“Take Your Time, Guys”

One of Kina’s pet peeves is when we eat too fast. This applies to both real and pretend eating. Sometimes, I like to freak her out when we’re playing “tea party” or “ice cream” by bringing the dish very close to my mouth and pretending to shovel the food in—like Garfield eating lasagna. Invariably, she gets a very stern look on her face and grabs my hand, telling me that I will “choke” or “get a tummyache”, and to take it slow.1 The sad truth is that Laurea and I also eat our real food quickly, because we are very hungry after work, and that also annoys Kina. Sometimes we have a more leisurely dinner, and Kina will finish first, after which she shouts that she “won the food game”. This is also how I treated dinner when I was a kid, and it took me years to realize that dinner didn’t have to be competitive. I don’t particularly like to think of Kina living with that view of dining as a race, and so I simply eat faster, so that she never wins.

Still, we should take our time. The closer we get to a sense of things being somehow “better”, the faster I want this time to run. Laurea and I want to just fast-forward through the weeks between now and when Kina’s grandparents visit, in a blur of vaccinations, playgrounds, and absurdly rushed meals. But there is so much happening that is amazing right now—which this newspaper will, of course, cover in great detail—that lives in the interstices between the rushing, and I want to give space to that goodness. So does Kina. Can you savor the dinner and still crave the dessert? We’re all trying—even our little fork cop, who religiously takes her time at the table, as long as you don’t remind her of the treats to come.

I’m going to take a sharp left turn here, because I think it’s important to—and it involves the killings in Atlanta, so don’t bother reading ahead if that’s something you can’t handle right now.

I wrote about violence against Asians in America less than a month ago, thinking (so naively) at the time that I wouldn’t have to mention it again. And then I woke up this morning. Eight people killed in Atlanta, six of them Asian, and all but one a woman. This was a shocking escalation in a long-smoldering stretch of violence (much of which actually predates the current pandemic and its thoughtlessly racist framing by former presidents and their media acolytes). I am furious and mournful for the innocent people who lost their lives yesterday, and frankly terrified at the prospect of copycats. It has been a horrible day.

It’s notable that many of the people I saw talking about this most poignantly on Twitter today were Black women. The killings in Atlanta weren’t just an expression of anti-Asian hatred; they were a loathsome expression of white supremacist misogyny—an experience familiar to both Asian and Black women. I stand for those women, and am deeply grateful for the thoughtful messages of solidarity I’ve seen from Black folks on social media and in my life. It’s a reminder of the importance of that solidarity between the Black and Asian American communities, regardless of which community is in mourning. As Asian Americans, we often forget to return that favor.

I spoke up at the start of a large meeting earlier today—at a group of people who nominally report to me—in support of my Asian colleagues, and I barely finished my statement without bursting into tears. This is exhausting, but we have to support each other. When we are oppressed, we shut down—not just in the face of our oppressors, but often for each other. Our suffering feels solitary, but we don’t have to let that be the case. If you are here, today, and feeling scared, know that I am, too. If this moment, and this violence, has created some resonance with your own experience of violence and oppression, know that you’re not alone.

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