15, 2018 SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only) Individual subscription (sent bulk rate): q Half year: $14 q Full year: $24 q Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): q Half year: $24 q Full year: $40 q Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): q Half year: $40 q Full year: $75 q Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): q Half year: $100 q Full year: $180 q Two years: $280 NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION INFORMATION FORM: Subscriber’s name: Company name: Address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to: The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept., 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 q q q For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only: Name (as it appears on the card): Type of card (circle): VISA Mastercard Card number: American Express Security code: Expiration date: Address of card: The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, Oregon. Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. hen an elegant grandma passes away, the way each must — this grandma then that one, your grandma followed by ours — there’s an awful anguish in all our bones. Especially so in the bones of our transnational and traditional communities. It’s an anguish shaped by awful uncertainty, like the dread that overtakes you when you break an arm or leg bone really bad. A revered grandma leaving us is different, very different from when a determined grandpa passes away. Away from this sweaty life we’ve daily shared. When a grandpa goes, our muscles ache. We ache like a bruised boxer’s old arms and shoulders ache, as we sorrow and we celebrate what our stubborn grandpas did and did and did to deliver their children and their children’s children from all those desperate places, from all those dark days and darker nights, so far away from our splendid lives here and now. So far away from this robust city on the confluence of our generous matriarchs, Rivers Columbia and Willamette. Hmong-American Grandma Kia Vue Cha’s passing away in Oregon’s autumn of 2018 was so different from that of any great grandpa. When this grand lady, as elegant and strong as bamboo, quietly left us — no old working man’s blues filled you or me. Her departing had the sharp anguish of a badly broken bone. Fractured bones, doctors reassure us, will surely mend. But a splintered bone, like a torn apart people, cannot heal. Not ever. It is the possibility of their human broken-ness, it was the probability of Hmong (Free People) extinction that has urged Grandma Kia’s kin to move continent to continent, century to century. To here. To the safety of here. To raise pretty babies and bury their elders, here. Just as surely, it’s been every muscular migrating family’s fear of erasure, that has made so vigorous this blessed northwest corner of our shared America. About 130 centuries of that. This is always and everywhere true. Every human community’s dignity, each of our deter- mined un-broken-ness brings a world of meaning to our marvellous little planet’s children, to their children and then to theirs. And likewise true: Every family’s un-brokenness has right up to today, W As Thai-American artist and community activist Chompunut Xuto said at Grandma Kia’s memorial, for families suddenly without a home, for communities without our homelands: “Mothers are our country because we are so far away from our homes.” depended on women like Grandma Kia. Always, they’ve made our households warm. Everywhere they’ve made our tummies full, they’ve made our minds at ease, then made your and my sleep deep and sweet. As Thai-American artist and community activist Chompunut Xuto said at Grandma Kia’s memorial, for families suddenly without a home, for communities without our homelands: “Mothers are our country, because we are so far away from our homes. Mother is our country, our culture, our home.” “Mothers are Home,” she said. “The home that daily feeds and rests us.” Then we get up for another day of shared sorrow and joy. Let me say to our men, to our husbands and sons and grandsons — Hmong and Lao, Anglo and Latino, Asian and African, traditional shamanic folk and good Christians and Muslims — all of us near Madame Kia Vue Cha’s grand family: Let’s you and me forget for a sacred moment our own aching shoulders, our nagging backs. Because we are assured that our beautiful mothers and wives and their bright daughters, who’ll all certainly be our elegant grandmas, will be there for your broken bones. For my blues. No matter how bad. Surely they will. Sure they will. But only if you and me properly care for their beauty and properly light their brightness. All good young men — including our sons and grandsons who’re a bit distanced from the Continued on page 11 Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.