Friday, April 5, 1996
Foreboding clenches my stomach as my sister and I sit in the
backseat of my father’s car. Tension fills the silence. Suddenly my
father whirls around in the driver’s seat. A knife glitters. He
grabs our palms, slashes them with the knife. I am struck by the
feeling of my flesh being torn apart. I hear my sister’s screams. I
don’t know what to do, how to make him stop …
I am tired of this dream because it keeps returning to disturb
my sleep. I am an adult now, but in an instant I can be dragged
backward through time. Somewhere inside I am 11 years old.
Do you know I feel safest when I am sleeping with my dogs? Kumba
takes the pillow and Neika stretches the length of my twin bed,
leaving just enough space for me to squeeze in. If I lie diagonally
across the bed, then I don’t get pushed off in the middle of the
night. As part of the pack, I am comfortable, secure.
But I never know when the dream will come again. The part that
stays with me even after I awaken is my feeling of foreboding, a
fear of the inevitable. On those nights, I lie in bed afraid of the
dark, wanting to turn on the light but scared to let even my arm
stray from the bed. On those nights, I am certain that monsters
lurk beneath my bed.
"FIND HER, FEED HER, FUCK HER, FORGET HER" was scrawled on the
back of the seat before me in Young Hall. I guess chemistry
lectures are just too inspiring for some of us. I hope the "her"
refers to an Inflate-A-Date doll.
But I keep remembering the UCLA fraternity songbooks discovered
a few years ago. I am haunted by the lyrics from the song about
"Lupe … [the] hot fucking, cocksucking Mexican whore." I wonder
how many women have been raped on fraternity row. Maybe that is why
I am telling 20,000 people that I am afraid of the dark.
Telling, yelling. So many people think that Asian women are
submissive. Let’s smash the silence and one more stereotype. I’ve
always secretly enjoyed the sound of shattering glass.
Silence used to be my way of separating myself from my father’s
rage, but it also made me feel isolated. I felt so ashamed and
alone those times when he used to beat my sister. Crouched in my
closet, I would wonder if the fights were somehow my fault. There
were so many times I just wanted not to think, not to feel.
I used to lie very still on my bed and try to make myself numb.
I would imagine myself shrinking, becoming paler and thinner until
finally I was just a pile of bones. Ah, the relief I felt when
those bones finally withered to dust.
Do you hear only my childhood pain here? Are you caught up in
the individualism of it? Or do you understand that violence is
purposeful and pervasive in our society? That violence is used to
enforce hierarchies, the status quo? Frankly, I am not looking for
sympathy; I am talking about survival.
Some people read Asian American feminist writers (Maxine, my
favorite) and think that talk-story is a quaint Oriental tradition.
How exotic! How charming! Is she wearing a kimono? They do not
realize that they are witnessing the political strategy of
guerrilla resistance fighters.
I remember this story my mother told me. Once upon a time, a
woman on a crowded subway train felt a stranger’s hand somewhere it
shouldn’t have been. This woman grabbed the offending hand and held
it high above her head. She asked loudly, "Does this belong to
anyone? I found it on my ass."
"Don’t take shame that doesn’t belong to you," my mother tried
to say. "Hold your oppressors accountable." But we have been
swallowing shame for such a long time that it has become something
of a habit.
In a parallel universe, or a moment of wartime panic (so our
oppressors would like us to believe), my family was banished from
the California farmlands they worked (but were not allowed to own)
and exiled to Heart Mountain, Wyo. After the war, my uncle applied
to Butler University in Indiana and was told they were "not
accepting Japanese."
On Oct. 12, 1995, I was arrested for civil disobedience in a
protest against the UC Regents’ decision to abandon affirmative
action throughout the University of California. Some people said
that I should not have drawn attention to myself, that I stepped
out of place. They might have said the same thing to my
great-grandmother, had she spoken out publicly against Executive
Order 9066. But they told her to go quietly, not to make waves. So
she watched from behind barbed wire as her son fought the Nazis in
Europe and liberated other people’s families.
Now supporters of the California "Civil Wrongs" Initiative want
us to eliminate affirmative action throughout California. Racism.
Makes me think of a white supremacist leaflet that appeared all
over UCLA two years ago during USAC elections. Proclaiming "No-Mo
Niggers," it asked students to "Keep White Hope Alive" by voting
against the African American candidates and listed their names. The
illustration showed a series of evolving apes, suggesting that
African Americans are primitive, not fully human.
I remember the days Asian Americans were labeled "the yellow
peril." Suddenly we’re the model minority. Except for Thien Minh
Ly. The neo-Nazis who stabbed him to death a few weeks ago in
Tustin bragged that they had killed a "dirty Jap." The Bruin didn’t
feel the hate-murder of a young alumnus warranted a story. Just
another young man of color meeting a violent death.
We must unite against the violence which anchors the status quo.
We must speak out against oppression in all its forms. I think
that’s why I keep having this dream.
"Some things are better left unsaid, but they still turn me
inside out," Annie Lennox sings. I used to believe I could heal in
silence, that my pain was unconnected to my community, that it was
better to be non-confrontational. But I can’t afford to be 11 years
old and scared of the dark forever. Too much is at stake.
Shigemura is a third-year geography/environmental studies
student.