"To date, I have been mistaken for Asian women who are almost a foot taller than I am, with women 15 years younger or older, biracial people, women who descend from every East Asian and Southeast Asian nation, plus Sri Lanka, as well as India, all of us thrown together by the willful, lazy illogic of racism. . . .
"Lately, every time I’ve heard about, read about, or encountered a fresh incident of hatred, the quiet refrain belling in my head like a chant, or a dirge, is: our hearts are breaking. I’ve found this frustrating, for who does it help, what action is involved in having a breaking heart?
"I’m listening more, though, today, to this refrain. Minutes after I first read about the attacks, I started thinking about what I should do, how I could be useful. Maybe I need to take another minute, maybe several minutes, to sit with this breaking heart. . .
"Yesterday, after the prolonged delay, I finally did talk to my mother, and I asked her to please take extra care when leaving the house. I was trying not to cry, and of course I failed, and of course my mother immediately tried to reassure me.
"She listed all the reasons she felt okay going to the store—she had this list ready, she’d been thinking it through—and then she started trying to convince me, the one in less danger, not to leave my apartment. If I did leave, she proposed I talk more loudly than usual in English, the hope being that racist white people would know I belonged.
"In other words, she’d worried about me, and I’d worried about her, and neither of us had said a word to each other about our long-standing worry because we didn’t want to cause each other any additional pain. It hurts. It all hurts.
"Still and always, hypersexualized, ignored, gaslit, marginalized, and disrespected as we’ve been, I am so fortified, so alive, when I’m with us. And I am thankful to the many other people, especially our Black and brown siblings who live with systemic injustice, unending police violence, and profound marginalization, who know to extend us their love, along with at least some white people."
-- R.O. Kwon
"A Letter to My Fellow Asian Women Whose Hearts Are Still Breaking,"
by R.O. Kwon, published in Vanity Fair, March 19, 2021.
R.O. Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, is being translated into seven languages and was named a best book of the year by over forty publications. The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and was a finalist or nominated for six other prizes. Kwon and Garth Greenwell coedited the bestselling Kink, which is a New York Times Notable Book and the recipient of the inaugural Joy Award.