2 notes

But at the same time, it was awful to worship at the altar of self-loathing, of wishing I was a different ethnicity, of wishing I had a different face, a different family, a different life. The white girls in my seventh grade class had an immense power over me that they never asked for and were most likely never even aware of, but it was given to them because that’s how privilege works—you don’t have to ask for it; you already have it.

6 notes

So many do not want to deal with our righteous anger. Many find it terrifying because it charges Whiteness with crimes against humanity. Walking through your day, living your life, paying your bills, you don’t want to believe that this is something that you are complicit in. Whiteness does not want to believe that it benefits from the pain and suffering on such a mass scale, but it is true. And as hard as it may be for you to hear it, it is even harder to live it.

4 notes

I didn’t know how to read Chinese characters, so I made it up as I went along. “That one says dickbag, and the one your arm says I farted,” I told them. I licked sugar from my spiky hair, told a girl that if she made fun of my last name one more time that I was going to “slam your head into this wall, and I’m not bluffing, BITCH.” I had no idea where it was all coming from. All I knew was that I had suddenly swung from one extreme to the other—from obsessively trying to cover up my “otherness” to obsessively flaunting it every chance I had.