George

My mom’s love is in the shape of the dumplings
She makes on Chinese New Year.
They taste like home to us both.

Eyes
Are the windows to the soul,
And my soul’s MADE IN CHINA sticker
Only reads MADE IN.
Why I have roots in many nations,
So these things just get lost in translation.
Growing up in Scarborough,
My Chinese friends kept their stickers close,
Putting them on their chests
And always on their math tests,
Making me feel not like a brother
But like a guest.

But we’re all guests in the west.
Come here by boat or plane,
It’s all the same
Be it 150 years ago or yesterday.
We play the same games for the same prizes.
Wake up at the crack of dawn to tug on the great chain for fortune and fame.
And when your back is broken, and still no one can pronounce your name,
You’ll be glad
Because you got to give your kids something you never had.

At 26, my mom saw the next 60 years of her life in China laid out
Like another stick of bamboo.
So in 2002,
She packed her bags, kissed her family goodbye, and got on the plane.
She became Canadian alone,
Starting without a computer or phone.
Going to the library every single day to apply for jobs.
Tirelessly searching, scrounging and slicing for her place in this new world.
But with bright eyes and an open mind,
She survived, getting to live the dream with her eyes
Open
And proudly Asian.

I carry that torch forward in my blood, but you wouldn’t know that.
To the world, I’m a racial Rorschach test.
I can’t get too mad I’m a racial nomad, I confess.
Those who hate Asians pass me by without as much as a whisper.
My mom is glad
Because I got something she never had.
I look most like my mom when I’m crying
Because my eyes get smaller like
A real Chinese person.
My mom insists that I am too a child of the rising sun,
But she only really believes it
When we’re both squinting.

It’s not my fault for being Canadian,
Raised on a fast-food diet of diet culture-flavoured snacks.
I have the burden of choosing what parts of my mom’s legacy,
If any, I carry forward
Because I’ll need to translate it first.
I want my kids to know their grandma’s story up to the part where
I have to explain why she doesn’t look like them.
Then, I’ll explain why the MADE IN CHINA stickers on their souls are missing.

But the part of mom’s legacy I will never need to translate
Is her love.
My kids will know exactly where that came from.
My mom’s love is in the shape of the dumplings
She makes on Chinese New Year.
They taste like home to us both.