Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

This is the place and time in which the most average person is average in their own special way, or learns to believe it. The ordinary can be powerful.

How does one measure the space a person inhabits? How can one be sure of how much or how little one takes? And what is the best way to maneuver given one’s perceived size and status?

Have I made myself this accommodating? A harmless vessel for their confusion and rage? They must see me as soft and small and unthreatening, because I have never suggested otherwise.

Somebody once asked me to identify the emotions that most strongly affect my life and the actions I do or don’t take. I couldn’t name them at the time, but now I’ve thought more about the question. Here is the answer I’ve come up with: revenge and regret and fear and guilt.

It is difficult to parse which parts of me come from my family, from being Chinese, from being Asian American, from being American, from being a woman, from being of a certain generation, and from, simply, being.

Without the black community we’d have no civil rights movement. Asians in America followed their lead. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We wouldn’t have what we have today without the black movements. We owe a lot to them. Remember that.”

My suffering is regular and small, and I want to suffer stoically and quietly, which perhaps then is the most Chinese quality about me.

Whatever lessons one can glean from other people’s relationships can only be taken in pieces, assembled into bare, minimal instructions.