Transcript:
I was in high school, and when we were about to learn about the Internment Camps, my teacher told us,
"We don't have that much time, we can skip over it, it's not that big a deal."
Asian American representations in history books mirror our representations in media:
Barely there except as background characters in a white man's story.
We spent 11 worksheets on 44 presidents over the course of our year,
Learned that Martin Van Buren was the first American-born President,
But that American-born meant nothing
If your eyes are thinner or your skin darker.
We glossed over the Japanese American kids pushed into segregated schools then herded into Internment Camps,
We didn't learn about the Coolie Trade: a Pacific middle passage where 80% of Chinese laborers were tricked onto transport ships, bound for tea and sugar plantations.
We are forests planted by sailors navigating ocean waters.
My family used the branches of their ancestry to build boats to cross the sea.
Family trees uprooted as napalm disfigured the landscape, like all of the babies born in the fallout.
Our roots are integrated into this earth even if our neighborhoods didn't.
Our canopies grow grasping the skies, reaching for degrees,
And hope, and a better future for our children,
And if a tree falls in the forest, and you are not there to hear it, it still makes a sound.
We still make a sound,
How American to define existence by witness.
This poem is for our predecessors whose bravery predated us,
Yuri Kochiyama, civil rights activist who cradled Malcom in his last speech.
Philip Vera Cruz, labor leader who linked arms with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta as they marched for worker's rights.
Helen Zia, feminist journalist who captured the eyes of American when Vincent Chin was murdered for the size of his.
This poem is for the migrants imprisoned on Angel Island who etched poetry onto the walls of their cells,
Their words engraving their presence into history when your immigration policies tried to erase theirs.
This poem is for San Francisco's Chinatown, it's for Pearl Gates, New Orleans, rebuilt after the storm surges.
This is for Endell, for K-Town, for Little Saigon and Eden Center,
But for Ferguson and Chicago too,
Because our ancestors knew solidarity even if they couldn't pronounce it.
They made a sound,
We make a sound,
Our chants, and screams, and drums, and cries will chase after all the miles you've tried to run from us.
We are not quiet, we are not submissive, we have always been fighters,
So fuck this model minority bullshit.
Asian American history may be an elective in your curriculum,
But Asian America is more than just two paragraphs in your damn textbook.