Better Than Starbucks!

I Never Knew

 

I am Thai, Hawaiian, Japanese, Scottish, and Cherokee.

But in my mind, all people see is a Twinkie.

​

Filing my client’s Chi-Man Ku’s paperwork,

I addressed the label last name, first:

Ku, Chi-Man.

Laughter came easy at his expense.

 

My father never taught me to drive.

He said Asians had bad peripherals.

The DMV failed me twice,

convinced it was my eyes and not my experience.

 

Once, an Asian poet called me offensive,

and I told him it was just a joke,

like the word “chink” from a boy I had a crush on in high school,

or the way my classmates pulled at the sides of their eyes.

 

My father refers to Asians as Chinamen.

He is not Asian.

I am not adopted.

I resemble the “chinky eyed masochist” who left him.

 

My mother sinned all over Bangkok.

Brought to this country to babysit her new father’s children,

I was a mistake made while using my father to escape.

She never loved him but credits him with her new life outside of her

     family.

 

My father loves me, but when he looks at me, I know he sees her.

The girl who used him and disappeared with his kindergartner.

He fought for me, and when I was ten, I chose with the mediator to

     leave her.

She tells me to this day, she “let me” go.

 

I was born into America, no cultural residue.

From a generation of interracial unions and mixed babies.

I have a mouth that will cut like a katana.

I was not taught to be weak and submissive.

 

I am neither exotic nor eager to please like a geisha.

Refusing to sit still and look pretty,

I find myself sitting still and trying to look pretty,

and for that, I am a contradiction.

 

“Reading Rainbow” taught me I could be

anything I wanted to be when I grew up.

It taught me which box I could check,

to allow me to be white collar instead of red dress.

 

As a child, I learned to loathe this dark hair, this skin.

Through my slanted eyes I only saw my father’s view.

His ignorance and anger at my mother assaulting me instead of her.

I have created an image onstage for people who look nothing like me.

 

I am the token “me love you long time” girl.

I make jokes, and the jokes turn to hypocrisy.

 

I have refused to get revolutionary,

yet hold my fist high for Asian Pride.

 

I tattoo the word “Poetry” on my back in Thai,

but don’t recognize the script.

 

I have worn a t-shirt emblazoned “Everyone Loves an Asian Girl,”

but never loved that description of me.

 

I am sorry.

 

I have always stood under the sunlight for my freckles to radiate.

I have never let the Pacific Islands touch my toes.

I have never had the patience to learn about Thailand.

It is a piece of me, no matter how much I joke.

 

I never knew how sharp the words were that dug through my skin.

I never knew the effect I could have on people that look like me.

I never knew how disrespectful I was to my mother and my lineage,

Or how Asian Americans could see me as a racist.

 

 

Kristina Robertson is a confessional spoken word performer and writer residing in Morgan Hill, California. She was a consecutive member of the San Jose Poetry Slam Team. Her spoken word poetry and journey was recently shared on a podcast publication by Chopsticks Alley Art.