One year ago, six Asian women were killed by a white gunman in Atlanta. They were working. He could not deal with his unwanted sexual fantasies. So he killed them.
I was working late that night and saw the news when I glanced at my phone. A tingling sensation ran up and down my limbs, with all the blood rushing to my organs. This happens when we sense a threat, and our body kicks into fight or flight mode. Most people don’t know that there is actually a third response — freeze. When we freeze, our body mimics death. This is advantageous because no predator wants to eat something they didn’t kill. It might contain decay or sickness. To make sure it doesn’t kill you, you have to be the one to kill it.
For weeks I felt tingly when I went outside. I live close to Chicago's Chinatown and worried someone might shoot it up. My grandma has lived there since my family immigrated in the 1980s, and my parents attend the large Chinese church. I knew that if something happened, it would be to someone connected to me. I worried because the names of the women who were killed sounded a lot like my grandma’s name and the names of the women in my parents’ Bible study.
