When I left my plight behind in Fresno, I was leaving a city riddled with urban decay. I waved goodbye to liquor stores like Uncle Tom's Liquors and predatory Cash checking places that littered the city. I wanted to live in a more progressive urban city, and decided somewhere in the Bay Area. San Francisco was my dream: Getting the metropolis feel of NYC within California with the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in my backyard. New Year’s Eve of 2009 will always be a significant day for me. At the time I was living with my cousin in Alameda until I found a permanent home. I took the Bart from Alameda to San Francisco, meeting up with friends at the bar. Many rounds were bought, friends were giving cheers to new beginnings for the next year -this would be a glimmer of a life I could claim as mine. I was having so much fun, I spent the night at a friend’s place to save me a trip all the way back. 

The next day I woke up with a splitting headache on my friend’s couch. Trying to gather myself searching for water, I stumbled into the kitchen where the TV was on. The news was talking about what happened at the Fruitvale Station the night before, the same station that was 2 miles from where I was staying. I sat at the dining table and watched a grainy video of a BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle pulling out his gun and pointing at a handcuffed 22-year-old Black male, Oscar Grant. He showed no signs of being a threat as he was restrained, but the officer still shot him dead. My body went numb because that was the first time I watched a human die. 

I tried to gauge people’s reaction to see if people felt shocked as I was, but the tone ended up being “It was an Oakland problem.” I kept my pain silent, I tried to belong with the crowd. My welcome home celebration was ruined with a cold, violent storm.

“Can you believe that? A kid from Oakland walking around believing in fairytales.”

—N'Jadaka

In February, I went to a book launch party like I have done so many times before. However this event was much larger than what I was used to. Instead of being held in a bookstore, it was held at a Cultural center that can hold over a hundred people. I’ve never been around so many Asian American writers before. In these circles of writers, there wasn't much they could say to me with everyone chatting about fellowships, submissions, or book deals. When they mentioned names like the Iowa Writers Workshop or Bread Loaf Writers Conference, I was only vaguely familiar with them. I thought they were resources to make your writing better. For everyone in this room though, these titles and workshops seem more royal to them. 

I tried to do my rounds saying hi, and I ran into a writer whom I’ve interviewed before: 

“Don’t I know you?” this author asks.

“Yes, my name is Long Vo.”

Abruptly they just walk away. I was stunned that ghosting someone physically was an option.

I was shaken up by the action and tried to think it was a misunderstanding. I looked at the room again and tried to justify why I was there. I called my Lyft and walked out on the event. I sat on the street curb in the cold waiting for my car, as I heard everyone shouting and laughing inside. Maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome, my words are no good here. The half-hour ride would be in silence, sitting next to my shame. Not knowing that Covid-19 would strike America the following month, I would be leaving my last book launch. 

“I am loyal to the throne. What are you loyal to?”

—Okoye, to Nakia

“Pivoting” was the word that everyone used to describe the disruption that Covid-19 was causing. All the writing residencies and workshops were cancelled and the instructors had moved their courses online. This was my chance to take these courses, and maybe see what makes these classes so regal. One particular class I took held over 200 students, mostly Asian Americans. I peek around the small squares in the Zoom app and see names I recognize, some from that same book launch.

After a few hours into the workshop, the typical discourse about white gaze within the writing industry came up. “We have been educated in the white dominant, white controlled, white teachers, needing to decolonize our writing.” Someone steps into the convo to correct her, saying not everyone in the diaspora grew up like that.

Another voice interrupts, “None of us are going to be outside the system.” 

In discussing the Asian Diaspora, the Southeast Asian American struggle is mostly left out of the conversation. Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, states that 11.3% of U.S. families live below the poverty level and within that, 18.2% of Cambodian Americans, 12.2% of Laotian Americans, 27.4% of Hmong Americans, and 13% of Vietnamese Americans live below the poverty level. Poverty limits opportunities for higher education, exposing them to be “outside the system.” I guess this writer underestimated that someone like me who lived “outside the system” would be in a class like this.

When class was over, I googled Geoffrey Canada because I needed to hear from someone who was also “outside the system.” I needed to hear that I wasn’t over-reacting to that writer’s generalization. This system this writer was referring to, a competent schooling system, never existed for me. My life in Fresno had such deep racistsegregation, I never had a type of education this writer was insinuating.

The clip I found was Geoffrey Canada talking in the opening scene for the documentary ‘Waiting for Superman,’ a film that exposes the failing school system in the US. “One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman did not exist. I just loved him, because even in the depths of the ghetto you just thought: he's coming.” When his mother told him Superman isn’t real, “She thought I was crying because it's like Santa Claus is not real, and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.”

“Kids look at the world and they make certain predictions based on the evidence they're receiving from their peers from their parents and from their teachers. From their perspective: the world is a heartless cold blooded place because they realize they've been given the short end of the stick and they don't know why.”

He was the truth I chose to omit.

—T’Chaka

The pandemic stretches beyond the public’s patience, so someone is to be blamed for it. Anger rises, a resurgence of the “Yellow Peril” has rebranded to the “Chinese Virus.” Asian American activists are trying to reframe this as nothing new, referring to the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the incarceration of Vincent Chin and Chinatown massacres. Nowhere was I reading about the structural violence Southeast Asian Americans are exposed to, being in neighborhoods that lack facilities such as libraries and tutoring centers. I guess it is easy for those who benefit from unjust social structures to ignore this kind of violence. “It little matters to me whether you shoot a man or starve him to death by inches,” says Mahatma Gandhi. The Washington Post decided to give Andrew Yang a platform to denounce this racial violence towards Asian Americans. His platform was to be as American as you can be.  “We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our Americanness in ways we never have before.” He writes in his op-ed piece of anecdotal evidence on combating violence, “Natalie Chou, a UCLA basketball player, said that she felt better when she wore her UCLA gear, in part because the association reminded people that she was an American.” Maybe that’s why that writer walked away from me earlier this year; my lack of looking American might subject them to violence.

On May 25th, it seems Andrew Yang was right. When I saw the news, my soul froze as it did January 1st, 2009. This time it’s George Floyd. An Officer forced a knee upon George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. As the camera panned out to show the complete situation, Hmong officer Tou Thao stood there and did not intervene at all. His presence represents all the systematic violence that I have seen Asian Americans have been complicit to. Be a part of the system so you don’t get killed like Black people do in this country.

“That is America,” said an enraged Hasan Minhaj on his show Patriot Act. “A Black man was murdered in cold blood, and we were on the fucking sidelines, watching.”

“No tears for me?”

“Everybody dies, it’s just the way it is around here.”

—N'Jobu and N'Jadaka

My heart bled in Oakland when Oscar Grant died, but over the years I’ve let my heart heal there too. So with the grief of this year, I bring my heart back to Oakland. As I look upon 2020, it has been a collective deconstruction of how we value human lives; from how we sacrifice our freedoms to live socially for the sake of public health to marching the streets in protest against how this country treats black lives. This is a shared grief we are all having. For some of us, sharing our grief is new. For others, like me or our beloved Oakland, it’s habitual, especially in the embodiment of one local filmmaker: Ryan Coogler.

Ryan Coogler was born and bred in Oakland. All three of his movies are deep seeded into my Oakland experience. Coogler’s first movie, ‘Fruitvale Station’, gave me the tools to process the guilt and the pain that I could have been on the same train that Oscar Grant rode back home. The way that he, as a filmmaker, was able to tell this violent story with somber heartbreak, and not with the blind rage that I was having, gave me the strength to endure the moment of Black Lives Matter, because Oscar should still be here.

‘Creed’ helped me grieve about my boxing days. The gym I trained at, Kings Boxing gym, was a five minute walk from the Fruitvale station. My trainer James Buggs gave me a way to learn how to channel the violence in my life into a constructive outlet. His elite boxing training was inclusive, he pushed me as hard as his pro fighters. Even when Buggs had to move on to train with the pros full time, he didn’t just walk away from me: he looked directly in my eyes and told me he appreciated the work we did together. That was the last time I saw him, he died a year later.  

It was no coincidence that Coogler would get Oakland’s own undefeated fighter Andre Ward, who trained out of King’s Boxing gym as well, to be in the movie. As I watched him in ‘Creed’ as one of Michael B. Jordan’s adversaries, I was able to remember that Ward was at Buggs’ funeral too. I got my chance to meet Ward. He gave me the time to tell me he misses Buggs too. He grew up watching him box. He inspired him to be a fighter.

And now me, Ryan Coogler and the rest of the world have to sit with Chadwick Boseman’s death. “I haven’t grieved a loss this acute before.” Coogler says in his tribute to Boseman. “I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren’t destined to see. It leaves me broken knowing that I won’t be able to watch another close-up of him in the monitor again or walk up to him and ask for another take.”

“You can’t let your father’s mistakes define who you are. You get to decide what kind of king you are going to be.”

—Nakia, to T’Challa

In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ story arc for Black Panther for Marvel Comics,  King T’challa was facing a country that did not trust him anymore as they would call him Haramu-Fal, Wakandan for ‘Orphan King.’ “All he knows is his damned throne,” Aneka says, as a former special enforcer of T’challa. “It’s who he is. He was raised an orphan. And he treats his country like one.” In my anger, I had my version of Haramu-Fal. I used ‘White adjacent Asians’ without any hesitation because I didn’t want to associate with something that will eventually kill me. But how do I justify my anger knowing that Boseman lived gallantly with his secret battle with an illness that was killing him?

The past month I’ve been watching the film ‘Black Panther’ repeatedly. Every viewing helps melt the frigid ice heart this cruel summer has given, melting away into tears. There’s a scene where Boseman is reawakened as the Black Panther and uses that moment to confront his Father, T’Chaka, for abandoning the movie’s antagonist, Erik Killmonger, in Oakland to keep Wakanda safe in isolation from the world. Michael B. Jordan’s portrayal of Killmonger was representation for those who felt left out of a society that could have helped him. He represents all the black bodies that were treated like less in this country. “You were wrong to abandon him,” Boseman says as a tear falls down his cheek, “we let the fear of our discovery stop us from doing what is right.” I felt Bose’s performance spoke for the anger I had being felt left out of the Asian Monolith. I found myself throughout the day thinking that I should not be a truth to be omitted. I relinquish the idea of silencing myself because of my experience within the API community. There are others like me who feel they dont belong to this “Asianness,” that is just “‘relatable’ jokes cater to cis-het, middle-class East Asians with Ivy League aspirations.” As I struggle to make sure my writing isn’t a retaliation, I must practice the empathy and the activism Boseman dedicated his life for.

In the comics, Wakandan Philosopher Changamire does not like the nickname for T’Challa. He confronts Aneka and asks her, “Would you say T’challa is a man who has lived uninjured? And did his injuries end with the death of his parents? We are all so injured daughter -- all of us. This name-- Harmu-fal-- was made to mock him. But perhaps it mocks us all. Perhaps it speaks to all of our losses.” In our diaspora, we are all orphaned from countries distant to where our lineage is. Though our grief, our losses, our opportunities may be different, we have to find cohesion to live together.  I hope my contribution will be the love, empathy and activism I’ve found in the Oakland community. My dream is that for this diaspora, we must also strengthen our allyship with the Black Community, as their contributions go so far as Fredrick Douglass’s stance against The Chinese Exclusion act. We must find a way to look after each other as if we are one, single tribe.

“Death is just a different kind of journey… to the land I am King of.”

-T’Challa, Secret Wars 

✊🏿👑