Thread by @ItsAngelaVo

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. The other day my mom texted me that she’d fallen, fractured her ribs but otherwise okay. I texted, checked in, felt sad but otherwise didn’t think too much based on what she shared. Today, I heard the rest.

She had donated blood & ran errands. Loading her truck w gardening soil, suddenly she found herself flat on the hot asphalt in a Lowe’s parking lot.

Unconscious in a parking lot w broken ribs, “All these người mỹ looked down at me, did nothing”! Mom was angry. “You believe that?!” My parents often use “American” to mean “white” in Viet. I never think much of it. Hearing her say it today it didn’t sound wrong.

She guesses she was unconscious 20 mins to an hr. She was in pain so just laid flat for another half hour until she could finally muster up energy HERSELF to call my dad to take her to urgent care. NO ONE checked in, said anything or moved to help her, even stepping around her.

so i didn’t sleep.

thinking of bystanders. my somatic coach reminds me to feel the difference between being a bystander and a survivor. many who are the latter have the most muscle intervening as bystander. my shaping is strong fight. she reminds me it’s ok to just survive.

Mom remembered in ‘85 when she arrived in Houston. She was walking to church when she passed a group of men. They started calling to her (she didn’t understand them). But then they followed. She ran, and they sped up trying to pull her into the car until she darted into a house.

thinking of all the times men followed me in subways stations, walking home, at a museum until i locked myself in the bathroom. the time a cop blocked my car w his, asking me to roll down my window only to reach into my car to hit on me, grab my hand, ask for my number.

Mom’s home now in bed and in better spirits. She switched to talking about a very impressive pork belly recipe she saw on instagram (“you know, the good kind that you use in banh xeo!”) bc I think she didn’t want us only to talk about sad things.

The day of the Atlanta shooting was also the anniversary of the Mỹ Lai massacre. When the US military uses rape as a war tactic against civilians who look like me. I called Di Hai, who is a massage parlor worker in Houston to see if she was okay and how she’s processing the news

She almost didn’t hear about Atlanta bc it wasn’t being talked about on local Viet radio where most elders get (tbh mostly very bad, right wing) info including how to navigate public housing, social security, and medicaid. She only knew bc it came on her car radio driving to work

I asked Di Hai how she felt. Completely nonchalantly these stories poured out. “Oh yes, my friend she turned around and her customer put a gun to her, she ran and got away and never went back. Too scared. She hasn’t worked since.”

thinking about how nearly all of the women in my family- myself, my mother, my Di Hai are survivors. Of Sexual & Gendered Violence. War. Genocide. Displacement. Forced migration. Extractive, exploitative capitalism that sees us as disposable. Free resources. Free labor.

thinking about how Southeast Asians hold onto so much resilient joy & community yet hold so much collective grief: who we or our families might have been, the lives we could have had sans US military imperialism, or serial colonization/occupation by the Chinese, French, Japanese

duong hai was an asshole. ex-general, a trusted martial art teacher, a sketchy uncle you didn’t want to be alone with. He left her for her younger cousin but came back to her in the form of a municipal letter stating that he was dead. I asked my Di Hai how she was doing.

he was divorced already when he met her as a teen thru my youngest uncles, kids fishing. as the eldest, Di Hai had the most traditional marriage, commanded to sleep on the floor, serving her mother-in-law. chinese imperial traditions that lingered long after they were overthrown.

in a hot sticky car ride down bellaire, she gulped silently, “I think he left me bc of my eyes, i have a hard time seeing.” I thought her eyesight suffered time but later learned it’s bc low income TX healthcare doesn’t cover the eye drops she needs to see. she can’t afford them.

thinking of the ongoing US imperialist violence that’s our current detention/deportation system that targets and criminalizes Southeast Asian survivors — and the violent silence on this too as Anti-Asian hate and the marginalization of our leadership & lives in AAPI organizing.

thinking about the times I’ve been silenced after being scapegoated and fired for naming racism at work (or “for being racist against white women” as one white-embodied non-profit called it). The time those same feminists told me my consent didn’t matter; to comply or get fired.

one time (of many) i got fired for raising racial equity concerns. unable to access healthcare or unemployment as the COVID peaked, i developed a strange unexplainable cough as if something was stuck in my throat.

my therapist notes this commonly develops in women of color.

thinking of when solidarity felt like my silence. thinking of the lack of accountability for harm i’ve experienced. my silence feels heavier today as they are given ample voice this moment.

thinking of how i’ve been told it’s all for the best. how i would harm them & something greater than me if i named it as harm. That someone like me couldn’t understand the big picture of real strategy/tactics. The violent racism, sexism, and classism of that.

thinking of the familiar ancestral, collective feeling in my Viet brown femme body of being collateral damage. how this silence is unnamed, unacknowledged, unspeakable under threat.

thinking about how i never talk about these things aloud bc i have it good. in the grand scheme of things they’re not that bad, it could always be so much worst. how i should be grateful. how i don’t want to be trauma porn but tired of saving face to hide what’s happening at home

Thinking about the difference between fear and trauma. most people remark how unafraid i always seem. i have a hard time feeling fear. Fear is what might happen; trauma is the body memory of what happened.

i stayed awake thinking if this is fear? or was i remembering.

please unroll @threadreaderapp 🙏🏽💕