WEBVTT

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All right.

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Thank you so much for that
wonderful introduction.

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Well, I can think Alison, Karen,
and all the wonderful workers

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at the Worker Bees and
at the Poetry Center

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for the hard work on my behalf.

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And I have to begin with a
self-introduction of sorts.

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And it's called "How I Got That
Name," an essay on assimilation.

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"How I Got That Name."

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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 B

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without the uncertain
I and 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.

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When my father, the
paperson in the late 1950s,

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obsessed with the
bombshell blonde,

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transliterated Mei
Ling to Marilyn.

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And nobody dared question
his initial impulse

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for we all know lust drove young
men to greatness, not goodness,

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not decency.

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And there I was, a
wayward pink baby

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named after some
tragic white woman

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swollen with gin and nembutal.

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My mother couldn't
pronounce the R.

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She dubbed me number one
female offshoot for brevity.

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Henceforth, she
will live and die

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in sublime ignorance flanked by
loving children and the kitchen

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deity.

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While my father
dithers, a tomcat

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in Hong Kong trash, a
gambler, a petty thug,

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who bought a chain of chop suey
joints in Piss River, Oregon,

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with bootleg Gucci cash.

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Nobody dared question
his integrity

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given his nice devout daughters
and his bright industrious sons,

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as if filial piety were
the standard by which

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all earthly men were measured.

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Oh, how trustworthy our
daughters, how thrifty our sons.

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Have we managed 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 to rote learning.

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Indeed, they can use us.

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But the model
minority is a tease.

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We know you are watching now.

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So we refuse to give you any.

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Old 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 a scented
candle and call us a bitch.

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Oh, God.

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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
spring morning,

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the great patriarch Chin 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
a nose without a bridge.

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

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

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And 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, says the proverb.

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So I wait for imminent death.

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The fact that this death
is also metaphorical

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is testament to my lethargy.

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So here lies Marilyn Mei
Ling Chin, married once,

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twice to so and so,
a Lee and a Wong,

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granddaughter of Jack, the
patriarch, and the brooding

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Suilin Fong, 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,

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nor vanquished.

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Just another squatter on her own
bamboo grove minding her poetry.

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When one day, heaven
was unmerciful

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and a chasm opened
where she stood.

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Like the jowls 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 did 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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Thank you.

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