A Revolutionary Lament

When I began to fully lament the ways that my own Asian identity had been minimized... I was met with the God that cries out for injustice too.

By Karen Mac

I

used to think that I was safe as the “model minority.” I didn’t have to deal with a school system that deems me dangerous, the systematic over policing and state-sponsored killings of my body, or many of the other consistent, intersecting oppressions faced by Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people in the racial hierarchy of the United States.

This year, I was forced to confront the reality of what it means to be Asian American: continually tokenized as quiet and hard working when it suits the majority culture’s purposes, but blamed and villainized in mere moments, like when a pandemic hits. 

As a young adult, I thought of myself as an honorary white person. Despite being born and raised in East San Jose, a city with the largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans in the US, I spent the majority of my high school and college years in predominantly white spaces. When faced with the microaggression that every person of color consistently faces—“Where are you from? No, where are you really from?”—I would try my hardest to not stick out. I would explain that I was Chinese, as quickly as possible, and always with the caveat, “But we’re pretty American. We speak English at home.” 

I felt like I had to hide my complicated Asian identity in order to fit into the standard narratives of race in the United States. I am indeed of Chinese descent, but there is much more to me than that. Born in Cambodia, my mom is an incredibly resilient survivor of the Cambodian genocide. My dad speaks Vietnamese with his immediate family members because that’s where he grew up. Growing up, I learned to speak something entirely different than Mandarin or Cantonese, a dialect called Teochew common in the Southern regions of China where I trace my ancestry to. I couldn’t identify whether the food I ate at home was Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Filipino, or something completely different—a strange fusion of all the places that my family had lived in. I am a rich mixture of hybrid nationality, ethnicity, and immigrant resilience. 

I’ve known for years that the “model minority myth” is a zero-sum game, one that perpetuates the divides between communities of color so that we can make no real progress against the true evils of white supremacy and systemic racism, but I didn’t realize how much I had internalized the myth. For most of my life, I’ve been conditioned to not take up space, minimizing my own experiences of racism and my unique, God-given identity. 

Reading the laments of many fellow Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders has given me courage to process my own pain. As Bianca Mabute-Louie beautifully writes for ELLE Magazine: 

There’s something sacred about Asian Americans making our heartache visible. As we mourn publicly, we delegitimize the current order of things. Simply put, our tears, our poems, and our testimonies communicate that things are not okay and that we have been in pain. When we take up space with our grief, we dispel the “model minority” myth that adamantly claims Asian Americans don’t experience racial trauma. When we tell the truth about racial violence, we challenge the hegemonic numbness and silence. We reveal the fallacy of America’s “post-racial” narrative, and our stories rescue us from disappearing into this country’s amnesiac fog. Our collective narration in this moment is rebellious, brave, and beautiful. It is revolutionary. (ELLE) 

When I began to fully lament the ways that my own Asian identity had been minimized, and more broadly, for all the ways that white supremacy tries to reduce the image of God in this world, I was met with the God that cries out for injustice too. I was met with the God who made my identity, who created me in my mother’s womb, and gave me a beautiful story that can’t be summed up by the dominant narratives of race in the United States. Before God, I am given the permission to be truly and completely myself. No hiding. No more minimizing. 

I read Soong Chan-Rah’s Prophetic Lament at the start of the pandemic with my Christian anti-racism book club, and it helped me understand the value of the emotions that I find myself experiencing now. We need to lament because it demonstrates honesty before God and before each other. When we cry out to God with our laments, we bring our full selves before God. We trust that God is large enough to handle our grief. Only then can God begin to pick up the pieces. 

In this Lenten season of acknowledging my dependence on God, I am reminded of the God who brought truly beautiful things out of lament and suffering, allowing the people of the Bible to make sense of their identities. After all, this is the God who met Hagar, a pregnant Egyptian slave woman, and allowed her to be the first to give God a new name: the God who Sees. This is the God who used Mary, a poor teenage girl, and her barren cousin Elizabeth to bring about the hope of the world. This is the God who gave women new identities as apostles and evangelizers by being the first to witness and proclaim the resurrection, even though they had little voice in the ancient Near East. 

Racism looks different for AAPIs than it does for Black, Indigenous, and other diverse communities of color in the United States, but this year of rising anti-Asian violence has made it more than clear that it has always existed. The Atlanta murders of Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels make it clear that this type of racism is violent, too. And now, we are crying out with years of suppressed pain and grief and heartache. 

Our laments are beautiful, and perhaps even revolutionary, because they ring counter to a world where we’ve been conditioned to swallow our suffering, both for the purposes of immigrant survival and as part of many of our own AAPI cultures more broadly. I even struggled when writing this, because I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, telling me “It’s safer to not get involved.” But these pain and tears can no longer be hidden behind closed doors. 

This is a revolutionary kind of lament happening right now. As we lament, we express our full God-given range of emotions, knocking down the cultural expectations that have told us to remain silent for far too long. As we lament, we begin to tear apart the divides between different communities of color, telling us that Asians have it fine in the standard Black-white hierarchy of the United States. So we need to cry, we need to express our anger, and we need to share our stories with the world. As we lament, we trust that God can redeem this too. 

A photo taken of Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s beautiful #OurCityNYC series at 97th & Broadway (NYC)

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Karen Mac is a second-generation Chinese American woman who traces her family history across Southeast Asia, navigating the tensions of hybrid nationality and ethnic identity. A native Californian, she now lives in NYC where she works for an advocacy organization focused on building inclusive care policies. You can connect with her on her website or LinkedIn.