Dear Mom, I Wish I Could Protect You
When six Asian women were killed in Atlanta in March, the writer Jane Park felt an ache of concern that was all too familiar
Dear Mom,
I’m surprised to find that, in my middle age, I feel like I am failing you more than ever. These days, I can’t protect you enough.
I remember being five and wanting with every cell in my being to make you feel safe and seen. This was my first and most important job. “I am not the dummy,” you would say whenever someone who spoke English more fluently than you made you feel less than. It might have been a passing stranger, or my grade school classmates who shoplifted from your corner store. “I graduate from Ewha Women’s University, oldest women’s university in Asia!” you’d tell me and never them, as if I had some superpower that could replenish your reserves of respect.
I know you were worried that their ways of thinking of would infect me, that I too would see you as the “other” and try to dissociate from you. But I would never, ever do that. Couldn’t you see that I was trying to protect you? If I could have shielded you from every hurt and racist abuse of power, I would have.
I would have stood up to the Canadian manpower officer who suggested that you take an…
