Giving Voice to the Asian Experience

 

This recent article by tech leader and San Francisco dad Garry Tan really resonated with me. To be sure, I don’t share all of Tan’s childhood experiences or present-day perspectives. He doesn’t speak for me, nor can I possibly understand let alone express anyone else’s opinion but my own. But there was much in his words that I could relate to and want to build on. 

What resonates is having grown up as clearly marked as “other,” which was understood and communicated in many ways. I may have been born in America but I wasn’t “REALLY from here.” My physical features and my cultural characteristics (language, traditions, food) were considered “different” and “foreign.” Even on the very issue of race and of being a minority person in the US, there was Black and white and Hispanic, but “Asian” was often minimized or even forgotten altogether, something about “they’re doing alright for themselves,” with most people incredulous that the “model minority” myth could be anything but a good thing for us. 

And, with all that having been seared into our upbringing, then to bear the modern-day gaslighting of our cries for help being silenced as unnecessary, unhelpful, or outright racist. When Tan speaks of attacks on our kids and our elders, I being around his age feel that in my soul. It makes me realize it is up to me and others in our generation to own and express and fight for these feelings. Even and especially when others wish to dismiss or smear us for them. 

I want to express deep gratitude for my village, which is composed of good people from all walks of life and racial backgrounds, who have journeyed with me and expressed profoundly supportive statements of solidarity and empathy and concern and outrage. I am tearing up as I consider how fortunate I am to be cared for so well by others. Yet they and I still have much work to do, to give voice when we are being silenced, to fight for progress and safety and respect when others would seek to drag us down or look down on our perspective. So glad so many who look like me are finding their voice; it emboldens me to do the same.