(Ishle Park) What does Thanksgiving mean to Asian Americans?

What? What kind of bizarre 7^th grade social studies question is this? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m tired. Next question, please. But hey, I’ma take a page from Beautiful Beau & write about whatever I feel like.

Ever since I was in junior high school, I was one of those kids who railed on & on about the massacre of the “Indians” and was like, f*ck Pilgrims. Oh, little militant me, big mouth, but not strong enough to resist Kunemo’s homemade cranberry sauce or uma’s Stovetop stuffing when dinnertime came. After a few years, we quit the turkey cold turkey – too dry, my father complains, what is this sh*t? So it’s chicken, rice, and garlic bread for us (plus a separate slew of Korean side dishes for my dad). And food coma in front of the Discovery Channel for the entire weekend. I have to admit, it was the one time of year (besides Christmas) when my cousins, my Uncle Joe & Hyosunah emo would come over to chill, so I enjoyed that ~ a lonely tribe of displaced immigrants & their kids coming together to sigh & smack lips over uma’s saliva-inducing “American” food. Oh, she was so good to us, in her attempts to assimilate her cooking to our little colonized/Americanized taste buds growing up. Yeah. Spaghetti & meatballs with Tabasco sauce. Huge hamburger patties between 2 slices of melting white bread. (Yes Eddie, us too!) Oh, uma. You tried so hard. And I love you for it.

And I guess that’s what I’m gonna write about. Giving thanks. Maybe that’s the difference between me now and me in my tortured teens & twenties. Yeah, life is crazy and horrifying and depressing and fake and lonely sometimes (a lot of the time), but hey, we’re still HERE! We are Alive at this moment, by the grace + sweat + blood of our ancestors, our tribe, our mothers, and the small daily kindnesses of girlfriends & complete strangers ~ something as tiny as a smile on a long line at the post office ~ is a beautiful thing.

So before I get weighed down by my to-do lists, my fears, insecurities & concerns, every morning I meditate, if only for 5 minutes. It saves my life. Because it reminds me to escape my Ego self, go deeper into my True Self. And listen to the wind rustling thick & green thru the big tree in my neighbor’s yard. To my dad singing some Korean love song in his husky voice in the living room. To unni’s new baby crying downstairs.

After I empty myself, I try to fill myself with visions of some of the truly sacred & timeless places I’ve been (by the mountains or the sea), and live there for a moment, and try to concentrate on my breath & not the static in my head (shutup, goddamit!) and fill my Spirit up on it. Then I give thanks.

I go thru a roll call ~ may all Beings, spirit & human, be at peace. And I see the faces of my grandparents, family & friends I’ve lost to AIDS or suicide (but their tender, smiling faces, their faces in a moment of respite) – and I think – wow, you were so incredible and beautiful. And you didn’t even know it. This world didn’t let you know it, didn’t acknowledge your own beauty. But I love you. And I send small beams of light to them, and then think ~ may all beings, human & non-human, be at peace. Here, the natural world gets props ~ that lovely wind-filled tree, my old pit bull Moby, the geckos that Billy coaxed onto his sleeve, the small dead penguin on Waiheke Island, Tyre & Marley, the majestic black wildebeast running alone thru the game reserve in South Africa, and then I think, as closure ~ may all Beings, near & far, be at peace. I kinda imagine myself as a little girl sitting on a globe, and spreading out warm waves of love to folks around me ~ first my moms, brother & dad (who knows, we might’ve had a fight the night before but so what), then out ~ to Mabel, Pimp, Bushra, Tamika, Suheir, Richard, Ed & Jeannie, Liam, Daniel, Sally, & everyone in Aotearoa, to Dennis & his kids & my Bay Area peeps, to David & family, the funny 70s-style pimp tour guide in North Korea, to Teba, Pops Mohamed, Chiwoniso, Farai, Khosi & family & Khehle & the incredible souls in Zulu nation in South Africa, to the Nicky & Little & the old family in Bushwick, to Danyel Waro & Damien Mandrin on Reunion Island ~ whoever I can remember that morning.

And in thinking of all these amazing souls, I realize how profoundly grateful I am for their friendship, their inspiration, their generosity, and their love, for being a brief part of the long saga of their lives. And it makes me almost cry sometimes, the love I have for them. And as lonely as I might feel at times, I know, we are not alone, we are here, together, right now, and Watched over by some inherent light & goodness in the universe that is Divine, slow-moving, but I think happy when we try to pull ourselves out of the Darkness of our own fears, into the Light of pure, simple gratitude, joy, & Love.

I’m sharing this very personal practice with you in the hopes that maybe you’ll try something like it too. If you’re going insane from grief or stress or deadlines or where to find our next paycheck, I feel you. Believe me. Welcome to life ~ the Korean melodrama of our lives. But if you take a little time to empty out, fill up, and remember the people who love you, in spite of yourself sometimes (haha), and Breathe, you’ll remember ~ it’s okay. Not fabulous, but okay. We’re Blessed. Let’s Love each other while we’re here, and try for smiles, not stress today. Peace, Ish.

PS ~ and you, Reader! Thank you for reading this! For clicking on this page & giving my random thoughts your time! Hope you have lovely day ~ sending you a little crazygirl beam of love, haha. :)

(Lena Wong) Thanksgiving: observations from a dinner table outsider

Now that it’s November and students are nearing the end of their mid-term examinations, I’ve been hearing a great deal of talk surrounding our upcoming Thanksgiving break. Some students are deciding if they should stay on campus or fly home, others are stressing about the fact that they are bringing their significant others to meet their parents for the first time. Yet, neither of those are a concern for me – the former simply because Thanksgiving has never really been celebrated by my family and the latter because, well, I’m single right now.

It’s not to say that my family’s never celebrated Thanksgiving at all. I have a few vague recollections of purchasing a ham from the Honeybaked Ham store and one recent memory of bonding with family friends over a smoked turkey. But, for the most part, it almost felt as though we were going through the motions of Thanksgiving in an effort to give the American tradition a try – but without genuine feeling for the holiday. It’s hard to reunite with family members, as the tradition seems to dictate, when most relatives live overseas in Asia and have little idea what Thanksgiving is or can’t afford to whisk off to America for a brief weekend. Yes, my intermediate family could have used the day as a way of sitting down for a bite to eat, but with only three people, that wouldn’t make Thanksgiving dinner more special than, well, any other evening meal. So, in light of this, what has Thanksgiving come to mean to me in the 14 years I’ve been here? Truthfully, it’s really become the one day of the year in which I feel the most foreign.

It started when my childhood best friend invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner at her house. I was about seven at the time and she made promises of candy, Dr. Pepper, and a fun-filled sleepover, so I accepted. After all, my family had no prior plans for the night. When I arrived there, though, I was greeted by a dozen people who I had never seen before – relatives that had travelled across the country just for Thanksgiving dinner. And, oh, the food! Although I arrived in the late afternoon, I was quickly informed that her aunt, mom, and grandmother had been in the kitchen since early that morning. No store-bought, pre-cooked ham here. Before the eating commenced, everyone was asked to name what they were thankful for that year. It was a Thanksgiving straight out of the television shows that I so devotedly watched. A Thanksgiving that I never thought I’d experience on my own because I didn’t think that people really celebrated the holiday with such extravagance. I would return back to her house for Thanksgiving three or four more times. Last year, I stayed with a family friend and his family in Washington D.C. for Thanksgiving and this year I’ll be traveling to a high school friend’s house for holiday dinner. In essence, partaking in other families’ Thanksgivings has become my tradition.

What struck me as the most interesting aspect of these dinners, however, was the fact that most of the people who shared the table with me were nearly dumbstruck because I wasn’t at home that day. It was more understandable last year since it’s costly and time-consuming to fly from Philadelphia to San Francisco, but in the days of my youth, when my friend’s house was a mere 15 minute drive, the idea of spending Thanksgiving with another family was baffling. It was those moments – when I was constantly asked (even in jest), “Why are you here? Does your family not care about you or something?” that I felt the most un-American. I had every other holiday – Halloween, Christmas, even Valentine’s Day – down to a tee, but why couldn’t I master Thanksgiving? Or, rather, why had my family never embraced the event like we had every other Hallmark holiday?

It’s become clearer over the years that we never really adopted the tradition because we didn’t need to. Perhaps it’s because this is intrinsically tied to our Asian culture, but we see our close family friends almost every weekend for lunch or dinner. As for extended family, my mother and I venture to Singapore on a yearly basis to see everyone there. There is really no need for a dedicated day every year to reunite with those close to us because we do it so often anyway. Yes, the thought of getting together over plates of candied yams and cranberry sauce is a cozy one, but the act of putting together such an extravagant meal is almost as superfluous as the amount of food we’d have left over given the relatively small circle of friends and relatives we have in the United States. So, instead, we refrain from the act, acknowledging the holiday but not adopting the traditions so widely celebrated by our neighbors, colleagues, and school friends. I can’t speak for everyone in the Asian American community, but this is completely fine with me. After all, as much as I enjoy candied yams, turkey isn’t all that great, anyway.