Where I came from
1000 years of border war; 100 years of colonization; 30 years (American-backed) Vietnam War;
The West speaks about us as if we were a concept,
as if the poverty, the uncertainty, the lack of opportunity,
is self-inflicted.
Where I came from,
Men love women. They get married. They bear children. They care for their elders.
Kids are told to keep their heads down, to listen well, to recite Uncle Ho’s poetry.
Where I came from,
I slept on floors. I shifted buckets of rainwater that flooded the house back onto the streets.
My father worked two blue-collar jobs
My mother pinched every one twentieth of a dollar (because that’s how much our currency was worth)
Because they saw my ambition. Because they wanted more for me.
Because I wanted more for me.
When I was in Singapore,
Singapore kids (university students, really)
(The would-be managers, leaders, and elites of the nation)
Sat in the middle of a circle. And they said
“These foreign talents. They came here, and they took our spots in university. They took our scholarships. They took our jobs. And they didn’t even go to the army.”
Because I looked like them, and I spoke like them, and I understood their Mandarin.
They forgot that I am one of those “foreign”.
They forgot that the Banglas built their infrastructure, that the Filipinos served their food, that the foreign Indians, the foreign Malays, and the foreign Southeast Asians paid their taxes and built their companies.
They even forgot that not all Indians and Malays are foreign.
When I was in America,
I went to one of the most prestigious Ivy Leagues in America.
I slept on floors, ate ramen, shared a kitchen, and took the bus, so we could get our start-up started.
Yet, I told white people on the bus I worked at a laundromat so they’d leave me alone
Black grandma at the bus stop told me, “I wish my grandson were more like your people.”
Asian men are a punch line, a joke, an asexual backdrop, and an abusive husband on TV
We didn’t need reminding that we didn’t belong there. We knew.
When I was gay in America,
My (white) boyfriend’s friends called me the foreign wife (with me in the room, as if I didn’t speak English, or that I didn’t understand microaggressions)
My Asian friends fought over their scraps of whites
And because my boyfriend was white, I am not allowed to talk about racism in the gay community, about white privilege, or about internalized homophobia in the Asian community.
“You’re a hypocrite,” they said, “if you have problems with this so much,”
“Why not just go back to where you came from?”
When I was in gay Canada, ten years ago,
I genuinely thought I had found a home
Sure, we aren’t perfect. We needed to care more about our neighbors.
We needed to reconcile with our past.
We needed to fix the paths to a better future for our youth.
But we had it pretty good.
We have peace. We have stability. We have freedom. We have rights.
We have healthcare. We have a social safety net. We prevent childhood poverty.
And then, this week, the Premier of Alberta came out and said
“Immigrants are ruining this place.”
“There are too many of them. They are coming too fast.”
“They flooded our emergency rooms.” (as if the same government didn’t dismantle healthcare, cut funding, and engage in multiple corruption scandals)
“They are taking your job.” (as if the same government didn’t put out ads to encourage more Canadians elsewhere to come for economic opportunities)
“They are making your children’s classroom overcrowded.” (as if the same government didn’t cut funding, force teachers to end their strikes, and enforce the same horrible conditions)
“We need to make these immigrants pay.”
(and then we will make you pay more. So that you have better healthcare. So that your kids get a better school)
“We need a new caste system.”
“When I said we wanted more immigrants, I meant only the white ones, the conservative ones, the wealthy ones, the trademen in oil ones.”
“When I said we needed more immigrants, I meant only the ones who worked the oil fields, who carried out dangerous jobs, who nannied our children, who nursed our elders. Don’t they dare send their kids to school or get sick, because that is reserved for the wealthy.”
And then they said, “If you have problems with this so much,”
“Why not just go back to where you came from?”
And there it is.
Where I came from,
I slept on floors. My father worked two blue-collar jobs. My mother pinched every one twentieth of a dollar.
Neighbors take care of each other
Doctors work in overcrowded emergency rooms
Teachers teach in overcrowded classrooms
(And they might even start to be ok with the gay thing)
At least where I came from
Our humanity is not reduced to an abstract concept,
of something to be first inline
for sacrifice
when a government fucked up
and the people will keep voting for that, too
because, “tax cut”.
Maybe I go back to where I came from
back to the earth, the rain, the heat, the mother, the father, the neighbors
Maybe I’m just romanticizing it
because I’ve been away too long. And there’s truly no place that one can call home
When one is a perpetual nomad
a gay
brown
immigrated
Vietnamese.
Pace Fine Arts 