2018 #MinneAsianStories: Hello, Neighbor

Child of Refugee Desires

By Magnolia Yang Sao Yia, Saint Paul

I am a child of refugees.
I am a child of refugees.

I am a child in constant refuge. I am always running away. Running away from refuge. Running to refuge. Undocumented criminalized, valorized like I need your validity, applauded for getting through the hard times “OMG that must have been so difficult.” Don’t pity me, just listen to me. Tokenized for being colonized with all my fancy Meeka words untranslatable to my community or even to my own father and tais tais not able to say “hi how are you” in Hmong and “I miss you so”, so here I am, trying to find myself but running away because that is what I do best, that is what we do best. Refuge.

Become the refugee from war, the war inside my home, the war inside my heart and mind, the war that has never left and is always present, in-tension, the war in which whiteness sustains in my everyday life and am reminded that I am a person of color maybe not because of my color but because of my chinky eyes. “Do you even see from them,” “Look at these pretty blue eye contacts, don’t they make me look beautiful,” and “How is it that you have no eyelids” they say, as if I am alien, foreign, always a foreigner in this land, I am reminded, not because of my color but look at my eyes as if I’m unable to look back because I have a different set of eyes. These eyes can see right through you, I promise, in the same way you have penetrated my soul, these eyes also penetrate your truth. I see your truth, for you see, your truth is always dependent upon my truths, because you steal from me, you erase me, you steal from and erase my ancestors. My ancestors speaking through my body, the vibration is felt through the Earth and resonates in my heart. They know what you did. They know what you do. They haunt me and remind me every day the things you do in how you creep up wanting to save me, to save us, to take from us. Lies entrenched in your own desires to desire more than you can ever desire in a place where desire is limitless for you, and not a reality for me. What is to desire? Why can’t you share – ever?

Home. I desire home.

Where is home? What is home?

It seems we will never arrive home.

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