How it is to be Asian - All Alone

Jolene Won, Age 10
Oakland CA
Crocker Highlands Elementary School

My family is the only completely Asian family in the neighborhood. There is a girl named Jessica, who is my age, and her family, who live about two blocks down from our house, but Jessica is half Caucasian. She can speak fluent Thai, but that does not make her completely Thai. My family would like for more Asian families to move in, so we would not be alone in being Asian, as we are now.

I am proud to be Asian, as I should, but it is hard to sell armbands printed with the words Asian Pride, or put up Chinese New Year flyers around the school when there is no one to buy the bands; no Asians to help put up the flyers, or to even read them and actually care. There are no other Asians to stand tall and proud with (well, sorry to say, most of us Asians aren't actually very tall) and that is a very, very difficult prospect to have to live with.

Some people think there is not a thought about racism in the younger generation such as my friends, schoolmates, and I, but those people are very foolish, very confused, or simply wrong. Kids at my school expect me to speak fluent Chinese, and for me to speak it in front of them. Why should I be obligated to, especially when I know that they will mock it until the end of time? (I, unfortunately, know this from experience)They do not speak Swahili, or Irish, or whatever the language of their culture happens to be. Not all the kids do this, thank goodness, but the kids who are racist are intolerably so. It is very common for a kid in my grade to come up to me and say, "Hey, I can speak Chinese," and let out a stream of solid gibberish. I have learned to say, "Yeah. Right. Whatever," and walk away, but it is infuriating, and painful to hear.

I do not have any different ideas about my neighborhood just because I am Chinese. Maybe my neighbors do -mind you, they are either African-American or Caucasian- but they have shown no sign of it.

It is possible that some unusual occurrences around our house have been linked to racism. My mom has gone outside to get the newspaper, only to find that it is gone, or that someone has stolen the newspaper and used the bag to scoop their dog's poop, and have left the bag on the lawn. Dog-walkers never seem to pick up their dogs' poop from our lawn, as they do everyone else's. This could just be my imagination, though.

People have also broken eggs on the sidewalk, thrown trash on our lawn, and stolen or cracked the decorative stepping-stones in front of the house.

I have no way to prove that these are hate crimes, and I actually do not think they are. I really hope there will be no more discrimination than there already is around the neighborhood, possibly none at all . . . but it is not like that, not yet.

It hasIt been a long time since this "racism" issue started up, just because some silly man or woman thought that if you were different, it made you awful, impure, or unclean in some way. Then people acted out of ignorance. Now it has created a mass of crevasses like dried desert soil, separating us all from what we could do, could be. Now man acts out of spite and envy and still ignorance, and a born-in comfort with people like us, with yellow, white or black skin; brown or blue, big or small eyes; black or blond, wavy or straight hair. That comfort, in some, makes other people, people who simply aren't like them, seem, "bad."

It has been so long since racism was born, that it would be all but impossible to destroy or wipe it out. We can still fight, though. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and many of the other fighters who might help are gone. But, this very moment, the next great Asian leader might be being born, or playing with Legos, or studying for a math test. Our equality is in the small hands of the younger generations.

Mystic Woman

Anwika Bhandary, Age 9
Cupertino CA
Collins Elementary School

Peace on Earth

Lingxuan Li, Age 9
Albany CA
Ocean View Elementary School

Sunshine Breaks Through The Rain

Rena Lea Wang, Age 14
Santa Rosa CA
Montgomery High School

About one year ago, the muddled gray sky poured forth tears as I trudged across a grassy pathway towards my father's burial site. My black boots became instantly soaked with the raging and emotional cry that had let loose in the heavens above that fated spring morning.

The rain had chronicled the last days of his life, as well as the hurting and anguish that resulted from that final day. The celestial showers eased its presence into the day of his diagnosis four months before his passing, as well as during his memorial service and his funeral.

In fact, it rained relentlessly for fifty straight days after my father's death.

Every morning I would awake to the pitter-pattering of a drizzle and every evening, I would fall asleep to the throbbing of an insatiable tempest. It wasn't until one particular evening, not quite unlike the rest, that I had the sudden vision of a shadow of a man with heavy eyelids, waiting to be spoon-fed by me at the kitchen table. This withering, terminally-ill person was my father, a soul who undeniably suffered more pain and endured more sacrifices than a human lifetime should know, yet possessed the courage to smile on his dying day. It was then that I finally realized that my father, Sean Shu Ren Wang, embodied the very essences of a true champion; my father will always be a superhero.

My dad was not a tall man, nor was he a particularly strong one. He could not fly or read minds, nor could he become invisible and hide a secret identity under a stretchy costume. My father was simply a short, lean, and dark-skinned fellow with an exceptionally cheery disposition that had a tendency to, instead of slip through the cracks, ooze out with renewed vigor. He grew up in a rural town in mainland China, and was the oldest son in his family. He worked very hard for all of his siblings, at anywhere from a busy restaurant kitchen to the crowded classroom at his small college, where he planned and began to pursue his dreams.

To my father, America had always been his promised land. He never hesitated after he made his decision all those years ago to transform his children's destiny and find a way to come to this country.

Once he arrived, you could not ever hear a complaint escape his lips. My dad never complained of his 13-hour work days, or of his 7-day work weeks. He never complained of a bad cold, a lost car key, or of anything malicious that came his way. At the restaurant we had owned for the decade up to his death, he never ceased to brighten the day of each and every person who walked through our double-doors, customer or not. His vibrant eyes would crinkle into an unmistakable grin as he would jump down from behind the counter and give a hearty shout, while placing his hand on their shoulder: "Heeey! Boss! Wow, it's great to see you again!"

In effect, my father was known by all of our customers and many throughout the community as "The Happy Guy." He wasn't about doing business, but about making friends, anybody age 2 to age 90. He was about making happiness.

When he was diagnosed with end stage pancreatic cancer in October of 2005, the day before my mother's birthday, he had already lost fifty pounds off his small, 160-pound frame. The morning after his diagnosis, however, he woke up early, right as the powerful rays of sunlight shot through the horizon. He declared in a shout that was nearly superhuman: "I am not that easy to push over! I will fight until I win!"

In the weeks preceding his death, he got paler and paler, with his sunken eyes yellowing by the minute. The shots of morphine and procaine rained into his blood like the sprays outside the murky hospital-room window, but when asked if he felt pain, he would muster up a strained smile and whisper, "No, no." Every day he would declare that "Today is going to be a new day!"

Among his many influences in his perpetually optimistic outlook on life, one of his greatest was always his pride in being Chinese and all its traditions. My father never forgot his roots in China, and he never let us forget our ethnic culture either. He would roam the restaurant kitchen, happily whistling Chinese Opera tunes in a bold, unabashed manner and explained situations to me in simple Chinese proverbs. He never wanted to hear one inauspicious word, nothing of "death," or "pain," or of anything unhappy and foreboding. My dad was always searching for that sunny day, and if he couldn't find it himself, he would, instead, create it for someone nearby.

In fact, at his very last visit for treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center, he shocked his doctor to such an extent that changed both his doctor's opinion of a mortal forever. As he stumbled little by little into Dr. Wolff's office, his doctor's eyes widened as he grabbed his desk, utterly speechless.

"Sean! Wow, this is such a surprise! How in heavens name did you make it in here?"

"I walked."

"I can't believe this! I have never had a patient in your condition who could even stand! And you? Walk into my office? Sean, you really are a man. No, listen and remember this: You are my hero."

My father was a true superhero in that he believed in living for life itself. If he cheered up one person, he would immediately set off for another. He endured, without complaint, many great pains and torments in his short life because, as he always told me, whining won't cure any disease. Instead, he would walk to the front door and spread his arms wide like a soaring eagle and say: "This is America! You see this sunshine? You see the green hills? Do you see any clouds or rain? This is what it means to be alive!"

Looking outside now, I can see the rolling green hills of America, bursting with new life. I can see damp streets and dewy foliage. I can even see the light breaking through rainy clouds. But most importantly, I can see the silhouette of an immortal superhero, walking off into the sunny horizon.

Super Heroes Helping Others

Cathy Phun, Age 9
El Cerrito CA
Castro Elementary School

For Finding Better Lives

Eunbee Jang, Age 13
San Jose CA
Bret Harte Middle School

Heaven's Justice Splitting Earth's Good and Evil

Kevan Nicholas Hom, Age 17
San Francisco CA
School of the Arts