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Talking Story  by Polo

 From The Asian Reporter, V17, #13 (March 27, 2007), page 7.

Terima kasih for your letter of last week, Kari Rothi. Thank you also for loving and feeding and schooling your pretty children. Born-out-of-your-tummy or found in a cabbage patch or adopted, no matter. They are kids. And they are loved by you.

Pero, let me bring current any Asian Reporter reader not on board with our issue.

Earlier this month, Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie adopted three-year-old Pham Quang Sang out of a Saigon orphanage. A week later, AR published a cartoon about this adoption. A week after that, Portland parent Kari Rothi wrote our editor. She was unhappy, very unhappy, about cartoonist Jonathan Friolo’s caricature of Ms. Jolie’s adoption. His cartoon had her "baby shopping."

Three more important facts: our cartoonist is a young Filipino American; our reader is an Oregon mom; and, there’s a world of difference in their feelings about international adoption.

In her letter to our editor, Ms. Rothi wrote: "The Asian Reporter owes the adoption community a huge apology for this degrading cartoon."

Silahkan Ms. Rothi, I think I understand your reasoning but I cannot say I am sorry for our artist’s ideas.

I can say there are many-many Asians and Asian Americans feeling exactly his way. And, I can also say with utter certainty: Everyone knows about our orphans, about awful poverty. About our stupidity.

More to the point: No one will argue how essential touching softly and talking quietly is to every precious child under heaven. For holding and for raising our abandoned boys and girls, Ms. Rothi, we thank you. From our broken hearts and our fractured bones.

Maybe not an apology, but an accounting, we owe you. So what follows is my best eight-hundred-word effort. We need to talk. We need to talk a lot more than we have.

We are family people. Unlike Westerners, we live in interdependent constellations. Familia. I am not a downtown lawyer or Gunderson iron-worker. I am our Catalan father and our Manado mother’s second son. I am our brave daughter and bright son’s hapless father. I am our younger brothers’ kids’ big uncle.

In Indonesia or Kampuchea or Korea, we make family. Immediately. Ever notice Asians asking how old you are? If you’re married? Have children?

When I visit a Malay or Yiu Mien household, I am quickly an elder auntie’s nephew. I am always someone’s brother. This provision of "place" sets into motion a traditional world of social obligations. These duties make me who I am. How well I perform makes me a man, or not. Indeed, a human being or not.

Traditional folks feel not so comfortable with peoples not falling into familia, this way. This is not a racial matter, in the manner Americans are used to defining our differences. This is culture. Hawai’i is illustrative. At issue is: Are you local (you mind our manners, your color means little) or haole (a foreigner).

A central corollary to this way of being is our long-long memories. We don’t forget a doggone thing. Our (passed-on) ancestors and our (vigorous) elders won’t let us. That is their place. As I suggested earlier, we do not start anew, autonomous American guys and girls. Folks older, folks younger make us what we are. It’s cozy.

In short, we are made up of the people who love us, and the times that have made us.

Now to the point: Our grandparents and our parents are wounded. Deeply. Our histories have been bitter. Ugly. Often Westerners have made it so. For us.

I say "for us" because we are bound in our sorrow (and our joy). We also say "for us" because it excludes you. That’s harsh. But that’s true. And the goal here is more truth. Not more nice.

We have been "nice" way too long. Partly because "respect" is real big among Old Worlders. But mostly because of the enormous power differences between us and angry Western occupiers. Resistance gets you a bullet behind the ear. Leaves your woman and your babies alone. For a husband, for a father, acquiescence is humiliating. You lose your "place," your face. Black and brown and red men have always argued among ourselves, over which is better: dying honorably or emasculation daily.

As our brinha Maileen Hamto expressed in the "My Turn" column, this tense arrangement is likewise firmly cemented into America. Dominance and subordination.

Unfortunately, for both the strong and the bent, our lack of honesty with Westerners, our niceness, our suppressed rage, has gotten America into lots of trouble. Take Japan or Korea, or Viet Nam and Laos; take Iraq or this, our present unhappy brawl about international adoption.

I am proud of Jono and Maileen. They talk true. I am proud of America: our schools taught them to be so.

Better than saying I am sorry for Jono is letting our cartoonist’s and our reader’s differences sit there on the table. And let him and Ms. Rothi live with their contrariness. It’s okay. It’s how God made us. And that’s all good. Al’hamdulillah.

Please let me finish on this final note about Ms. Rothi’s note. I say it with all respect due. I mean it as an invitation to know each other better, and eventually-eventually-eventually to make familia.

Here goes: Jonathan Friolo’s cartoon is not an ‘assault’ as characterized by our reader’s letter. New Americans are often amused by how folks here feel "attacked" by another’s words. We are startled by America’s inability to embrace our Mexican cousins, calling our confluence "the battle" over the border. We are shaken by U.S. "wars" on poverty, on drugs, on terror. Not because of victory, but because of the violence.

I know something about assaults, attacks, and the like. I know for sure not a lot like that happens here.

Better than brawling is making familia. ‘Ohana. Taking our abandoned children into American homes is one way to do it. That is love. There are many-many more methods. Like strengthening families. Like eliminating poverty, alleviating stupidity. All loving as well.

And these will happen soon enough. After our power differences narrow a bit.

But till than, it’s all right. Let us try truth. Our differences are good. Love as truly as you can. Approval all around is not necessary.

Al’hamdulillah (Bahasa Indonesia and Indo patois, from Arabic, language of the family of Islam): thank God.

brinha/o (Indo, from Colonial Portuguese): niece/nephew. Need not be your biological relative.

familia (Colonial Spanish and Indo): an orbit of folks bound by reciprocal obligations among each other.

‘ohana (Hawaiian): family.

pero (Colonial Spanish, Tagalog, and Indo): but. However.

silahkan (Bahasa): if you please. If I may.

terima kasih (Malay and Bahasa): I offer my love. Said when Yanks say thank you. Inviting familial reciprocity.