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Chez Andrew
Andrew Lam is a NAM editor and author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
[ filed under: california rights ] Four years ago, I wrote the essay below. Upon re-reading it, I find that it still conveys all the sentiments I feel today when the California Supreme Court struck down existing law forbidding gays to marry, essentially legalizing gay marriage. San Francisco was just ahead of its time in this regard. I wrote the essay when Gavin Newsom allowed Gay couples to get married at City Hall here in San Francisco. I thought I should re-run it here in celebration of the new dawn for gay rights. In it I said I’m proud to be a San Franciscan. But now I’m also proud to be a Californian – so read on… “Get used to it,” an eccentric aunt of mine warned us when we first came here in the mid-’70s, fresh from a war-torn Vietnam. I was 11 years old, speaking not a word of English. My aunt, a San Franciscan since the late 1960s, drove me and my family to the Castro district our second week in the city, and parked. In our car, we watched as two men kissed passionately on the sidewalk. “My god,” my mother gasped, covering her mouth. That was when my aunt said it: “Get used to it,” she whispered. “This is San Francisco.” I didn’t know what to make of that kiss. I remember staring from the backseat of the car, however, until one of the men turned to me and winked. Fast-forward three decades. As I watched two men on the steps of City Hall kissing last week, having just been declared spouses by the city authorities, I finally know how I feel: Proud. I don’t use that word lightly. I’m not always proud to be American. I, along with a hundred thousand here, protested against the war in Iraq last year. I’m not always proud to be Vietnamese either, having seen members of my own clan at each other’s throat in a bloody civil war that proved pointless afterwards. But I have to say I am proud to be San Franciscan. For to live in San Francisco these days is to live with a sense of what’s possible for the rest of America Those men in tuxedos on their way to get married, those women who hugged and wept on their way out of City Hall with flowers in their hair, having been declared legally married by the city, seemed to speak of something far larger than gay rights. In a way, San Francisco has always been a more American city than most of us who live here realize. Though small, it has always rejected simplification. Known for its flower power and hippie ‘60s, it has also become a city of non-white immigrants in my lifetime. The gay Mecca of the West has become an Asian city. Whites make up 41 percent of its citizens; Asians are not far behind at 33 percent. There is no majority left in a city whose compass is pointing increasingly toward the Pacific. On Chinese New Year the city schools shut down. The Chinese New Year parade precedes the Gay Pride Parade, which is followed by Carnival in the Mission. It’s a city where private passions have a tendency to spill out into the public domain. After all, with no real suburb to speak of, its residents live in overlapping neighborhoods. It’s a city that takes my aunt’s message to heart. Get used to it. We’ve had to, because, unlike expansive Los Angeles, San Francisco has only 47 square miles. We’re constantly in each other’s face, like it or not. Thus, we tolerate. We integrate. We learn to like our cosmopolitan lifestyle, our global sense of self. Thus, down the street from where I live, a gay couple walk hand in hand past the old Chinese lady doing her morning tai chi next to the homeless teenager reading a romance novel outside the coffee shop owned by Middle Easterners. Meanwhile, a twittering flock of Asian children wearing colorful backpacks rush up the hill on their way to school. Indeed, growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in this open, cosmopolitan city was more or less a walk in the park. I never felt like an outsider here. If anything, it was the city that gave me dreams of possibilities beyond my own conservative, Confucian-bound upbringing. It was here that I fancied for myself a vocation that shocked my parents: writer. It is here that I see myself as a central character in the latest modern American novel. San Francisco is in the limelight again, and I think for a good reason. The scene at City Hall may seem like the Boston Tea Party to outsiders. But we’re not seceding. We’re only sending back hopeful images of a tolerant America, from a nearby future. This message came into the mail this morning, an obvious spam but it got my attention: Here’s what it says: From: hard_snip@yahoo.com Attention…...... Now listen,I will arrange for us to see one on one but before that I need the amount of 30,000 pounds,I will come to your home, or you determine where you wish we meet,I repeat do not arrange for the cops, if you play hard to get,it will be extended to your family,do not set any camera to cover us or set up any tape to record our conversation,my employer is in my control now,An account will be provided for you to make a part payment of 20,000 pounds first which will serve as a garantee that you are ready to coperate,then one of my boys will deliver a video tape or i can even download it to you.It contains his request for me to terminate you(the tape recorded our conversation)which will be enough evidence for you to take any legal action against him b/4 he goes employing another person for the job. you will pay me the ballance of 10,000 pounds in cash once he delivers the tape to you or i send it to you,beware of business associates and friends,
WARNING:DO NOT CONTACT THE POLICE,MAKE SURE YOU STAY INDOORS ONCE IT IS 7:30PM UNTIL THIS WHOLE THING IS SORTED OUT,YOUR NEGLIGENCE IN ANY OF THESE WARNINGS,YOU WILL HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME. Bye. Hugo didn’t say anything about blogging it so I’m glad at least for that. I don’t have 10,000 pounds – is that like a million US dollars now? – but I do have a full bar so I’ll be waiting for him tonight with my martini shaker. btw, I checked and there’s a website that warns people of the latest spams called Switch.com and the above scam is well reported. I got that cute pix from their site. Nice reading to get early in the morning indeed. Andrew Comment [1] [ filed under: asia foreign-policy ] That was the title of Time magazine article over the weekend… as if somehow this is feasible. The junta is universally condemned by the world’s press and esp. american press, and perhaps rightly so, for their failure to help their own people and their interference with international help effort. But to invade another country? Even for humanitarian purpose, that is a serious issue, given the fact that it is obviously a permanent quagmire. America seems to think that invasion is a process that takes a few months and then it’s done. “Mission Accomplished!” But in reality, esp. in the old world, just as saving someone means taking on permanent relationship, taking over a country means a long term committment that goes beyond feeding the starving and treating the sick – but setting up infrastructure, build new political system, and pumping resources that we no longer have. McCain got it right when he said we’ll be in Iraq for 100 years. He understands how long it will take to set things right again when you break … them. It also strikes me as arrogant that the US still thinks it can lead in humanitarian aid in the world considering its own abysmal failure in saving its own people after Katrina. Folks waited in water for days – just like the Burmese in the Irriwaddi delta – for aid that didn’t come and it was foreign aids that poured in – from Latin America, from Mexico, and even Cuba offered doctors. We should have “invaded” new orleans, and we didn’t. Besides, ask the Hmong or the Vietnamese who were abandoned by the Americans after the war ended in Vietnam what it’s like to have been offered friendship and visions of democracy and then left behind to be hunted by their enemies. If we invade, will we get bored and bothered, and decide to betray in a few months and let the Junta go at it when we’re gone? That said, a coalition of Asean countries – Thailand, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and so on – should put pressures on the Junta to open up. Thailand and China esp. hold enormous influences over Burma as they are main trading partners. I think before invasion – a pipe dream – persuasion (rather than mere condemnation) is the key for realistic change in that country. Andrew Lam’s articlesPerfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora Side Bar: Media Contacts: U.S.: Jan Dragin – 24/7, +011 781 925 1526, jdragin@gis.net NEWS UPDATE Local Organizations Making the Difference, Delivering Food, Water, Shelter ‘If communities don’t get rice seeds in the ground within month, BANGKOK – Tues May 13, 2008– Ten days after cyclone Nargis devastated parts In the face of aid shipment and distribution challenges facing international Myanmar maintains open land-trade routes with Thailand and India that allow “And local organizations have the advantage of knowing how best to obtain CWS first provided humanitarian assistance in Burma in 1959 and has CWS, whose initial fundraising appeal issued the day following the disaster, Church World Service and ACT member agencies are warning against an “It’s critical that we ensure that this major disaster doesn’t turn into an Exacerbating the problem of getting rice for food and for planting quickly CWS and ACT member agencies in Bangkok said in communiqués today, “Now is Church World Service and its Asia-Pacific Region offices are particularly In the U.S. in addition to public donations and other grants received by Church World Service provides relief and recovery, sustainable development, Contributions to Church World Service’s Cyclone Nargis response may be made ### Comment [5] [ filed under: california literature ] I’ll be participating in another Literary Death Match this saturday at the Richshaw Stop. For those interested do come by…
Now we ready for the All-Star Literary Death Match (Episode 9) which will double as the release party for Opium6: Go Green! (But Save Me First). We won’t dare tell you the particulars, but expect an LDM like never before featuring past champions, the return of hilarious judges, a finale that will end in crying laughter, and (we’re not kidding when we say this) more! Hosted by LDM co-creator Todd Zuniga (after his accidental move to Brooklyn), participants include Stephen Elliott, Michelle Richmond, Kirk Read, Jon Wolanske, Kurt Bodden, Sam Hurwitt, Sean Finney, Andrew Lam, Tony Dushane and more! Where: Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St., SF All proceeds support Opium Magazine. PS> I won : > MP4 will follow soon…. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, NCM – before it became New America Media – interviewed me and my father, general Lam Q Thi, along with 2 other Vietnamese regarding Vietnam and its relationship with Vietnamese expats… Here are the 3 segments.. enjoy… Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Links to Andrew’s Youtube page: |
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