The Saturday after the election, I found myself at the East Bay Meditation Center for a daylong workshop about “Courage at the Crossroads: Faith Over Fear.” The teacher opened the day with reflections from the audience about what brought them to the space that morning. There was so much emotion in the room, we had to air it out in the open before settling into meditation. People spoke honestly, and from the heart. Much anger, frustration, sadness emerged. We were a mixed group: gender, age, race, class, ethnicity, ability. I could sense from the outset that this day was going to be both challenging and necessary for our individual — if not also our collective — healing.
I found myself sitting next to a young woman whose community in East Texas was missing her queer black radical voice. Part of me wanted to say hi to a fellow liberal Texan questioning whether she should be in the Bay Area or back home, but I ended up not saying anything: didn’t think my feelings could compare, having lived in a larger Texas city, having faced less discrimination growing up. On my other side sat an older black woman who spoke with palpable rage and frustration, whose presence emanated strength, and grace, and calm. I listened and I felt alongside her. I just wanted to sit in quiet that day.
After our sitting meditation and our walking meditation and our dharma talk, the day ended with small group discussions about how we might view current events as a positive thing: a hard challenge, and a necessary reframe. I was not courageous enough to opt out of the discussion and to stay in my own silence, so I found myself in a group with three other women of color, who were all farther along on the social justice goddess warrior path than I am. They were frustrated. They were hopeful. They were angry. They were tired. They were energized in their strength and groundedness and hurt, as they have been doing this for so long. When it was my turn to speak, I did so in vague abstractions, alluded to my baby feminism, and shared how these times were going to push me into facing the realities of finally putting my body on the frontlines.
The workshop was wonderful, and helped me to heal, and provided much needed context and compassion from which to move forward. I left the workshop more grounded than I had felt all week — but I also left feeling like shit.
I didn’t feel entitled to the same rage and heartbreak of other black and brown people of color that I was feeling because I was at the same time also feeling the guilt and complicity of the white people that they were railing against, who I too was frustrated with. This feeling of invisible frozenness within their in-between was so familiar to me as a yellow person, that I started spiraling, wondering if I was complicit in this self-silencing of myself, feeling tripped up in repressing my feelings and my words because I didn’t feel I could claim any of it for myself, as if there were someone checking claims tickets, but then again who…?
That’s when I realized I needed to stop,
that I needed to write, to at least reflect
this experience of the stuck in the in-between,
before I could move,
move beyond that
into action in solidarity with all marginalized people
into confronting my own privileges and prejudices
into dismantling any learned and internalized oppression
into embodying compassion for all beings
into making concrete the world we imagine wherein these structural oppressions and inequities have been replaced with just systems that operate from a place of full&complex humanity, dignity, and equality for all.
So. A poem.
caught / uncaught
For a time,
in the rawness of grief,
when mixed groups can trigger,
it is okay to gather your tribe
To be with your people
To confess your sins
to those who understand
the complexity of living
your skin
This poem
is for any Asian American out there
feeling stuck righ’ now
‘cuz I feel it.
I feel caught.
Caught between grief for an America we thought we knew
and wanting to fight for the country that our families chose
Caught between rage sadness & frustration
and guilt apathy & complicity
Caught between worry for our families’ lives
and shame at their racist homophobic lies
Caught between their vulnerability
and their willful political passivity
Caught between immigrant survival in flight
and never learning how to stay and fight
Caught between wanting to fire back, draw weapons, take sides
and avoiding conflict, peace-strivin’, love and compassion
Caught catching them silencing whitewashin you
and realizing you been invisible all along
Too ‘other’ to belong in white America
Too ‘model minority’ to be in solidarity with POC
Shouldn’t be surprised
this feeling as familiar
as second skin
as the complicity of
cringing at mom’s accent
as the guilt of
losing your mother tongue
as the confusion of
being too American
and not Asian enough
but never American enough
to be Asian in America
It is a good thing
I have learned
how to hold multiple truths
in the palm of my hands
as so much layered sand
It is a good thing
I have practice
holding contradictory emotions
in the chambers of my beating heart
knowing they will move
because emotions are built
to move
if you let them
and so are bodies built
to act
if we guide them
If we can catch ourselves from
turning hate into hate,
we become uncaught.
Take a breath
Step back
Look again
Codeswitch n
Flip it
and Reframe it
We aren’t caught…
but poised
in this middle
space
between
Asian (and) American
POC (and) majority
old generation honor (and) new generation justice
acting against oppression (and) waking up from delusion
wanting to protect the most vulnerable (and) having some power and privilege to do so
between being baby activists in America (and) having gandhiji ai wei wei aung san suu kyi thich nhat hanh tiananmen square and the dalai lama in our heritage
We have always been uniquely poised
to bridge
different worlds
to bridge
loyalty and love
to bridge
the Asian and the American
within ourselves
both/and
.
Christina Tran's Blog 