the following pages are created by some members of the 20182019 task force: carter yee ‘21 johnstone tcheou ‘20 rachel wang ‘21 jamie noh ‘21 nhi tran ‘19 olivia nichols ‘20 ellie kleiman ‘21 on aapi visibility and identity
johnstone tcheou
rachel wang + jamie noh
jamie noh
From Hieu nhi tran i. My mother tells me of a story of when she was seventeen, when she brought a boy home for the first time. My grandfather, shaking, red in the face, beat and chased him out with a straw broom. The boy, bruised like a fallen mango, yelped and stumbled out the door and down the dirt path all the way home without looking back once.
She laughs as she recalls it, teases me, ‘So don’t bring any boy home. You are still too young. Maybe your father isn’t as crazy as mine was. But with men and their daughters, you never know.’
ii. There was a set of rules that my mother taught me, as she has been taught by her mother, like many other women that she knew.
Girls never sit with their legs spread. Girls do not whistle. Girls do not play fight. Girls do not talk back to their elders. Girls do not stay alone with a boy. Girls must be obedient. Girls must know how to do chores properly. Girls must fold the signs of their existence onto themselves, make themselves smaller, softer, quieter. Girls must endure. Girls must learn to take care of her family and others.
(And what about herself?)
iii. One thing that both is both wonderful and terrible about my parents is that they like to brag.
ellie kleiman