Friday Joy: I Don't Have to Own This Tragedy
On the essays I didn't write this week.
"What's your Friday Joy going to be about?" my husband asked earlier this week.
"Monterey Park," I said.
"That's not very joyful."
"I know," I said.
I grew up about 10 minutes from Monterey Park, in another town in the San Gabriel Valley. I was going to write about the joy of growing up around so many Asians. So many Asians that I—a half-Asian person—was barely even considered Asian. A place where a roomful of first-generation Asian immigrants from a variety of countries could find community and joy in ballroom dancing together every Saturday. I think it would have been a good essay.
But in the middle of writing it, I read Jay Caspian Kang's essay in
, about who owns a tragedy, and I suddenly understood the uneasiness I have been feeling all week. I've been squirming around in this space where I felt somehow expected to have an unusually meaningful reaction to a tragedy because it involved Asian people, and also felt uncomfortable with my own reaction when I found out the shooter was another Asian person. It was a sort of relief. That it wasn't a white supremacist, that this wasn't one more reason to be afraid to leave the house with an Asian face.
Kang writes:
I do think there must be some separation between the very real and human anxiety one feels when they hear about their own being shot and killed — one I felt as well on Sunday morning — and the quick rush to lacquer everything in culture and race. We should, I believe, suppress the impulse that says that because this happened to people who are my people, the tragedy is mine to bear and explain in whatever way I see fit.
I don't need to own this, or explain context, or feel it any more deeply than any other human. In the US, we all know the pain and fear of living in a culture that believes the right to bear arms is more important than the lives of people.
So the joy is here: in identifying that feeling, and then letting go and sitting down. Being okay with staying quiet here with my jumbled thoughts in a bag, not on display.
Before I felt like the shootings would make it seem glib, I was going to write about how the new plant corner by my desk is bringing me joy. It was going to be about how watching life do its thing is so soothing, and is probably why everyone got into plants and puppies and sourdough starter during Covid lockdown. I think it would have been a good essay, though it still doesn't quite feel like the right time for it.
Maybe next week.
What I'm Into This Week
Listening To
In the Scenes: Behind Plain Sight podcast. Oh, this podcast is bringing me so much delight. It's a spoof of all those podcasts featuring hosts who worked on long-ago TV shows, and are now rewatching the show while giving listeners the behind-the-scenes scoop. The (fake) show in question is Behind Plain Sight, about an adult paperboy who accidentally witnesses a mob hit and has to hide out undercover in a nudist colony. The podcast "commercials" are also gold—i.e., a new (fake) podcast called Magic Mountain in which people verbally describe magic tricks they have seen. If you love movies like Waiting for Guffman, you'll be giggling along too.
Thinking About
How Restaurant Workers Help Pay for Lobbying to Keep Their Wages Low. The National Restaurant Association—which has lobbied for decades against increases to federal and state minimum wages, as well as the subminimum wage for tipped workers—also runs the ServSafe program, which offers food handling training that restaurant employees are required to take in certain states. Some of those employees have to pay for the training themselves, so in a roundabout way, they are paying to lobby for their own continued underpayment, and the whole system is apparently legal. It's not a direct analogy, but I was reminded of how dietetic students and interns are often required to join the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which uses that money to support entities that those students and interns may deeply oppose. The article also points out that restaurants can work with other food safety training providers, a small way to fight a troubling system if you are in a position to do so.
Just a couple recommendations this week, so we can talk about…
Book Club Updates
Okay, here is how it is going to work:
We will read a book.
I will host a live, virtual discussion of the book over Zoom, with a very limited number of spots. This will be a chance to connect, chat, and hear each other's thoughts. I'll be taking notes on themes of the discussion.
I'll write up our discussion as a newsletter essay, and everyone else will have the chance to chime in with their thoughts on the book in the comments.
This is a big experiment, so thank you for trying it out with me! I welcome feedback or ideas now and at any point in the process.
Now we have to pick a book! A couple weeks ago I asked what type of book you would want to read, and it was a tie between a memoir or a novel with themes of food and race. I picked one of each to choose from that I’m personally excited about reading, and I hope you'll agree.
The Books
Here are the books with the publisher's descriptions and a couple quotes from reviews: