Interior Lives: Contemporary Photographs of Chinese New Yorkers
Photographed By Annie Ling, James Holton and An Rong Xu
I guffawed the first time I read the not-quite-accurate, titillating headline: “Lesbians beaten for refusing to kiss.” For starters, I’m bisexual, but that’s besides the point. My memories of the fight are addled by adrenaline. Maddeningly, I don’t remember exactly how it started. My persisting anger is directed not towards the idiots on the bus but the reduction of my battered face to cheap clickbait.
A refrain I’ve heard ad nauseum is “I can’t believe this happened – it’s 2019”. I disagree. This attack and the ensuing media circus are par for the course in 2019. In both my native United States and here in the United Kingdom, it always has been and still is open season on the bodies of (in no specific order) people of colour, indigenous people, transgender people, disabled people, queer people, poor people, women and migrants. I have evaded much of the violence and oppression imposed on so many others by our capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal system because of the privileges I enjoy by dint of my race, health, education, and conventional gender presentation. That has nothing to do with the merit of my character.
The press coverage, and timely law enforcement response, was not coincidental to our complexions. Neither was the disproportionate online reaction over the victimisation of a pretty brunette and blonde. The commodification and exploitation of my face came at the expense of other victims whose constant persecution apparently does not warrant similar moral outrage.
I want a home mostly just to welcome people into it. There will be bowls of candy for guests, and the cookie jar is full. I’ll always say “I was just about to make a coffee/tea/cocoa, would you like one?” when somebody walks in. There’s lemonade and iced tea made fresh on hot days. Once it hits That Hour and they start saying they really should be going, I’ll remind them that the futon is always open, and I’m making cinnamon rolls tomorrow. There’s champagne and sparkling juice hidden on a high shelf just in case somebody announces their engagement or their pregnancy or their new job while they’re here. There is an extra chair in the living room, at the table, and on the deck, and it’s for you. I want to be able to say “if you’re ever in trouble, come to me.”
trust your mother’s opinion on people
um. she married my dad
c-elebutante
and she regrets it and learned from it, so trust your mother’s opinion on people
Nellie Wong, Kitty Tsui, and Merle Woo, Members of the poetry and performance collective, Unbound Feet Three, 1981
if you think egging fascists is cool, wait till you here about
shooting them