CHINESE-AMERICAN DREAM
ISABELLA LI
They rose from flame. Ashes of famine below. Red smoke above. Red scarves choking necks and red books crushing arms.
My father rose from the sand and cracked heat of Xinjiang. My mother rose from the concrete and humidity of Hunan. Her mother told her to save the food for her younger brother, because he would get the job and raise the family and bear the flag for generations to come. She would stay at home.
This was the Cultural Revolution. A dense country with gates bottlenecked and people gasping for air beyond.
My parents studied their way out. Walks home with equations twisting in brain folds, summers with chemistry textbooks reaching towards the sky. Huddled by radios for the English program that crinkled through every night. Statue of Liberty behind dreaming eyelids.
My father rose from the sand and cracked heat of Xinjiang. My mother rose from the concrete and humidity of Hunan. Her mother told her to save the food for her younger brother, because he would get the job and raise the family and bear the flag for generations to come. She would stay at home.
This was the Cultural Revolution. A dense country with gates bottlenecked and people gasping for air beyond.
My parents studied their way out. Walks home with equations twisting in brain folds, summers with chemistry textbooks reaching towards the sky. Huddled by radios for the English program that crinkled through every night. Statue of Liberty behind dreaming eyelids.
*
“The American Dream is a lie,” my history teacher told our class.
He taught a reconsideration of stars and stripes. We learned that the religious safe havens of the Puritans became cauldrons of oppression and rigidity. The blooming capitalist society of Jamestown was built on the backs of bruised slaves. Colonists yanked forests richer than butter, rivers bluer than sadness, from unsuspecting Native American hands. Red white blue painted over with black, blood, tears, chains.
He taught a reconsideration of stars and stripes. We learned that the religious safe havens of the Puritans became cauldrons of oppression and rigidity. The blooming capitalist society of Jamestown was built on the backs of bruised slaves. Colonists yanked forests richer than butter, rivers bluer than sadness, from unsuspecting Native American hands. Red white blue painted over with black, blood, tears, chains.
*
The book had made its home on the bookshelf in our living room, flanked by Walter Isaacson and Stephen Hawking, pages yellowed like soy sauce. Hunched over. In eighth grade, its pink cover, bright as a wish, reached out to me. The Chinese in America, it was called, and on its front was a sepia picture of Chinese schoolkids packed around a shadowy wooden table.
Its pages taught me that the first Chinese woman to come to America built her new life as an exhibit owned by amused eyes and their unconcerned gazes. The girls who followed tucked their dreams in the kisses they gave to the American men who paid for their bodies.
And the first men, they were lured by mirages of gold and opportunity. The Qing Dynasty dripped its black silk blood onto the backs of their children. Little did they know, their mirages led to chains. Long passages across the Pacific in wooden coffin ships, suffocated by disease and hunger. Days, weeks, months in the desert, wind burying lungs with sand, laying metal on wood on dirt for railroads. They were called “coolies,” or ku-li, meaning bitter strength in Chinese.
And when money slipped through the hands of America, the first thieves put on trial were the coolies. The chinks—who ate rats and dogs to nourish their alien eyes and sickly yellow skin— they stole the jobs.
So America fought back with the Chinese Exclusion Act. And the country locked its gates to an entire nation of people.
Its pages taught me that the first Chinese woman to come to America built her new life as an exhibit owned by amused eyes and their unconcerned gazes. The girls who followed tucked their dreams in the kisses they gave to the American men who paid for their bodies.
And the first men, they were lured by mirages of gold and opportunity. The Qing Dynasty dripped its black silk blood onto the backs of their children. Little did they know, their mirages led to chains. Long passages across the Pacific in wooden coffin ships, suffocated by disease and hunger. Days, weeks, months in the desert, wind burying lungs with sand, laying metal on wood on dirt for railroads. They were called “coolies,” or ku-li, meaning bitter strength in Chinese.
And when money slipped through the hands of America, the first thieves put on trial were the coolies. The chinks—who ate rats and dogs to nourish their alien eyes and sickly yellow skin— they stole the jobs.
So America fought back with the Chinese Exclusion Act. And the country locked its gates to an entire nation of people.
*
Our history teacher never once mentioned Chinese immigrants, their coffin ships, their bitter strength. The impenetrable metal gates they faced when they brushed their fingertips with desperate dreams.
*
I rose from wind and water. Air singing secrets in my ears as I raced my bike alongside it. Chlorine stinging my eyes and tinting my hair red after swimming away days in clear blue and sunlight. Laughter and smiles and play-pretend.
My parents studied their way out, and since what they knew was numbers, they buried me in them, too. Walks home with equations twisting in brain folds, afternoons spent with fractions and long division. They studied their way out of the bottlenecked gates using calculus as their sword, and I would climb my way to the mountaintop with algebra as my carabiner. And when I was at the summit, I would have conquered the clouds and the lights and the big, big city.
When I decided that numbers were my enemies and I wanted to understand the world instead, they got me a watercolor picture book with planets and cells and molecules.
“Read this, and your brain will own the stars,” they said.
My parents raised me on hopes and dreams.
My parents studied their way out, and since what they knew was numbers, they buried me in them, too. Walks home with equations twisting in brain folds, afternoons spent with fractions and long division. They studied their way out of the bottlenecked gates using calculus as their sword, and I would climb my way to the mountaintop with algebra as my carabiner. And when I was at the summit, I would have conquered the clouds and the lights and the big, big city.
When I decided that numbers were my enemies and I wanted to understand the world instead, they got me a watercolor picture book with planets and cells and molecules.
“Read this, and your brain will own the stars,” they said.
My parents raised me on hopes and dreams.
*
They read to me every night, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, my favorite. Princesses and little girls who would always win.
But for all the words that painted magic in my mind, the Chinese characters that swirled through the air held secrets I could not decipher. When my Chinese relatives visited, I muddled my way through conversation with half-formed words and smiles emptier than glass.
My parents first fought to ingrain the black-ink characters and melodic tones of their mother tongue into my mind. They gave me Saturdays of Chinese school, family movie nights watching Chinese soap operas about Chairman Mao’s teenage years. But my brain was locked shut and tucked away in an inaccessible corner, and not even the sharpest of calligraphied characters could pry it open.
But for all the words that painted magic in my mind, the Chinese characters that swirled through the air held secrets I could not decipher. When my Chinese relatives visited, I muddled my way through conversation with half-formed words and smiles emptier than glass.
My parents first fought to ingrain the black-ink characters and melodic tones of their mother tongue into my mind. They gave me Saturdays of Chinese school, family movie nights watching Chinese soap operas about Chairman Mao’s teenage years. But my brain was locked shut and tucked away in an inaccessible corner, and not even the sharpest of calligraphied characters could pry it open.
*
For one Thanksgiving, my grandparents left their apartment in the thick-as-gravy smog and heavier-than-gold humidity of Hunan. They flew thousands of miles to us. They looked out our house’s windows at trees the color of sunset and grass green as envy. Their eyes gleamed awe.
My mother decided to prepare a real American meal. Turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, casseroles, pies. My grandma tried the sweet potato casserole first, a small orange dollop on the end of her chopsticks.
Lips pursed and eyes squinted.
“It’s too sweet,” she said. In Chinese. And she ate rice for the rest of the meal.
My mother decided to prepare a real American meal. Turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, casseroles, pies. My grandma tried the sweet potato casserole first, a small orange dollop on the end of her chopsticks.
Lips pursed and eyes squinted.
“It’s too sweet,” she said. In Chinese. And she ate rice for the rest of the meal.
*
In third grade, my best friend Jessica and I carpooled home every Wednesday after school. We played pretend and danced in the basement. My mom made us Chinese food, noodles and dumplings and fried rice. We sat around the kitchen table, sunlight dancing circles around us.
“Chinese eyes are like this,” Jessica said, and she tugged up the corners of her aquamarine eyes and white-blonde eyelashes until they slanted like ski slopes and were thinner than a blade of grass.
“Chinese eyes are like this,” Jessica said, and she tugged up the corners of her aquamarine eyes and white-blonde eyelashes until they slanted like ski slopes and were thinner than a blade of grass.
*
Lucy Wang’s parents voted for Trump, she told me.
lmao!!, she texted.
Trump rose from flame. Ashes of an imagined past below. Red smoke of a desolate future above.
He promised a future of the American Dream. Blue skies vanquishing red smoke and dark criminals. Blue skies protected by metal and wall.
But he forgot the past where bitter strength was reduced to alien eyes and yellow skin, where coolies were chinks and thieves, where the country locked its doors to an entire nation of people.
Lucy’s parents rose from flame, too. They studied their way out. They rose to the top and bought a big white house in the suburbs and raised their kids on hopes and dreams. And they voted for him because they wanted blue skies.
hahahahahaha, I texted back.
My parents didn’t vote.
lmao!!, she texted.
Trump rose from flame. Ashes of an imagined past below. Red smoke of a desolate future above.
He promised a future of the American Dream. Blue skies vanquishing red smoke and dark criminals. Blue skies protected by metal and wall.
But he forgot the past where bitter strength was reduced to alien eyes and yellow skin, where coolies were chinks and thieves, where the country locked its doors to an entire nation of people.
Lucy’s parents rose from flame, too. They studied their way out. They rose to the top and bought a big white house in the suburbs and raised their kids on hopes and dreams. And they voted for him because they wanted blue skies.
hahahahahaha, I texted back.
My parents didn’t vote.
ISABELLA LI is a high school student from North Carolina. She has been honored nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and has been published in Canvas Literary Journal and Teen Ink Print. When not reading or writing, she enjoys chemistry and biology and Game of Thrones.