This poem is one in a series commissioned by Day Eight within a project funded by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of AAPI Affairs, directed by Regie Cabico.
Being and Belonging: Walking While Asian American
By Sunu P. Chandy
It was an extrovert’s dream
Saturday. After spending the morning
sitting on the newly built porch at a friend’s home
and the three-year-old’s refusal to share
his stuffies, not his diny, sharky,
fishy, or puppy, but insistence that I acknowledge
each of them and him playing with them,
and after we gave him a new happy birthday box
of flesh-colored crayons, imagine it,
24 skin tones now, and after we took almost nothing
from their yard sale except one lovely wire
basket, mostly to mark the memory
of that gorgeous September perfect
weather day, after all of that,
we stopped by a DC street fair.
And as we got closer to this street fair
there were cars honking, police
directing traffic, and overflowing crowds
on the sidewalk. My teen daughter and I got out
to walk and meet our friends
since we only had a short window
of time to say hello before my friend’s cocktail
dress required 40th birthday party that evening.
As we were rushing along,
there was an older, possibly intoxicated
man, with two women friends, in front of us
on the sidewalk. We soon observed, this was the kind
of seemingly drunk man who commented
out loud, on everything. And when we passed by,
he began to say, Oh they’re walking so fast, so fast,
so fast, I am going to follow them. And then he began
to trace us closely. And then he began to say:
What’s your name, what’s your name,
what’s your name, what’s your name. Hey miss,
what’s your name? And before I could decide
whether or how to engage
in the midst of our rushing, this turned
into: Oh okay, so you don’t speak
English. Oh okay, you don’t speak
English. I guess you don’t speak
English. And if that wasn’t enough,
he then he went into a full “fake Chinese
mocking” “word-sounds.” Those very sounds
I had not heard since my own Midwest
American childhood. But this time
my daughter was with me. Her face
told me she was startled,
and possibly scared. And I didn’t
turn around and say: Stop it
right there. I didn’t stop and say, No one
harasses me, or my Asian American
child. I just said to her, quietly
and plainly, You know what,
let’s keep on. Let’s just keep on
walking.
And later in the car, when we debriefed,
my daughter said, I wanted to cuss
him out. And I said, I get that. And
she said, That was so super racist.
And I said, Yes. She also said, He was probably
“on something.” And I said, You’re probably right.
I continued, It’s hard to know
how best to engage in these moments,
and my goal is always to defuse,
instead of escalate. And when I asked if she knew
what escalate means, she said, To throw gas
on the fire? And this was the best definition
I had ever heard.
And then I told her about the long ago time
the white attorney boys in 1998 in NYC
told me, they could in fact keep sexually harassing
the white attorney girl in the office,
and talk about her body, every single time
she came into the library where I too was sitting,
because, as they said: I don’t know where you come from
but in this country we have freedom
of speech. Upon hearing that legal theory,
my 13-year-old, with zero law school training,
suggested they go back to school
because, as she said it: That’s actually not
what freedom means.
Sunu P. Chandy is based in DC as a social justice activist, poet and civil rights attorney, and her family roots are in Kerala, India. Her poetry collection, My Dear Comrades, published by Regal House, features cover art by Ragni Agarwal. Sunu is a Senior Advisor with the non-profit organization, Democracy Forward, and a board member of the Transgender Law Center.
Featured image in this post: “Granite sidewalk – Manhattan, New York City, USA”, 2020, Daderot, creative commons.
