Marilyn Chin Quote

How I Got That NameMarilyn Chinan essay on assimilationI am Marilyn Mei Ling ChinOh, how I love the resolutenessof that first person singularfollowed by that stalwart indicativeof be, without the uncertain i-n-gof becoming. Of course,the name had been changedsomewhere between Angel Island and the sea,when my father the papersonin the late 1950sobsessed with a bombshell blondtransliterated Mei Ling to Marilyn.And nobody dared questionhis initial impulse—for we all knowlust drove men to greatness,not goodness, not decency.And there I was, a wayward pink baby,named after some tragic white womanswollen with gin and Nembutal.My mother couldn’t pronounce the r.She dubbed me Numba one female offshootfor brevity: henceforth, she will live and diein sublime ignorance, flankedby loving children and the kitchen deity.While my father dithers,a tomcat in Hong Kong trash—a gambler, a petty thug,who bought a chain of chopsuey jointsin Piss River, Oregon,with bootlegged Gucci cash.Nobody dared question his integrity givenhis nice, devout daughtersand his bright, industrious sonsas if filial piety were the standardby which all earthly men are measured.*Oh, how trustworthy our daughters,how thrifty our sons!How we’ve managed to fool the expertsin education, statistic and demography—We’re not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning.Indeed, they can use us.But the Model Minority is a tease.We know you are watching now,so we refuse to give you any!Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots!The further west we go, we’ll hit east;the deeper down we dig, we’ll find China.History has turned its stomachon a black polluted beach—where life doesn’t hingeon that red, red wheelbarrow,but whether or not our new loverin the final episode of Santa Barbarawill lean over a scented candleand call us a bitch.Oh God, where have we gone wrong?We have no inner resources!*Then, one redolent spring morningthe Great Patriarch Chinpeered down from his kiosk in heavenand saw that his descendants were ugly.One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridgeAnother’s profile—long and knobbed as a gourd.A third, the sad, brutish onemay never, never marry.And I, his least favorite—not quite boiled, not quite cooked,a plump pomfret simmering in my juices—too listless to fight for my people’s destiny.To kill without resistance is not slaughtersays the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death.The fact that this death is also metaphoricalis testament to my lethargy.*So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin,married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong,granddaughter of Jack the patriarchand the brooding Suilin Fong,daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wongand G.G. Chin the infamous,sister of a dozen, cousin of a million,survived by everbody and forgotten by all.She was neither black nor white,neither cherished nor vanquished,just another squatter in her own bamboo groveminding her poetry—when one day heaven was unmerciful,and a chasm opened where she stood.Like the jowls of a mighty white whale,or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla,it swallowed her whole.She did not flinch nor writhe,nor fret about the afterlife,but stayed! Solid as wood, happilya little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized