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  1. bookbear expressAva2/21/2113 min
    7 reads7 comments
    9.8
    bookbear express
    7 reads
    9.8
    You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • Jessica2 years ago

      Oh, Ava. I feel like she organized all the thoughts that have been swarming in my brain on this topic.

      Maybe that’s my real cultural inheritance: self-control, a kind of simmering disdain.

      Wow, self-control, a kind of simmering disdain – I appreciate that perspective. I grew up internalizing this "self-control" as respecting others and their opinions, but exerting “self-control” can be very emotionally damaging. It’s like feeding myself poison while others live in oblivion, not knowing that what they said is deeply hurtful.

      I should’ve tried to explain, I know—how something you don’t even really understand can affect so much of your lived experience, how when anyone sees me now and forever the first thing they’ll recognize is that I’m an Asian woman—but I just turned away. I didn’t want to say anything to him at all.

      I feel so seen. This is my exact experience.

      1. Update (7/3/2021):

        I just thought of this line from Minari:

        Sometimes I wonder if the Asian-American experience is what it's like when you're thinking about everyone else, but nobody else is thinking about you.

    • sjwoo2 years ago

      Lately I've been feeling kinda bad that I give so little thought to race relations. Maybe I'm just a fatalist, but honestly, I don't think I belong here in the US and I don't think I ever will, and I'm okay with that. I'm an interloper; I don't think it's possible not to be when you are first generation. So perhaps I have it easier than Ava here, who was born here.

    • chrissetiana
      Top reader of all time
      2 years ago

      I’m not an activist or an advocate or particularly informed at all—I’m just stumbling through my life, trying to describe it all.

    • Plum2 years ago

      “ I’m afraid to write this post because I feel like I don’t know enough about being Asian. “

      She writes well about how hard it is to find our identity in the stereotypes that define us in others eyes although not our own.

    • DellwoodBarker2 years ago

      Wow! I am So Incredibly Grateful the Immensely Gifted micro-dose writer, Ava, decided to tackle this topic. As with every other topic she does so with Authentic Vulnerability and a Refreshingly Centered Compassionate Perspective even when expressing the harsher side of True~True experiences.

      As with many of Ava’s reads I would declare this to be the best read I have read on the topic to date.

      Being a white male living in a small town that is full of mostly Native, Hispanic and white population, currently, and having gone to an Amazing and super diverse highly black populated school growing up with a black principle I would rank up there with MLK: I am experiencing this strange revelation about my younger experiences internally compared to now internally and I am disturbed and troubled because whereas when I was younger I had no inner dialogue going on about being around diversity as I was just naturally hanging out with diverse friends and celebrating our differences naturally… today, I notice that when I see a non-white, non-Hispanic, non-Native I find I am internally clapping and dialogue going gratitude for the visible addition of diversity, but then I get kinda angry about it because media and those making money in journalism to dissect our differences are actually in a strange paradoxical fashion creating more of a rift and great divide within about diverse others and myself. Why am I suddenly in a state of applauding the visible diversity from what feels like a less natural state than when it naturally made no difference when I was younger aside from just hanging with different races and learning about our differences via a common ground of communication?

      I value the awakening all of us are experiencing on this planet now in regards to injustice and discrimination and even latent subconscious racist behaviors that we may never have been aware of…. I just want to get back to the calmer, more peaceful internal landscape as a kid and teen when I hung out with diverse friends with overthinking our diversity yet not negating distinctive cultural vibrancy especially those in danger of becoming extinct ( languages, rituals, arts) that we need to survive…ultimately we all stem from One.

      These are 13 Divine and Golden Moments of Reading Here. I would give this article a 13 rating; if available.

      1. Update (7/1/2021):

        Correction: Without Overthinking 🦄🐬🧚🏽💫😘

      2. Update (7/1/2021):

        P.s. Cool to see Dj Yaeji’s photo smack dab in the middle of this read.

        🙌💕💓queues Raingurl & DJY Mix💓💕🙌