It was the perfect plan. My parents were completely unaware; I told them that I was studying at a friend’s house, waving the “grades” flag that was sure to blindfold them into ignorance. All of my contraband was hidden in my backpack, away from the eyes of peering mothers, and years of obedience meant my parents would never suspect anything like this from me; I was their good girl, their angel. Once all the preparations were made, I left through the front door and got into my friend’s car, ready to sneak off to a forbidden place. We were headed, with my contraband picket signs in my backpack, not to a party, but to my first rally—a Black Lives Matter rally. Now, let me backtrack a second. Something that’s important to
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Going wholeheartedly against this mindset and exercising civil disobedience in order to advance the rights of “dangerous” and “scary” Black people was, to my parents, the equivalent of sneaking out to go to a booze-filled party to take shots and snort cocaine. After about a forty-minute drive in the passenger seat of a Toyota Camry, I arrived at my first destination outside of the Long Beach Police Department. My nervous teeth rattled as I stepped nervously out of the car, putting myself into unfamiliar territory. There I was, a five-foot-two spoiled little middle-class Asian girl in a crowd full of passionate activists, muttering unfamiliar chants outside of a suburban police department. I turned to my friend and grimaced, the cool morning air brushing up against my inexperienced …show more content…
We were a relatively small group of about fifty protestors, using nonviolent, non-confrontational methods in a calm suburb. Yet, it was exciting enough to make about three minutes of air time on a local news channel the next day. So when I saw news cameras at our destination, I momentarily panicked; would my parents see me? Would my work be foiled? Yet, I banked on the fact that my parents rarely watched cable news and that it was unlikely that the camera’s eye would notice the short girl standing in the back of the crowd. Nevertheless, my mother somehow seemed to catch me in those three minutes of airtime on that obscure news channel. The only explanation was encapsulated by my mother’s favorite quote—“A mother has to be as tough as steel and as sharp as jade.” I guess her sharpness came out to play at exactly the wrong moment for me.
When I came back from a local café with my friends the next day, I found my mother waiting for me in the living room of my two-story house. When I saw her eyes, I knew that the jade knife was out to cut. The first biting “Where were you last afternoon?” inevitably turned to fury as my mother’s questions became more pointed and precise. I stood there, still, as her enraged eyebrows swallowed her face and she went on
Going wholeheartedly against this mindset and exercising civil disobedience in order to advance the rights of “dangerous” and “scary” Black people was, to my parents, the equivalent of sneaking out to go to a booze-filled party to take shots and snort cocaine. After about a forty-minute drive in the passenger seat of a Toyota Camry, I arrived at my first destination outside of the Long Beach Police Department. My nervous teeth rattled as I stepped nervously out of the car, putting myself into unfamiliar territory. There I was, a five-foot-two spoiled little middle-class Asian girl in a crowd full of passionate activists, muttering unfamiliar chants outside of a suburban police department. I turned to my friend and grimaced, the cool morning air brushing up against my inexperienced …show more content…
We were a relatively small group of about fifty protestors, using nonviolent, non-confrontational methods in a calm suburb. Yet, it was exciting enough to make about three minutes of air time on a local news channel the next day. So when I saw news cameras at our destination, I momentarily panicked; would my parents see me? Would my work be foiled? Yet, I banked on the fact that my parents rarely watched cable news and that it was unlikely that the camera’s eye would notice the short girl standing in the back of the crowd. Nevertheless, my mother somehow seemed to catch me in those three minutes of airtime on that obscure news channel. The only explanation was encapsulated by my mother’s favorite quote—“A mother has to be as tough as steel and as sharp as jade.” I guess her sharpness came out to play at exactly the wrong moment for me.
When I came back from a local café with my friends the next day, I found my mother waiting for me in the living room of my two-story house. When I saw her eyes, I knew that the jade knife was out to cut. The first biting “Where were you last afternoon?” inevitably turned to fury as my mother’s questions became more pointed and precise. I stood there, still, as her enraged eyebrows swallowed her face and she went on