WEBVTT

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I'm going to begin with the
self introduction of sorts.

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It's called "How
I Got That Name,"

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an essay on assimilation.

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I always begin with this poem
because it grounds the reading

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with biography, a
little biography.

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OK.

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There's some made
up stuff as well.

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"How I got that name,"
an essay on assimilation.

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I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin.

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Oh, how I love the resoluteness
of that first person singular

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followed by that stalwart
indicative of "be"

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without that uncertain
I-N-G of becoming.

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Of course, the name had been
changed somewhere between Angel

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Island and the sea when
my father, the paper

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son, in the late 1950s obsessed
with the bombshell blonde,

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transliterated Mei
Ling to Marilyn.

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Nobody dared question
his integrity,

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given his nice devout daughters,
and his bright, his just

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industrious sons,
as if filial piety

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were the standard by which
all Earthly men were measured.

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Oh, how trustworthy
were their daughters,

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how thrifty our
sons, how we manage

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to fool the experts in
education, statistics,

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and demography.

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We're not very creative,
but not adverse

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to rote learning, rote
learning, rote learning.

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Indeed, they can use us, but
the model minority is a tease.

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We know you are watching now,
and we refuse to give you any.

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Oh, bamboo shoots,
bamboo shoots.

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The further west we
go, we'll hit east.

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The deeper down we
dig, we'll find China.

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History has turned its stomach
on a black polluted beach,

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where life doesn't hinge on
that red, red wheelbarrow,

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but whether or not our new lover
in that final episode of "Santa

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Barbara" will lean over scented
candle and call us a bitch.

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Oh, Lord.

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Where have we gone wrong?

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We have no inner resources.

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Then, one redolent morning,
the Great Patriarch Chin

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peered down from
his kiosk in heaven

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and saw that his
descendants were ugly.

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One had a squarish head
and nose without a bridge.

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Another's profile, long
and knobbed as a gourd.

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The third, the sad, brutish
one may never, never marry.

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An I, his least favorite,
not quite boiled,

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not quite cooked, a plump
pomfret simmering in my juices,

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too listless to fight
for my people's destiny.

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To kill without resistance
is not slaughter,

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says the proverb.

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So I wait for imminent death.

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The fact that it's death
is also metaphorical

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is testament to my lethargy.

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So here lies Marilyn
Mei Ling Chin,

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married once, twice to
so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong,

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daughter of the
virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong

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and G.G. Chin the infamous.

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Sister of a dozen, cousin of a
million, survived by everybody

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and forgotten by all.

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She was neither Black nor
White, neither cherished nor

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vanquished, just another
squatter in her own bamboo

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grove minding her poetry when
one day heaven was unmerciful

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and a chasm opened
where she stood.

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Like the jaws of a
mighty white whale,

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or the maw of a
metaphysical Godzilla,

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it swallowed her whole.

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She not flinch nor writhe,
nor fret about the afterlife,

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but stayed.

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Solid as wood, happily, a
little gnawed, tattered,

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mesmerized by all that
was lavished upon her

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and all that was taken away.

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[APPLAUSE]

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So that's a dramatic
monologue and--

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[LAUGHTER]

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No.

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No?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Not slam, I was told.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But--