Status Updates From Eureka

“...What’s more frightening is that what happened to the Chinese people in Eureka also happened, in varying ways and degrees, to other Chinese people in over two hundred cities across California between the mid-1800s and 1906. An expulsion also occurred in other places such as Tacoma, Washington, on November 3, 1885.”

“He’s standing with his
back against a tree,
hands behind him,
his long braid tied
to the braid of another
man who is standing
next to him, whose braid
is attached to another man.

Poor Uncle!

Four Chinese men
around the tree,
another four around
another tree,
maybe thirty people
looking at them,
laughing, jeering.
“Go back to China!”
“Chinese must go!”
“Chinaman, go go go!”’

Jesus

‘“You don’t speak?” the woman says,
looking at me up and down,
down and up.

“That’s good. I don’t want
to hear your ching-chong talk
anyway. Too much of that
already.” She waves
her hand at me like I’m a fly
and walks
out of the kitchen.’

Some things never change. #Amerikkka

‘“No sewers
in Chinatown.
Garbage and waste
go down that creek.”
Uncle Wong points
across the street.

“Used to go into a
swamp over there.” He points
to the edge of the street.

“But now the garbage can’t
drain out because
the white people filled in
the swamp, leaving
Chinatown as the last stop
for waste and sewage.
So it always smells here.”’

Of course

“She tells me about how
she and Ba Ba paid money
for their trip to America
but didn’t have enough,
and now they owe money to
people called brokers.

And now the brokers need
money, fast, and
want me
in exchange!
Girls like me get sold,
to work.”

Jesus

“I stare at Ma Ma’s lotus
shoes, red ones
that look like a
lo mai gai,
sticky rice wrapped in
bamboo leaves, that
I love to eat on
special occasions.

Ma Ma’s shoes are
pointy in the front,
each shoe as small as
my hand.”

The world really hates women and children

“Then she pushed the toes
on each foot down and
curled them under as
hard as she could
downward,
downward,
then squeezed them
until the toes broke,
until the arch of each
foot broke.

Her ma ma wrapped and
wrapped the bandages
in a figure eight,
starting at the inside of
the foot,
over the toes,
under the foot,
around the heel,
over the broken toes,
pulling, pulling,
tightening, tightening.”

😬😬

“Ma Ma sits back
down, and I am suddenly
amazed by her
smallness.
She lifts her feet
back up on the lounge,
little lotus feet,
each one only
two inches long,
each broken toe
like a lotus flower petal,
soft
and
beautiful.”

😬

“As I walk out,
I turn to look at Ba Ba,
who has now gone
back to cleaning the
store and hanging more
roasted ducks up.

People tell us our ducks taste the best.”

Now I'm hungry 🦆