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[tip of the hat to K & B!]

Observations on race and gender from Chemoland

[Be aware: what follows is somewhat of a rant, but it's also part of my observations on going through the hospital system as fully aware that I occupy a raced and gendered body]

If you are a new time reader to this blog, I have a semi-apology to make. Usually I try to write 2-3 times a week (or at least once a week), sometimes with fillers like YouTube videos or links to other sites, but oftentimes I try to write about my observations on race--all things racial--all things dealing with the intersections of racial identity (like sexuality, gender, class, region, religion, you name it)--or just my own esoteric observations of the day based on what's going on in the news or in politics and popular culture.

However, in mid-April of this year, the week after I came back from this fantastic conference, the annual meeting of the Association of Asian American Studies (of which I am a proud member in good standing since 2000--I think I only let my membership lapse once and when Bush sent around those refund checks in the mail his last year in office I used mine for a lifetime membership with AAAS--so now I never have to pay the membership fee when I go to the conference--WOO HOO! And I used the money where I thought it would be best used--to help an organization whose mission is to educate ourselves and others about issues surrounding Asian American populations and to be a mouthpiece for anti-racism wherever we see it (most recently the organization put out a statement condemning the racism of the Arizona state legislature for their many egregious laws and resolutions).

Anyway, back to my main story. So I come back all invigorated from this conference and I have to suffer one of the most maddening and anxiety producing doctor's appointments ever. And this really minor thing happened with the mamography technician. I mean, it was a very small comment that she made--and I know, I KNOW she didn't mean anything by it. But I'm setting up this context so that you understand that I JUST got off the plane Sunday night from this amazing 4 day conference where I was immersed with scholar-activists around the nation and the globe, going to panels and hearing some amazing papers and taking part in wonderful conversations and just hanging out with the friends I only get to see once a year at this conference. And reveling in being with people who shared the same shorthand and understanding of what it means to be Asian American.

So when I had my 8am mammogram appointment (the second one in 2 weeks -- long story) I was grumpy and grouchy for several reasons (among said reasons: fearing a breast cancer diagnosis). And my nurse was one of those folks who if you turned to the word "chipper" in the dictionary, there would surely be a picture of her. She was a middle-aged, petite, white Southern lady and as perky as you could be for 8am. She was also one of these white Southern women who has decided that as short or as surly as you are, she will just get chipper and perkier by the second. Which perhaps works on 99% of the people she sees.

But not me.

Of course things got off to a bad start the minute she asked me my name--as in, "Excuse me, how do you pronounce your last name?" Now, I want to be pseudonymous on this blog, but I'm going to have you imagine all of the last names that someone who is Chinese American could possibly have--and mine was not spelled in any unusual way--it was spelled and sounds phonetically as you would imagine. It's homonym, in fact, is a very common word in the English language. So I said to her in the most deadpan way possible, "How do you think it should be pronounced?" And this woman drew out my last name (which only has one syllable) in the most tentative way possible, nearly whispering it to me (what did she think I would do if she mispronounced it--if in some oddly peverse way she had managed to completely mangle it--that I would scream at her "NO! THAT'S NOT HOW MY NAME IS PRONOUNCED???!!!" But I realized quickly that I was making her nervous. Because I am not your typical Southern woman. Anyway, I nodded my head and she breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Oh good, I just wanted to make sure because it's different."

Different from what???!!!

Because I'm Asian???!!!

WTF???!!!

So now I'm seeing red. I mean, there's a whole backstory about how the hospital didn't get all the mammogram films from the other clinic I went to 2 weeks ago (and where I spent 2 hours between the mammogram technician and the ultrasound technician having my breasts poked and prodded and squeezed every which way), and there was the maddening bureaucracy of the hospital machine (which I had wanted to avoid when I first found the lump and went to my primary care physician--I had hoped it was just some kind of benign cyst but NOPE, didn't get lucky on that score). Anyway, there was an issue about whether or not I'd be able to get the biopsy that the doctor at the clinic assured me I needed--as soon as possible.

But back to the tech. So now I'm only answering her questions in monosyllables. Because I'm feeling a bit racially targeted here. And let me clarify. I'm not saying that she behaved in a racist manner. In fact, I think she did what she thought she was supposed to do. Encounter a woman whose last name seemed "foreign" and ask for the correct pronunciation. It's just that--I just got off a plane the night before where I was at a conference where I didn't feel foreign--where I was surrounded by hundreds of other Asian Americans and where our names, funny as they may seem or sound to others, were completely within the norm in our little world.

So being asked the correct pronunciation of my two letter one syllable name just made me feel that in a state of vulnerability, with my lab coat being tied in the front not the back and the stress of having to re-do mammogram films and potentially not getting a biopsy for the lump in my left breast, well to have Nurse Chipper ask me the correct pronuncation for my name because it was "different" just made me feel she was holding up a mirror to me and saying, "See, you don't look like the women I'm used to dealing with and I'm just trying to be extra sensitive to you."

In short, it backfired.

And my clear seething (I was trying not to yell at her) clearly made her even more nervous, to the point where she went into high gear perky-rambling mode. And here's where she made tactical error #2. So, there is some low level radiation when you do a mammogram, so they always ask you if you are pregnant. Now, unbeknowst to this poor tech (and unbeknownst to all you dear readers) what Southern Man and I had been keeping semi-private is that we had been trying to get pregnant. Not for too long, just a few months, but still, it was something we were hoping for. So the tech says, "Are you pregnant?" and I know the answer to this because I just got my period so I say, "No, I'm not" And she repeats, "Are you sure?" And I say, "Yes, I'm sure."

And you would think that would be the end of discussion.

But NOOOOOOO!!!! This the Perky Tech decides this is where she can make nice with me and make me feel at ease because she says, "Oh, at least that's one piece of good news that you won't have to worry about today!"

Here is where I would have slapped her if she had been any closer to me. It took all my power and strength not to scream at her "LOOK LADY! MY PARTNER AND I HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY TRYING TO GET PREGNANT FOR A FEW MONTHS SO IT IS NOT GOOD NEWS THAT I'M NOT PREGNANT RIGHT NOW AND IT DOESN'T NOT MAKE ME LESS WORRIED IN THE EVENT I HAVE A CANCER DIAGNOSIS--CAN YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

I think she sensed that her last comment was not making me feel like she was my best buddy, so the poor woman went into this hyperdrive of constant chatter. And I mean CONSTANT chatter--about whatever it was that could come into her mind. It was like she lacked any kind of filter--whatever thought floated into her head, she said aloud to me, whether she thought it was appropriate or not.

So she starts up with a stream of noise that at first is just about the weather and the traffic and the pollen but then as she is positioning me in the mammogram machine and taking the images she starts to comment on what she sees--meaning my breast tissue--which is dense. I have dense, lumpy breasts. I've known this about my poor breasts since I was in grad school and for that reason have always been extra diligent about self-exams. So this woman tells me what I already know, that I have dense lumpy breasts. But then she goes on to say that there's nothing WRONG with having dense, lumpy breasts. Lots of women have dense, lumpy breasts and they're fine--there's not a good or a bad breast, one is not better than the other, and she's sure that mine are fine just the way they are.

Again, WTF???!!! REALLY??? You are going to prattle on about the state of my breasts and that I shouldn't feel bad that they are dense and lumpy and that they're fine just the way they are???!!!

When it was done I marched out of the mammogram office and back into the changing room, where I was supposed to wait for the doctor to tell me my results. But I was fuming, and I realized that I realized that I had left my bag of personal belongings back in the mammogram room, so I let out a loud and angry "FUCK!" as I stormed out of the waiting room to go retrieve my bag. Of course, behind me were a group of women, all in various states of undress either waiting to get their boobs smooshed or waiting to have a doctor tell them the results of the mammogram films. And I did feel a bit guilty--I was breaking all rules of Southern womanhood and decorum. The loud swearing, the stomping, the angry seething I was doing in the corner of the room.

I finally get called after about 5 minutes (probably much to these ladies relief) and was brought into a small conference room where I met with the radiologist, who happened to be a fellow working with the main radiologist (after all, I'm at a teaching hospital, so I knew that this was part of the deal). I mention this guy being a fellow not because he's not competent, per se, but because I think his bedside manner leaved a lot to be desired, perhaps because he's still in training. So the first thing he says to me, as I'm sitting across from him, angry as all get out, still in my gown that is tied in the front, so that I'm having to make sure that my right breast isn't popping out since the gown is an extra-large (all the gowns are extra large) and I'm NOT. Anyway, he's not gowned, he's fully dressed, not even in a labcoat, and he starts to go over my results, beginning with the fact that they think I may have cancer in my right breast.

Now, you have to understand, what brought me to this point was finding a lump in my left breast, one I felt myself and then was confirmed needed more imaging by my primary care physician. But nothing was said about my right breast. Yet apparently there were some abnormal calcifications that they saw on the mammogram films that they were concerned could be early stage cancer, oh and by the way, he thought I needed a biopsy so they'd have to schedule one for later.

This is when I lost it. Because it is SO DISEMPOWERING to be sitting across a conference table when I am clutching at my gown and this guy is fully dressed and he's telling me that not only should I be worried by my left breast but there's potentially cancer in my right, oh and by the way, the biopsy I'd hoped to get done that morning would need to be rescheduled for later.

So unfortunately for this poor guy, he was not dealing with a nice Southern woman who understood all the norms and manners of the region. He was dealing with a very ANGRY ASIAN WOMAN who started to rant and rave and gesticulate with my hands (because I am one of those people who talk with her hands) and I began by talking about the really humiliating and upsetting interactions with the mammogram technician and that I had WANTED to have a biopsy scheduled for today and how could they lose the mammogram films from my other clinic and what does he mean to tell me I could have breast cancer in my right breast when we had only been focused on my left breast before. And in the middle of my rant I look down and notice that my right breast is flapping in and out of the gown as I keep waving my arms up and down in front of this poor guy--who is around 6 foot tall, white, with glasses, and clearly FREAKED OUT that this woman is yelling at him in this manner.

So I grab my gown, calmly look at him, apologize for taking out all my anger and anxiety on him, but then I ask him this question: Do you ever do a breast exam in this room. He says no. I then ask him if he ever finds a reason to ask a woman to disrobe in this room for any reason. He says no. And then ever so quietly I lean in and ask him, why on EARTH, if there is no need for me to be gowned in such a manner, is he sitting across from me fully dressed telling me the news about my potential cancer and treatment options while I have to sit across from him clutching my open gown--wouldn't this suggest an automatic power differential that leaves female patients completely DISEMPOWERED???

To which he says, "I dunno" -- clearly miserable and unhappy that he had the misfortune to meet me and have to talk to me about my potential cancer.

Anyway, that's the story I'm leaving you with today. Because I haven't been blogging much about issues of race, but I have been thinking A LOT about race and gender and sexuality as I've been going through the hospital administration, from the time of my initial biopsy and then subsequent cancer diagnosis to my current chemo treatments (which I have to say, the first 5 days kick my ass and I am feeling HORRIBLE right now--nauseous, dizzy, fatigued, and generally feeling like crap, and yes they have me on a ton of meds to try to relieve my symptoms AND I'm taking acupuncture AND I'm wearing sea bands on my wrists AND I'm drinking and eating all things ginger AND I'm trying other things that, lets just say, are supposed to simultaneously help control nausea, increase appetite, and let me relax (yes, I'm literally trying EVERYTHING).

Listen, I really will try to blog about things other than my cancer and chemo. But I confess, I am pretty self-absorbed with my health, esp. the 5 days following my chemo treatment when I just feel like absolute CRAP. Plus, every time I go to the hospital, I am struck by things anew related to intersections with this blog. So I'll be trying to include those vignettes from time to time, as well as to ponder the ways in which cancer, like everything else in our world, has intersections with issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, region, but especially CLASS--in terms of education, culture, and especially socio-economic position.

Hope everyone is well--and healthy--and if you're not either of things right now, then I hope you will be well and healthy soon! That's my own hope for myself.

Please watch & circulate

I've written about the importance of registering for the National Bone Marrow Registry before--especially the importance for people of color to register -- because minority registration is VERY LOW, especially in the Asian American community (only 7% of Asian Americans are registered).

I'd like to put a more personal face on this appeal--very specifically, the face of my aunt, Teri Li. Our family has created a video meant to be a direct appeal to the Asian American community. Please watch this and please circulate it among any Asian American groups/list servs/blogs that you know. It really could help save my aunt's life.

Because I've been a bad blogger and I love Star Wars

Here's something I found from a friend's page--so tip of the hat to "M"--in light of World Cup Soccer/Football beginning today, I figured this was very apropos--and it is in keeping with the theme of a mixed-race America--or galaxy:



[By the way, I do plan to blog again--never fear! I had my first round of chemo yesterday and had some interesting/problematic interactions with very kind receptionists and nurses--definitely became an internal "is this a teachable" moment kind of thing--and honestly, while I can do righteous, you don't feel very righteous when someone is sticking a needle in your veins--but more on that later]

I'm not going to the chapel but I am...

...going to get married tomorrow at 4pm at an undisclosed outdoor location with just immediate family (my parents and Southern Man's parents and siblings) in attendance.



[this is the graphical representation of how I feel]

While I know this is rather personal to be sharing (although as regular readers will note, I've been sharing more personal news on this blog since major life events seem to keep popping up and hitting me in the face), this particular bit of personal information is actually quite apropos of this blog because I am an Asian American woman marrying a white American man.

Even more specifically, I am a divorced, born in NYC but raised in the Bay Area of CA, Chinese ancestry, Jamaican culturally identified, transplanted to the southern U.S. feminist scholar-activist marrying a born and raised in the U.S. South Italian American/Scotch-Irish American no-longer-practicing/former-alterboy-Catholic, fluent-in-Spanish white ally.

Our household and now our combined extended families are truly a mixture of various races, ethnicities, cultural and religious influences, and sexual and gender identities.

So I'll be busy picking up folks from the airport, finalizing details on all the festivities this weekend, and just plain enjoying myself because I'm with those nearest and dearest to me celebrating the union of myself and Southern Man, who is an exceptionally amazing person.

When the dust settles I'll try to come back with something interesting and insightful. Unfortunately it will coincide with the beginning of a new chapter of my life: chemotherapy (yep, that begins the week following the wedding--sigh).

But that's to worry about next week--for now, I'm just enjoying myself!

Why we need a passport to enter Arizona

So you know I've been self absorbed with health issues because I haven't blogged about Arizona yet. To be honest, because my diagnosis of breast cancer came right before the madness of Arizona's double-doozy laws: the anti-immigrant, "lets-make-everyone-carry-papers" law and the anti-ethnic studies "lets-make-everyone-say-nice-things-about-white-people" law.

But I just read this article in The New York Times and then followed the link to the Talking Points Memo (both are specifically about the anti-ethnic studies law and especially about the bill's sponsor, Tom Horne, and I just have to say

HOLY FUCK!

Let me repeat this:

HOLY FUCK!

[Aside: Yes, I swear now (actually, I always swear, I just tried not to do it in this space). I'm sorry--it's one of the things about me post-breast-cancer-diagnosis that I seem not to be able to help or rather choose not to self-censor. I do apologize to anyone who may be offended by my strong language, but I'm at a place where I feel certain events call for strong language, and my cancer and what's going on in Arizona seem to warrant these kind of expletives right now]

I don't even know WHERE TO BEGIN.

I guess with what is so messed up with the bill, which:

"Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

•Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

•Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

•Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

•Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

WHAT THE FUCK???!!!

OK. So I guess they aren't going to teach the history of the Civil War since the confederates were exactly looking for the overthrow of the U.S. government. And I suppose this also means that we can't teach history that comes from Texas textbooks since all of it is geared for white Americans of a conservative nature (point #3). As for promoting resentment toward a race or class of people, well, I guess they are going to be teaching a lot of social justice classes to help against promoting resentment toward a race or class of people because the current way of teaching history or social issues seems to only promote a sense of resentment against people of color and poor people--and shall we now say that the curriculum is going to be queer friendly since most public school curriculums have not been so queer friendly--and yet clearly Arizona wants people not to promote resentment of different classes of people, right?

As for treating people as individuals rather than as ethnic blocs, again, I suppose they are going to be heavily emphasizing white privilege and white supremacy as a way to understand how people of color have not been seen, traditionally, as INDIVIDUALS and only been counted as a MASS of people in which white Americans were not and continue not to be seen as a raced and classed and ethnicized group of people.

Of course, all of the above is the OPPOSITE of what Mr. Horne had in mind. He apparently has a big axe to grind, specifically, with Mexican Americans. And I gotta say, Mr. Horne clearly needs to have a sense of REAL history to understand that to discount Mexican American history or to divorce it from Arizona history or U.S. history is like saying we should discount the revolutionary war or the Louisiana Purchase or Civil War history (the war of northern aggression as some would say south of the Mason-Dixon line). Because parts of Arizona used to BE Mexico--so what the hell is Horne afraid of? That people will learn THE TRUTH???!!!

Sometimes there are grey areas--times when we aren't sure if we should use the dreaded "R" word. And sometimes it's clear:

Tom Horne is a racist. This bill is racist. All of this is evidence of institutionalized state racism.

Any questions?

P.S. The title of the post is meant to convey that I think that what is going on in Arizona is so fucked up right now that it seems to be it's own country and that maybe EVERYONE who lives in Arizona should be the ones who should carry papers because they are the ones who need a passport to enter the rest of the 49 states of the union. And yes, I know how simplistic that is to say--and I suppose I'm not counting the people in Arizona who are unhappy with both bills, but it just seems SO FUCKED UP that I wanted to convey that Arizona seems to be its own freakish little white-supremacist state right now.

MRA Book Review: Ann Patchett's Run

One of the pleasures of taking a time off from life (and I definitely feel like I am taking a time-out. I know for some people, a vacation means sight seeing and becoming edified and going places and doing things. My ideal vacation has always been about being still--about the ability to do nothing and to have no obligations other than to myself and the call of the ocean and sand, since my ideal vacations always take place near the sea), is that I get to do a lot of pleasure reading. Or even if it's reading that may intersect with my research interests, it's still a pleasure to read contemporary American fiction.

Which brings me to today's book review: Run by Ann Patchett.



I must confess that this is the first Patchett novel I have read. She's most acclaimed for her fourth novel (the one that immediately precedes this one, Bel Canto). And certainly it is on my "to read" list--it has been for a while, but especially now that I've finished Run (which I read in a 24 hour time span--I could not put it down and Patchett's lyricism make the book a delight to read), I will be sure to check out Bel Canto.

But besides being an enjoyable piece of contemporary fiction, this novel is appropriate for Mixed Race America because at its heart is a family, the Doyle's who are comprised of the senior Doyle, former mayor of Boston, his biological son Sullivan, who shares the same read hair as his deceased mother, Bernadette, and then there are the two brothers that Doyle and Bernadette adopt, Tip and Teddy, named after those iconic Boston politicians, Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy. And, indeed, the novel (which is set in the South End neighborhood of Boston) is about politics. It is also about transracial adoption--about adoption in general--and about how we find kinship and connection with those we do not share blood with.

Although one of the New York Times book reviews quite rightly faults Patchett for not delving more deeply into the reasons behind the boys being put up for adoption, Patchett does not shy away from race in the way that another reviewer accuses her of doing. Instead, I think Patchett drops in self-conscious observations throughout that make clear that she knows what kinds of assumptions and tensions others may bring or believe in seeing an older white man who is the father of two university-aged sons (one goes to Harvard, the other to Northeastern). Yet it doesn't belabor that tension and actually shows the tension to be something outside the relationship among Doyle and his sons. This isn't to say that the boys, raised in a privileged white background, are oblivious to race and the intersections with class. In fact, at one point the elder adopted son, Tip, acknowledges very directly that part of his difference from other black Bostonians comes precisely from his privileged class and educational status. It is one thing to be a poor Black citizen in Boston; it is another to be a wealthy Black citizen connected to a former mayor of Boston.

Perhaps it is the mood I am in--that my analytical lens has been tuned down. But I really did find Patchett's novel luminous and just simply a good read. I'd love to hear someone else's take on it--perhaps my rose colored lens aren't allowing me to be more critical of this work. Or perhaps Patchett's novel really is a page turner that let me briefly transport myself back to Boston (and perhaps nostalgically I liked reading about my old stomping ground). Or perhaps it is this. That sometimes it's nice to read a novel in which race is both the central point of the novel and absolutely marginal at the same time. And that is perhaps what I find most refreshing about Run--not that Patchett isn't aware of race and racism but that it doesn't necessarily inform the entiriety of her work--that these two young men get to be both young African American men but also (and perhaps more importantly) a devout Catholic (Teddy), a budding scientist (Tip), and brothers who loved their adopted mother devoutly and who treat their father and older brother were respect and affection--whose lives are defined, but not solely, but the color of their skin and whose personalities make them into individual character rather than caricatures.

Shades of Ray

This just in from my cousin "W"-- who wants me to set it up like the old SNL skit with Mike Meyers doing "Coffee Time":

Talk Amongst Yourselves!



And here's the link from the website for the Shades of Ray film, where you can see two additional trailers:

http://www.shadesofray.com/index.html

Thanks Cousin "W"!