he looks at my name tag and asks
what's your real name
i tell him that cindy is what's printed
on my birth certificate ever since i was
little
i was made invisible
in physical and emotional ways
on franklin avenue he bumps into me and
says
watch where you're going they see us as
very quiet
not very outspoken almost as if we
fade into the background in an ikea
parking lot i yield
he signals me to roll down the window of
my u-haul truck
laughs not too bad for an asian woman
asian women are not weak asian women are
not
timid asian women are not quiet i hear
my therapist call me beautiful and call
himself
colorblind they don't want something
different from what they're used to
and that kind of forces asian women to
kind of
shift towards american you know beauty
standards social standards
my friend has brain cancer and enrolls
in a clinical trial
he asked if i would sleep with him
before he dies
there is a sense that we always owe
something more
that we should accommodate to what other
people need
if it's not given immediately there's a
sort of punishment or withdrawal of a
relationship
to pay for that i think the first
generation
like my mother's generation and my
grandparents they did keep to themselves
so you never heard from them they were
hiding not because they were afraid or
anything
they were just independent for some
reason this past year
they think all the asians should go home
wherever home may be
but they don't know that home is here no
justice
no justice i wish americans or just
people would see asian women as other
people
at the root of it all we are all human
beings we all
have families we all have loved ones we
all want to be happy
we all care about other people
[Music]
you