Vol 01: Leaves the Ninety-Nine
Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
01 | Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Then Jesus told them the parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” LUKE 15:1-7
02 | Acutely symptomatic of the upwardly mobile, privileged immigrant experience is a death grip on respectability politics. The political physics of Taiwanese LINE group chats is as follows: for every action, there is an illogical, viscerally wounded reaction. For every evident injustice, there is *that* auntie who insists, if there were no protests, there would be no riots.
In Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King writes:
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
I have a saved Instagram folder titled “2020 Biggest Oofs,” a sort of catty archive for humanity starved of self-awareness and, apparently, critical thought. Among them, a derisive congregant threatens to leave her church because her pastor has posted a black square for #blackouttuesday. “Don’t you know,” she snips, “‘darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only love can do that.’” I wonder what kind of cognitive dissonance allows her to look at the world so blankly and literally. Dr. King, to whom her quote is attributed, has also said that deep disappointment exists only in the space carved by deep love. I personally feel that my disdain for people outsizes my ‘like’ of them - but I guess the paradigm only works in radical truths, in extremes:
So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
And then we have the Christian Nationalists — the most sinister, baffling ‘oof’ of them all. In The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religions Nationalism, Katherine Stewart investigates the far-right political activists masquerading as Christlike generals in their own marketed culture war. America’s obsession with its own false mythology is absurd, pointing to a power scramble rather than true conviction. These are not, Stewart argues, conservative politics. Conservative ideology would cherish electoral integrity, the preservation of institutions, and values of tolerance and mutual respect. And yet the strategies of Christian Nationalists are terrifying and cruel, combining political manipulation with inflammatory rhetoric “that homosexuals, blasphemers, adulterers, incorrigible teenagers, and practitioners of ‘witchcraft’ are all worthy of the death penalty.”
03 | But thank God for poets. In Letter of Apology from a Ruth Lilly Fellow, poet Phillip B. Williams wrote (in response to a circulating petition calling for the restructuring of the Poetry Foundation):
But the problem lies in the desire to replicate or at least the unwillingness to stop said replication of divisive and intrinsically anti-Black-queer-POC practice of pretending entitlement is reparations and that our hoarding power and resources is the same as power being given to all.
For the last year, I’ve been acutely conscious of how easily you can slip from being the underrepresented minority to convincing yourself that there is only room for one of your kind, that the fight is against your own over the token seat and not against the tokenization itself. I hope we can all work towards Williams’ sense of integrity, whenever it is called upon:
The abuses were obvious. And we allowed it because we mistook friendship as always innocent and always righteous. That is not friendship. That is a conspiracy. And when we were called out on it, we gaslit the public and took yet another gig, another publishing deal, another check, another leadership position with Poetry--not even questioning why the same people followed us to the top of PoFo's seductive tokenism.
We must recognize that being allowed to serve our communities is a gift we don’t all get.
I was complicit. And, yes, maybe you were as well. It’s the old saying: “People criticize the fortune of others until they receive the same fortune.” Many of you crowned and crucified us, giving even more strength to this institution. And guess what? Loves, you did okay. I understand. The systems get inside of us all and we mimic them to our detriment. How do you refashion the bones of a thing that suddenly has our face?
And, as I do at literally every possible opportunity, sharing this Mary Oliver poem that doubles as my personal code of conduct:
Be ignited, or be gone gives me goosebumps.
04 | Inviting people to ~intimate~ book clubs is my most-used, least-effective pickup line (I sometimes get the men and literally never get the book club), and honestly that might just be a form of grace since I’m realizing that I truly just… do not enjoy discussing books at length. Chapter by chapter. Excruciating “just to echo what you said” discussions. I wonder if I enjoy the social signals of book recommendations (“ah yes, I too have read the entire Proust canon”) more than the actual work of fellowship in literature.
I may also just be anti-social.
Sharing a more comprehensive post on my favorite books of 2020 to date on The Official CL.
05 | One of my favorite refrains in the last week has been to “normalize changing your opinion when presented with new information,” and it’s something I’ve tried to visibly practice. For me, the instinct to deflect shame or accountability is rooted in ego, and quite frankly - 2020 has too much going on to indulge that kind of nonsense.
Every day, my ask is this: that I be used to do good, to do right by others, to break for what is broken, to sustain the energy for radical reconciliation, to decenter my pride in the pursuit of all of these.
To that note, a non-profit I lead has spent the last few weeks in overdue reckoning of Taiwanese Americans’ specific role in allyship with the Black community. Here is a master list of community-based (multilingual, culturally contextual, volunteer-generated) resources, here is an op-ed I co-wrote, here is a Hokkien Taiwanese podcast episode on Black Lives matter, and finally, a piece from Lausan HK:
In regards to their relationships with the U.S., Hongkongers can not only engage in elite diplomacy, but can also be more active in various American civil society organizations and networks, and build trust and solidarity, just as Hongkongers and Taiwanese people have sought to establish friendships over many years. In pursuit of greater transnational solidarity, it will be up to Hongkongers to see whether we can situate ourselves in different parts of the community, understand their complex conflicts and their different experiences. We do not have to stick to one side, or one party; at the same time, we should not be simply be driven by transactional utility, seeking only self-preservation and the protection of elite diplomatic relations, thereby giving up on others who are similarly in pursuit of freedom and equality, seeking a defense of their fundamental rights.
Another resource I’ve really enjoyed has been the Time to Say Goodbye podcast and newsletter - in particular, the following episodes/articles:
Tou Thao and the Myths of Asian American Solidarity
A cop is still a cop; 'PoC' respectability politics, and how China sees the American Uprising
Rejecting Upwardly Mobile Asian-American Politics, Taiwan and the WHO, and guest Wilfred Chan
06 | In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, things the Samaritan did not do:
Wonder if the man had a criminal record, or whether he deserved to be stripped down, beaten, and left behind
Calculate the opportunity cost of deviating from his set route
Void himself of all accountability because he did not see the people who had hurt the man, nor was he the one to hurt him in the first place
Seize upon the opportunity to speak of his own peoples’ oppression - though it absolutely did exist
Wonder if the broken body was a product of a political agenda, and not simply a man injured and in need of mercy
Create art to prove his witness rather than reach out to bind the man’s wounds
This has been a tough week in every way. But still, I’ve received grace upon grace.
To end, a lovely Tweet to dissect with my therapist next week:
I don’t want to be called strong. I want to be cared for.
LWC