May 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Poems

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, so designated by Congress to acknowledge contributions and honor accomplishments achieved despite bigotry. It is a time of renewal and opportunity to celebrate Asian/Pacific newcomers--Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, southeast Asian. May is when the first Japanese immigrants arrived in 1843 and the transcontinental railroad built by Asian laborers was completed in May 1869. Mari Matsuda, who teaches law at Georgetown University, has said, "It is still a radical act to stand in my shoes and speak when someone who looks like me is not supposed to do what I do. This is resistance. None of us were supposed to become law professors, write books, teach elites, or speak with authority about the words and systems that were designed to keep our kin under control."

Can't Tell

When World War II was declared
on the morning radio,
we glued our ears, widened our eyes.
Our bodies shivered.

A voice said
Japan was the enemy,
Pearl Harbor a shambles
and in our grocery store
in Berkeley, we were suspended
next to the meat market
where voices hummed,
valises, pot and pans packed,
no more hot dogs, baloney,
pork kidneys.

We children huddled on wooden planks
and my parents whispered:
We are Chinese, we are Chinese.
Safety pins anchored,
our loins ached.

Shortly our Japanese neighbors vanished
and my parents continued to whisper:
We are Chinese, we are Chinese.

We wore black arm bands,
put up a sign
in bold letters.

-- Nellie Wong

Father From Asia

Father, you turn your hands toward me.
Large, hollow bowls, they are empty
stigmata of poverty. Light pours
through them, and I back away,
for you are dangerous, father
of poverty, father of ten children,
father of nothing, from whose life
I have learned nothing for myself.
You are the father of childhood,
father from Asia, father of sacrifice.
I renounce you, keep you in my sleep,
keep you two oceans away, ghost
who eats his own children,
Asia who loved his children,
who didn't know abandonment,
father who lived at the center of the world, whose life I dare not remember,
for memory is a wheel that crushes,
and Asia is dust, is dust.

--Shirley Geok-lin Lim