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.
Two days after the shooting, my partner and I attended a vigil in Chicago's Albany Park. It felt like a funeral. The haunting beat of the drums, candles that flickered across the photos of the deceased. Afterward, we decided to get dinner at Cho Sun Ok, a nearby Korean restaurant. As we walked up to the entrance, a former colleague of mine was on her way out. We exchanged pleasantries, and she asked what we were up to. I told her that we had just come from the vigil. I still remember the confused look in her eyes, her furrowed brow as she filed through recent news in her mind. We used to be close.
There was a lot of love among us Asian American women. We checked in with each other. There wasn’t much to say. We all knew. We’ve had sexualized racism sown into our lives from the very beginning. From the old white man who told 12-year-old me that he would “climb me like a tree,” to my high school friends’ obsession with my hairless forearms, to checking whether the white guy I was seeing had yellow fever and dated a string of Asian women before me. “Memoirs of a Geisha,” one of the only mainstream movies with an Asian female lead, told the story of a poor Japanese woman who entertained men with her sexuality and sold her virginity to the highest bidder before a patron raped her.
These were the seeds of what happened in Atlanta. And suddenly, I saw what was sown in my life for what they could become. I did not feel safe.
What hurt the most was how some people responded. Some were silent until my partner reached out and told them they really should consider texting me. Some responded by sending “thoughts and prayers.” I know they meant well, but I felt frustrated. What happened to these women, to me, is violent. And these texts are too nice. These people seemed like they were scared and wanting to keep emotional distance without admitting it. I was scared, and I did not have the option to keep an emotional distance. I wanted to scream: What do you think about this? Do you wonder if I’ve ever experienced something like this? What if “letting you know if I need anything” feels like I need to give you a step-by-step advocacy plan, and hell, I’m still in shock?
These relationships were not as strong as I thought. They could support me if I had to replan my wedding during the pandemic, but not if I felt scared that someone might hurt me. I did not realize I would feel so disappointed. That was a surprise. I learned to accept their limitations. I looked for support elsewhere.
One year later and I refuse to see us as two-dimensional, as society would have it. I will not expect us to move through our lives as if we are without history.
Until you are ready to make space in your imaginations for the magnificence of Asian American women in our fullness, we will be here, getting it done, finding a way, spinning an abundance of love.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Tiffany Fang is a second-generation Chinese American who researches the impact of racism and how to cope with it. Fang is a psychotherapist and current doctoral student in counseling psychology at Loyola University Chicago.
