by Shin Yu Pai
there is a problem with
being single-issue activists
as erasure comes with its costs —
the commissioned calligraphers
made to vandalize their own
artwork after a month and a half
of labor, complied with managerial
concerns to control the public narrative,
citing instructions from "the city-state";
four years back, the local government
passed its inclusion resolution:
an expression of public opinion
when hate visited the community
in the form of the Ku Klux Klan
robe abandoned at a Black woman's shop;
last year, the City hired a diversity
expert; though the public statement
came through the office of Parks & Rec;
the artists were gracious, and
disciplined citizens in giving
credit for the swift reversal of order
the City even provided a canopy
and space heater to hasten the
repair — to reinscribe
Remember Palestine
the very mention of homeland
as hackle-raising as calling
Taiwan a "country" or
the Duwamish, an Indigenous
people, a "tribe" — dictating
what history, whose personhood
is counted in the master narrative,
which subjects have a right to speak?
Shin Yu Pai's essays have appeared in Atlas Obscura, YES! Magazine, City Arts, Tricycle, KUOW's Seattle Story Project, Seattle's Child, ParentMap, and Seattle Met. She is the author of several poetry books, including her new collection,Virga.
Featured Image: Illustration by Jorm S./Shutterstock.com
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