Content warning: anti-Asian racism, white supremacy, trauma, misogyny
I’m trying to think of a time in my life where I ever felt safe enough to be myself.
It wasn’t when I was a child. I grew up in a household with parents who were only a few years removed from starvation and mass murder. And I learned what a landmine was along with my numbers and ABCs. None of my problems ever felt large enough to mention.
It wasn’t when I was in grade school, when kids called me chink and made something of my Asian-ness almost every day I attended from first through eighth grade. The bus ride every morning and afternoon were my twice daily fifteen minutes of shame.