abandoning cartography
Jan. 31st, 2009 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glass_icarusThere is no map for us.
Once upon a time, a nation that dreamed said to the world, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." So the people with yellow skin joined all the other dreaming people and crossed the ocean to a land without dragons, a land newly-minted and shining with hope and riches.
Or so they thought.
Once upon a time- no, that's not right. Once upon no time, the men and women who shared my skin toiled in a Land of Opportunity. They were coolies and construction workers, laundromat-owners, "comfort women" and mail-order brides. They lived- and died- in a place where people only saw in black and white, and they were neither white enough nor black enough to fit the citizens' perceptions. If their neighbors saw white as people and black as not-people, or vice versa, then the men and women who shared my skin were simply not: invisible, inaudible, ignored.
Years passed, and more of their fellows came from over the seas, and so the invisible ones turned their sight inward, toward their own. They made communities within their cities, crafting homes-away-from-home out of their loneliness, their bitterness, their exile. They worked hard to try to lift themselves out of the blue-collar class, despite the fact that no matter where they went or where they worked, no one saw them. They worked hard and swallowed their pride because things like family and duty could not be ignored, and if things like honor and respect and acknowledgment weren't attainable for their generation, perhaps they could be secured for their children, or for their children's children.
Thus was the "model minority."
Years passed, and their children came of age in a place where their faces were not. When they learned of dragons, they did not learn about the dragons of the east, but the dragons of the west. When they spoke in school, they did not speak the tongues of their parents, but the tongues of the strangers without their skin. Slowly and surely, despite the best efforts of their parents, these children lost their heritage and became something else, something new, something not of one world or the other. Slowly and surely, these children set their feet on different roads, ones outside the edges of all the maps, and began to walk forward, without compasses.
There is still no map for us.
Once upon no time, the men and women who shared my skin came to the shores of a land of many dreams. Some wanted to stay, and some wanted to return to their roots, but all of them dreamed of home.
-- written for the Remyth Project.
Once upon a time, a nation that dreamed said to the world, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." So the people with yellow skin joined all the other dreaming people and crossed the ocean to a land without dragons, a land newly-minted and shining with hope and riches.
Or so they thought.
Once upon a time- no, that's not right. Once upon no time, the men and women who shared my skin toiled in a Land of Opportunity. They were coolies and construction workers, laundromat-owners, "comfort women" and mail-order brides. They lived- and died- in a place where people only saw in black and white, and they were neither white enough nor black enough to fit the citizens' perceptions. If their neighbors saw white as people and black as not-people, or vice versa, then the men and women who shared my skin were simply not: invisible, inaudible, ignored.
Years passed, and more of their fellows came from over the seas, and so the invisible ones turned their sight inward, toward their own. They made communities within their cities, crafting homes-away-from-home out of their loneliness, their bitterness, their exile. They worked hard to try to lift themselves out of the blue-collar class, despite the fact that no matter where they went or where they worked, no one saw them. They worked hard and swallowed their pride because things like family and duty could not be ignored, and if things like honor and respect and acknowledgment weren't attainable for their generation, perhaps they could be secured for their children, or for their children's children.
Thus was the "model minority."
Years passed, and their children came of age in a place where their faces were not. When they learned of dragons, they did not learn about the dragons of the east, but the dragons of the west. When they spoke in school, they did not speak the tongues of their parents, but the tongues of the strangers without their skin. Slowly and surely, despite the best efforts of their parents, these children lost their heritage and became something else, something new, something not of one world or the other. Slowly and surely, these children set their feet on different roads, ones outside the edges of all the maps, and began to walk forward, without compasses.
There is still no map for us.
Once upon no time, the men and women who shared my skin came to the shores of a land of many dreams. Some wanted to stay, and some wanted to return to their roots, but all of them dreamed of home.
-- written for the Remyth Project.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-31 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 01:49 am (UTC)Yeah, I can see your point about things transferring, cross-culturally... I recently read a piece by a friend of mine who's Southern to my Northern, and it was startling, just how much didn't come across. I didn't really even get what she was going after.
Then again, part of that was her writing, maybe, and that's not a problem you have. :) ♥ right back!