Our Stories, Our Voices

by Amy Reed (ed)

  IV.

  It’s college now, and I am a little drunk with my friends. We start telling dumb jokes, laughing at each one. Then one of them says, “Hey, I have a good racist joke.” I look at my friends—one white, one half Brazilian, several Chinese, one Mexican, two Persian, one Vietnamese. “What kind of racist joke?” I ask my friend uneasily.

  “About Black people.”

  I tell him, “Fuck no. Don’t tell a racist joke about Black people.”

  “Why not?”

  This question begins an hours-long debate between me and one particular guy, the lone white dude. Like many times in my life, I don’t hesitate to take the bait. This guy, he’s like a lot of guys I meet in life. The kind that hate girls like me, that feel threatened and irritated by girls with strong opinions. I’m like a pebble in their shoe and their ego cannot take it. You know that guy. Most people ignore him. Not me.

  And so I delve into the impossible waters of defining racism, but I am not equipped with the tools to articulate my thoughts about privilege. So I yell in anger. And I do the thing that I hate doing as a girl—I cry in frustration when they don’t get it. I accuse Lone White Guy, who is my most ardent challenger, of being racist. It’s loaded, but it’s true. My head just about implodes when he says, “Black people should just wait for equality to happen naturally.” I am angry, but I also feel sorry for him. That his life is so small, that he has had such little exposure to oppression and injustice, that he actually believes this. At this moment, my anger is balanced by a feeling of gratitude for the family and city that I was born into.

  Later, when we’ve all left the red Solo cups behind, my friends thank me for speaking up. Their silence, which I interpreted as damning, was just discomfort and fear. Their thanks is like a balm.

  V.

  I leave California and go to graduate school in Boston. I’m not there to get an MFA in creative writing, but I take some literature classes with people who are. At first I’m comfortable in these classes—I have loved, known, lived in books my entire life. I’ve read everything. I can write critical essays dissecting literature in my sleep. I’m grateful for that confidence because I am the only person of color in these classes. In almost all my classes. Almost in my entire program. But after a while it’s clear that I’m too irreverent. I don’t take literature as seriously as them. I like talking about books, but I also don’t name-drop Cheever in earnest. This makes me uncomfortable because I feel the pressure of needing to excel as the only nonwhite student. And because I’m a woman in a male-dominated class of full of little Hemingways in training. I need to prove that I am not in these classes by accident, that I knew what I was signing up for.

  One evening in a lit class, we’re talking about a popular memoir by a Black writer that had just been exposed as fiction written by a white woman. For me, being repulsed by this is natural; that is the normal reaction. For these guys, it’s not. And I’m holding back because by this point the rage no longer runs through a burst pipe, but a sturdier one with some small leaks. (The pipe has been patched up by various things: the knowledge that people get shot on LA freeways over road rage, understanding that holding on to certain angers triggered my chronic anxiety and was toxic, and learning the hard way that explosive anger wasn’t always productive.)

  I listen to people as they are in agreement about this thing: that being a writer, an artiste, means you can write about anything. It’s so entitled and clueless and I am conspicuously silent. To speak or not to speak? To make everyone uncomfortable or to keep everyone feeling safe and cozy?

  But when it starts to feel ridiculous, I speak, tentatively, knowing exactly who I am in that class. “I don’t know. I think I understand why writing from the perspective of another culture might be a sensitive issue.” (I was probably not this concise, probably stammering.) It is the most gentle, coddling way I can think of to express my views.

  The biggest blowhard in the class, this fool who once told me with a straight face that New Hampshire had better Mexican food than California, this guy says, “I disagree. I can write about a Black man’s experiences just as well as a Black person.”

  The silence is so thick, so loaded with discomfort and cowardice, that I also find myself speechless. (Oh, to have, as writer Sarah Hagi said, the confidence of a mediocre white man!)

  It’s only later, when I’m buzzing with anger on the train ride home, that I fully comprehend the shittiness of the position I had been in. That nothing I could have said wouldn’t sound like hysterics from an overly sensitive Asian girl. Nothing short of MLK Jr.–level articulation would have shamed me as the Ambassador of All People of Color in Literature Programs.

  I’ve had my culture appropriated and misrepresented my entire life. I know why one should be careful and thoughtful. Writers can write what they want, but I also know that they can, rightfully, be criticized for doing it poorly.

  Years after this class, a white woman, bestselling author Lionel Shriver, will walk onto a stage wearing a sombrero and basically proclaim the same thing as that bozo in my class. That as writers, we can write whatever we want—that awareness of cultural appropriation and good representation are stifling to the creative process. But by then I’m a published author and have finally found the words to rip literary entitlement like that to shreds. Step right up, folks. Ask me about the importance of diversity in literature and I promise this time I won’t keep silent.

  VI.

  There are permanent lines in my forehead that I discovered after growing out my bangs.

  “Your face is going to stay that way.”

  Grandma, you were right. My constant bitchface has now gifted me with these markers of my ragey time on earth.

  Why am I reliving painful memories and listing grievances, each like a whisper out of Arya Stark’s mouth as she falls asleep at night, like a promise of revenge?

  Maybe it’s because I’m Korean-American. Koreans believe we have han. It’s hard as hell to describe. It’s not a characteristic of Koreans as much as a concept that they feel is specific to their history and culture.

  A quick and lazy Google search had this to say, on Wikipedia:

  Han or Haan is a concept in Korean culture attributed as a unique Korean cultural trait which has resulted from Korea’s frequent exposure to invasions by overwhelming foreign powers. Han denotes a collective feeling of oppression and isolation in the face of insurmountable odds . . . It connotes aspects of lament and unavenged injustice.

  In her book, The Birth of Korean Cool, journalist Euny Hong says:

  The result of all this abuse is a culturally specific, ultra-distilled form of rage, which Koreans call han . . . By definition, only Koreans have han, which arises from the fact that the universe can never pay off this debt to them, not ever . . .

  . . . But Koreans do not consider han to be a drawback. It’s not on the list of traits they want to change about themselves.

  I actually discovered the concept of han by reading Hong’s book. My parents never mentioned it, I would guess because it’s so ingrained in the culture that there’s no reason to explain it. If you’re Korean, you’re born with it, just like you’re born with the burning desire to root for any professional sports team with a single Korean player on it. So when I read Hong’s chapter on han, I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. That’s it. I recognized han on a molecular level—especially the part about “unavenged injustice.” As mentioned earlier, in all of these stories I’ve just told, there was never enough justice doled out to satisfy me.

  Because there’s an alternate ending for each story:

  The kid at the volleyball game gets expelled and is forced to watch El Norte on repeat until he cries blood.

  The man in the parking lot keeps laughing until his car explodes to smithereens.

  The racist joke teller fails out of college because he had no critical thinking skills and becomes a heroin addict—sad.

  The smug MFA guy is forced to share a stage with Ta-Nehisi Coat
es, discussing how he could write about the Black experience better than him. And then literally shits his pants in front of me.

  Alas.

  I’m a firm believer in #noregrets. And in each of those instances, I found myself growing as a debater, a fighter. I leveled up each time someone was sexist, racist, or a delightful combination of both. It adds another little metal plate to the armor I wear every day.

  VII.

  I understand that there is a spectrum of anger. I don’t want to punch a woman in line at the grocery store for taking too long counting her change. I want to have civil conversations on heated topics without resorting to screaming and calling someone an asshole, which is what I did in high school and in college fighting with those boys. And I certainly don’t want friends and family to fear confrontation with me.

  After years of fights and arguments, I’ve learned how best to communicate my anger, how to make my point effectively and, in the best of cases, be persuasive. Having a husband with the disposition of a monk helps. Therapy helps. And having a proper outlet—my writing—has been the most helpful of all.

  So now, when used wisely, I’ve discovered my anger is an immensely satisfying weapon during battle—these personal, tinier battles set against the backdrop of bigger battles that we all need to fight against systemic racism and sexism. So I’m willing to harness this rage, my han, and do something with it.

  Because ever since November 8, 2016, there’s a lot to be angry about.

  This last election opened a whole new facet of rage in me I didn’t know existed. Those unjust oppressions passed on to me from my ancestors? They now take on the form of the person in charge of my country. My home.

  Seeing the stark differences between my reaction to the election and some of my Black, LGBTQ, and disabled friends compounded it. They weren’t as shocked as me. Their battles have not been as tiny as mine, and many of them have always been battle-ready, whether they wanted to be or not.

  Now when I wake up angry because our basic tenets of democracy are being threatened, I take that anger straight to my phone and call my representatives. It’s the fuel that keeps me going when I’m fatigued by the news, when I feel helpless. If I see something idiotic on someone’s Facebook wall—whether it’s someone’s great-uncle or a close friend—I’ll speak up. I will tell the truth, even if it pushes them to a place of discomfort, so that they are forced to face their wrongness. My anger now courses through a very well-functioning pipe and I’ve installed a couple of convenient faucet handles.

  VIII.

  One night, unmoored and unemployed after graduating college, I started writing a story about a girl. A Korean-American teenager who always says what’s on her mind and tries to do the right thing. Vulnerable yet fearless. I worked on this story on and off for a long time, over many years. Her voice was always in my head, urging me to sit in front of my computer and write her thoughts down.

  I, for one, am looking forward to growing a year dumber through my abysmal California public school education.

  Heh heh.

  Now I had to go to the stupid dance and find a stupid damn date.

  Then many years later, someone wants to buy this story and make it into a book.

  Since You Asked . . . , my first novel, was the culmination of years and years of rage. Rage that had no outlet. Rage that sometimes shamed me or got me into trouble. Maybe it’s not so obvious when you read it, but it’s there. Anger was the seed that book came from. It finally had somewhere to go.

  I continue to write about teen girls. Not all my girls are angry. Some are those even-keeled types who mystify me. But I almost always write about Korean-American girls. I give them a voice in my novels because my readers are living in a world that is, sadly, not so different from the one I grew up in. We still live in a world where people will underestimate you because you are a girl, because you look different from them, because your parents are immigrants, because you worship differently, because you like girls instead of boys, because you’re in a wheelchair, because you have to take medication to get through the day. These people who keep us on the margins, they think we will not fight back.

  But those people are wrong. Those people can go fuck themselves.

  Rage has empowered me, and I give you permission to let it empower you.

  THESE WORDS ARE MINE

  Stephanie Kuehnert

  I had just turned fourteen when a boy touched me against my wishes for the first time. He was sixteen or maybe seventeen, from the small town where my friend and I were visiting her mom. One of the cute boys down the hill that my friend’s mom gushed about. Brothers, she exclaimed. And they were excited to hang out with us. And did she mention cute? They were really cute.

  Boys didn’t notice us back home in the Chicago suburbs. We both had mega crushes that we’d nursed through eighth grade. In our heads, we were already dating those guys. We would marry them someday—tarot, horoscopes, and the Ouija board had all confirmed this. But, of course, the reality was we didn’t even know if we’d see those boys again in our new, giant high school. So why not check out these other boys? These older boys. These boys who’d think we were cool just because we were from Chicago (well, close enough). Who could drive and take us on adventures. Who were “really cute,” according to my friend’s mom.

  They were not cute. Not by our 1993, grunge-and-MTV-worshipping standards. They had mullets. They called our hero, Kurt Cobain, who actually was cute, the F word that neither of us would use. We would nickname them the Bon Jovi brothers. That was too kind, an insult to Bon Jovi.

  But they could drive, we were bored, and my friend’s mom had already set this whole thing in motion. We were to go out with them. We felt we had no choice.

  They had a pickup truck. The two of us, the two of them, their younger brother, and their friend all rode to a pool hall in a nearby, slightly bigger town. On the way to the pool hall, I think we rode in the cab. I don’t really remember. I also don’t remember what the pool hall looked like. Smoky and dim, I imagine. I know that even though I was unimpressed by the boys and the banter that I’m sure they thought made them sound cool, I was still excited to be on this adventure—one I knew my own mother would never let me take. I also felt like I had some power over the boys because when they said that F word that I hated, I would glare and they would apologize.

  Any feeling of power vanished the moment one of the brothers decided to show me how to hold the pool cue and very obviously, very intentionally groped my breast in the process. He smiled as he did it. That I remember. I think he probably said something too, some line that he thought was funny or slick, that let the rest of the guys know he had touched my boob and what it was like. I could tell that he thought I should laugh, that I should be turned on and let him touch me more.

  I felt like I’d been hit by the stomach flu. I was nauseous. The room was too loud, too smoky. It was closing in and I was trapped. I didn’t know how far I was from my friend’s mom’s house. This was exactly why my own mother would not have let me go on such an adventure. I hated that she was right, but I’d never wished harder for her to magically appear.

  Of course she didn’t. My friend’s mother was not at home, and since cell phones weren’t a common thing yet, we had no way to reach her and ask for a ride. We had no choice but to continue with these boys, hoping that it wouldn’t get too much worse and that they would eventually take us home.

  After the pool hall, we insisted on riding in the back of the truck, hoping for more space, more air. But since it was windy, it gave the boys (who’d decided to ride in back with us, of course) a reason to put their arms around us. Faux chivalry. “We don’t want you to be cold.” I’d invented a boyfriend by that point. It was my crush, except instead of sharing that he drew and played guitar, I said he was on the wrestling team. As if this boyfriend could somehow defend me from a thousand miles away. As if, I would reflect a couple years later, boyfriends would protect or defend you. It didn’t help anyway. The twins’
friend still stuck his hand up my cutoff shorts to “see how loose they were.”

  My friend did not invent a boyfriend because her mom had already told these boys she was single, so when the twin who groped me asked her out, she felt obligated to say yes. We were trapped in the back of a pickup going sixty miles per hour. We wanted to go home. We were fourteen and had never been asked out. What else was she to do? And what else was she to do but let him kiss her, hard and with tongue?

  She cried about it afterward—after they took us home, after a terrifying hour (or maybe it was only ten minutes that felt like an hour) of being alone in her house with them. She cried and I told her it didn’t have to count as her first boyfriend or her first kiss. Then we put on the angriest song we knew: “So What” by Metallica. Ironic considering it was all about the acts men can commit and shrug off including doing things to “a schoolgirl’s twat.” We chose it because it was loud and there was a lot of swearing. Because we wanted to say, So fucking what? to this night and forget it, though it was also already ingrained in us that society would say, So fucking what? about what had happened. “Boys will be boys” is just a euphemism for that, after all.

  We didn’t tell my friend’s mom what happened, just played the insolent teenager card and said the boys were gross and we didn’t want to see them again. I didn’t tell my parents either. When I told another friend about it, she shrugged it off, saying that’s just how boys were and I should get used it. That stung at the time. It made a lot more sense later when I found out that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

  It did seem like nothing after that. And after I learned that another person I knew had been groped and pushed around daily by her guy friends when she was in sixth grade. And after another was raped by a relative in junior high. And after what happened to me sophomore year of high school.