Ling Ling

I'm four when I walk into my first day of preschool.
The kids mocked my eyes by using their fingers
to drag out the racism.
My tiny hands could not yet grasp the pain,
but I still managed to swallow it whole anyways.
That day at school, I learned my eyes were
not the standard of beauty society recognizes.
My skin, not the color white.
My name, nothing but a reason for me
to be last in line here.
It was never feeling my Chinese body fit
in an American setting.
I'm older when I'm at the dinner table.
My father turns to me and explains a joke he heard.
He says, I'm like a banana.
My mind curious, I asked, "Baba, what does that mean?"
He says, "Yellow on the outside, white on the inside."
Here, it was always feeling too American
to understand the Chinese in me.
Being a Chinese woman in America is looking
down the barrel of oppression for it to shoot model minority.
It's seeing the painful history
of Chinese women auctioned off
like property to white America,
knowing history is repeating itself in the city.
It's learning about the transcontinental railroad,
but not the ones who built it.
The sound of the hammers hitting the tracks play
in my head, chink.
Thousands of unrecorded deaths, chink.
Grand opening, Atlantic to the Pacific, chink.
The Chinese Exclusion Act, chink.
Alienization, chink.
Otherization and 150 years later, chink.
It's a little girl with yellow skin and small eyes
who never found the missing pages of her history textbooks
that would help her explain where this word comes from.
And suddenly, there's silence from America.
But America will take time to love their China-towns.
And as America walks down the streets
of San Francisco and Houston,
they will believe in the power of the food
and the old buildings,
but forget that their feet step on the same remnants
of hand-carved land Chinese migrants fought for to survive
in white America, being forgotten can feel so complacent.
But Chinese women know what it feels like to be forgotten.
Silenced, not just by America, but by our own culture too.
Chinese baby girl left on the footsteps of a hospital.
Chinese girl, be quiet at the dinner table.
Chinese object, take in all the Ling-Lings
and men with yellow fever.
Chinese woman, serve tea to the guests.
Chinese leftovers, marry before 24.
Chinese wife, be obedient to your husband.
Chinese daughter, learn your place in the household.
Chinese woman,
you are stronger than the gold
our people lost their lives searching for,
more resilient than the cities we built across this land.
Somewhere woven into the fabrics of our cheap house,
fossilized in the Jade we wear around our necks
and the red we paint across our lips are
the untold stories of the women who came before you,
who conquered their oppression and live inside of you
to grant you the strength to persevere.
To be Asian and American is to play a game of tug of war,
except you are the only player,
and as you fight with balancing identity,
sometimes the rope will fall on either side.
And there is no word right enough
to describe the pain of losing.
The loosening of the rope, the fall, the giving in.
But know that in this unique game,
you are also always winning.