Oregon Council for the Humanities

Oregon Humanities Spring/Summer 2007

Kathleen Holt: EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano: GRAPHIC DESIGN
Leigh van der Werff: PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
Allison Dubinsky: COPY EDITOR
Editorial Advisory Board: Tom Booth; Brian Doyle; Debra Gwartney; Julia Heydon; Marianne Keddington-Lang; Guy Maynard; Win McCormack; Camela Raymond; Kate Sage; Linny Stovall; Rich Wandschneider; Curt Yehnert

Oregon Humanities, a journal of ideas and perspectives about the humanities, is published biannually by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, 812 SW Washington Street, Suite 225, Portland, Oregon 97205.

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Posts: Readers Write about Secrets

Secret Asian Woman

When my mother died, I wondered if I'd still be Asian.

"I'm part Asian," I've said most of my life.

"Oh, which part is that?"

I point to my prominent cheekbones, my best facial feature.

"This part."

"I see."

No one really sees. Sometimes I can't see. I look in the mirror and turn my face to and fro and see Meryl Streep with a flat nose, freckles, and dark, thick hair. Often I look at my beautiful Asian women friends, and while I feel at home, I wonder if they look at me in that sideways manner as well.

I've been in many a crowd that assumes I'm white, and I hear "Oriental" jokes. Or worse, someone is singing a rendition of that awful Disney song:

" We are Si-ah-mese if you puh-lease..."

It's subtler now than when my brother was called names in our childhood.

But something so small can still bring up memories like bile of being the "other."

Memories of being on a school bus when you're ten years old and kids who thought you were white quickly turn on you when they spot your mother, waiting for you at the bus stop.

My beautiful porcelain-skinned mother, ninety-nine pounds petite with a coiffed black bouffant, wanted to make sure we were safe the first day of school, so she stood there on the side of the highway waiting for us to come home. A wave of gasps rippled from the front to the back of the bus where we were sitting.

All eyes locked on my little brother and me as we made our way off the bus.

I didn't greet my mother with a smile or a thank you. I secretly wished she had stayed away, stayed hidden, so we would have been spared the humiliation of being "Chi-neeese."

Life in Junction City, Oregon, a town of two thousand Scandinavian farmers and pioneer descendants, was to become a torment for my brother. From that day on until he graduated from high school, my sweet, eight-year-old brother endured fights and racial pranks that would now be called "hate crimes," because we were the only interracial family the town had ever seen.

I, however, could pass. I could be Secret Asian Woman through high school and college until the climate changed, and race could be talked about and explored and could be a source of pride. That would be a long time.

Occasionally I still hear someone joke they have a Japanese houseboy or refer to an awful Chink joke and, amazingly, people laugh. And then I take that long breath, feel my back straighten and say:

I'm Asian.

Dead silence.

Funny, you don't look Oriental.

People still use that word. Oriental. I think of carpets and rugs. Not a way to describe who I am. I take another breath.

Throughout my life in Oregon, people have looked at me as if I was a spy. I sing my secret spy theme song inside my head:

"Secret Asian Woman, Secret Asian Woman. They've given you a number and they never knew your name."

As Secret Asian Woman, my mission was to seek out others who might be like me and to create harmony in the universe for all people of color. Or just simply try to figure out my identity in this mixed up world. My only secret power was empathy. Sometimes I could read faces and intentions and know if they were good or bad or simply in too much pain. But empathetic powers can make one lonely and confused because so much of what people say doesn't match what is in their eyes. And unmasking myself in white crowds and coming out as Secret Asian Woman grew tiring.

Once I said to my best pengyou (Chinese word for "friend"), "People say racist things about Asians right in front of me."

Best Pengyou replied, "Hey, at least they're saying it to your face. I always have to wonder if they're thinking them and trying to be nice to me but really feeling something else."

Good point. Would you rather have the dagger directly in front of you or behind your back where you're less able to protect yourself? Let me see the dagger coming at me, and Secret Asian Woman will knock it away!

People are often well-meaning, but keep asking the same things with the assumption that if I look white, wouldn't I want to be white?

The truth is that I identify with my mother. My friends are of many races, and it's only been recently that I have even met other people who held both cultures inside their hearts.

I'm Asian enough to appreciate a life that consists of rice and strange-looking vegetables and American enough to shun the chicken's feet and pig's intestines.

I'm Asian enough to know all the racism and hatred my family has endured and American enough to try to change it.

I'm Asian enough to return produce to the store and American enough to be embarrassed by it.

I'm Asian enough to be ashamed I'm even saying any of this and American enough to know it has to come out.

--Dmae Roberts, Portland

Secrets and Social Development

Confusion over assignments, minor cultural misunderstandings, broken air-conditioning, and malfunctioning plumbing, leavened by mild banter and lots of tea, composed an average day at the office for me. I was working in Pakistan on a new educational development project. One afternoon I was unexpectedly summoned to USAID, the project's funding agency, to help resolve some obscure, but apparently important, accounting requirement. The woman in charge of meeting this requirement was in a bad mood, saying that she had no idea what to do, had tried all morning without success, and was now giving up. After much scurrying around I found the man who performed this function for other projects. When I asked him for help, his faint smile emerged as something between a sneer and a smirk. He said he knew perfectly well how to do it but had figured this out for himself and she should do the same. He was adamant. No amount of cajoling on my part could induce him to reveal the proper method. This, he insisted, would remain his secret.

The more I pondered this incident, the more I thought of similar situations I had encountered while working in developing countries. I realized that in the U.S. and most Western-based cultures, the power of having a secret is to share it with other people. The attitude is, stated in ungenerous terms, "I know something you don't know. It's a secret but I will tell it to you so we'll both know it. That should make me seem smart and helpful, and you will respect me more." However, in most of the developing countries where I have worked, the power of having a secret is to retain it. The attitude is, "I know something you don't know. It's a secret so I will not tell it to you. When I know something you don't know, that should make me seem smart and powerful, and you will respect me more." My realization engendered a sudden revelation: this behavior is not the result of underdevelopment but rather one of the major causes of it. I felt like the man in the comic strip with the bulb suddenly lighting up in the bubble above his head. If one refuses to share information, the interest and focus in the situation dissipates, and activities slow down or halt.

Secrets can give one prestige and power. But how is this prestige to be celebrated and this power to be wielded? Perhaps the Dalai Lama was right. He is reputed to have said, "Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality." Perhaps sharing information is also a way to develop one's country--or one's town, one's family, or one's self.

--Nick Cowell, Portland

No Strangers Here Today

In an intimate little leatherbound journal, Elizabeth Conard Edwards, my great-great grandmother, wrote down a few of her memories from life on a farm in southern Ohio during the winter of 1864, three years into the American Civil War. When her diary fell into my hands, Elizabeth Edward's secret life became public, and history became personal. Coded entries in her daily notations from January 1 to July 31, 1864, suggest that Elizabeth Edwards and her family, who were Quakers, were a link in the Underground Railroad, a secret network between blacks and whites that defied federal authority and moved fugitives of slavery north to Canada, and to freedom.

In the shadows of the story of the Underground Railroad is freedom's opposite: oppression. The thinking that justified the brutal system of human ownership was driven by an economic system (the South was the fifth-largest economy in the world), supported by both the North and the South, and backed by federal law. Fugitive Slave Laws protected human "property," not human rights. Harboring and assisting a fugitive of slavery--even in "free" states like Ohio--was punishable by fines, incarceration, confiscation of property, and physical torture. Slave catchers were out on the roads, hunting down fugitives and kidnapping free blacks for money, and then transporting the human "property" back to the masters in the South.

Elizabeth and Robert Edwards joined thousands of other courageous souls to become what Henry David Thoreau, in Civil Disobedience, called "a counter-friction to the machine." Quakers called the fugitives "travelers" and "strangers," a form of code. "No strangers here today," Elizabeth wrote intermittently. On other days, the "strangers" were led to a secret room on the farm. A man who lived on the Edwards' farm in the 1930s, on what is now called Underground Road in Highland County, remembers shimmying halfway down a cistern, where there was a small door, large enough to crawl into. Inside was a nine-foot square room with a low arched ceiling and two stones that may have been benches. The room was painted bright white, he said; and when he found it, it was perfectly clean.

King Cotton enslaved millions, used the "overseer system of plantation management" (severe physical, sexual, and mental abuse) to control labor, and broke up families to sell slaves "down south" to fuel the market. During this time, the Underground Railroad became a vast grassroots resistance movement that moved fugitives from "safe house" to "safe house" until they reached safety.

The Society of Friends valued prosperity, self-sufficiency, and the leadership of women, and they were guided in their actions by the Golden Rule and the Inner Light. Elizabeth Conard Edwards was part of a movement that took history personally. In her own way, at her own risk, she refused to collaborate with federal authority. Instead, through her resistance, she offered her help. She did not wait for history to change. She saw what was happening and secretly cooperated with others to change it.

--Susan Banyas, Portland

Please, No Secrets

That I don't like keeping secrets does not necessarily mean that I tell everything I know to the world at large. It does mean that I am immune to blackmail. (I might redden if reminded of some embarrassing incident from my past, but would not be destroyed.) Still, my life is sprinkled with secrets, from "Hey, let's surprise Kelly on his birthday," to "Goodness, don't let Mary know I saw John with Wendy," and "Don't tell his Aunt Martha that Marvin's dying."

I don't like being told, "don't tell." If you don't want me echoing you, don't tell me in the first place. My life is already more complicated than I wish it were, and I don't want to have to add, "keeping your secrets" to my list of things to do. Besides, Kelly might enjoy his birthday party even more if he has time for a shower after soccer practice and before being feted by his friends. Mary is engaged to John; does she not have a right to know the limits of his relationship with Wendy? And perhaps Marvin's Aunt Martha would make good use of an opportunity to assess, and possibly alter, her relationship with him--before she no longer can.

My hearing your secrets might burden me. I may agree with your perspective, but if I feel manipulated by your assumption that I do, my compliance will depend on our relationship. Do I trust you? Do I feel in concert with your secret? If yes, certainly I will oblige, but if I believe a whistle needs blowing, I must defy. Even should I remain neutral, you have forced me to pass judgment on something that concerned me not at all before you told me your secret.

Trade secrets that reward their creators aside, I propose that many secrets are too significant to keep to oneself. Knowledge worth knowing needs sharing. Informing on secrets that protect vices can benefit an entire community. The recent Mark Foley exposure is a perfect example: Keeping his secret compromised innocent Congressional pages.

Concealing secrets wields power; revealing secrets can dissipate it. Alfred E. Bush entitled his secrets, "Terrorism Defense," to con and scam us. Revelation of his secrets may shake us, but the entire world will profit from their exposure. Who really gained the most from the demolition of the World Trade Center? Who gained from the debacle in the Middle East, especially the war in Iraq? How much more damage has been done by secrets we have not yet discovered? We cannot know until all of his secrets are disclosed.

The very nature of secrets makes them suspect. For instance, I have lately heard whispers of a secret self that dwells in each of our hearts. How insidious. I must stop what I'm doing, relax my body, sit quietly, focus, and listen, until I can tell exactly what this secret self is.

--Cathleen Freshwater-Du Bois, Rockaway Beach

Secret of Sharing

Secrets become me. A shared confidence in my pocket adds a skip to my step and a lightness of spirit. Depending on the secret, the feeling can last for days. All I have to do is to remember the shar- ing, and the warmth of recollection yields sweet satisfaction.

I am blessed with wonderful friends. When one of these women trusts me enough to share a private corner of her soul, I consider it both a privilege and an honor to listen. To receive a confidence from someone you love is a gift, a tangible expression of faith and trust.

I shared a secret recently with a few close friends. It was painful and wrenching but their separate responses were as uniform as they were heartfelt. No one was surprised at my revelation. All had seen signs, observed changes taking place in me, noting gradual shifts that I did not see. It was as if they were quietly waiting for me to wake up to what they already knew, patient for the moment when I would be ready to open my eyes. Ready to embrace me when I did.

Their gentle acceptance surprised me. It shouldn't have. Hadn't I been the recipient of their secrets, hadn't the tables been turned before? They waited for me to share a private corner of my heart, just as I had waited and listened when it was their turn.

The rudder of friendship steadies us through the occasionally troubled waters of life. We help each other by taking turns at the helm, easing someone else's burden by sharing it, by taking a bit of the load off weary shoulders, knowing that in doing so a heart is lightened, if just a little bit. It's that little bit that can make the difference between hopelessness and hope.

The secret that becomes me most is the one I shared with them, for now that I have, the weight of it doesn't seem so overwhelming anymore. My step's a bit lighter these days, just as it is when I've got one of their secrets in my pocket.

--Cindy Beckett Kehoe, Gladstone

A Secret Box

There's a little box where all my letters and birthday cards go. This box contains a whole life of secrets, because this box is full of letters from a daddy to his daughter. A daddy who is a secret because he's been in prison since she was three years old.

Her life is a secret from me as well. Every now and then I'll catch a glimpse of it through the whisper of an event, witnessed by another and related to me. I know she sings in a choir, and when she smiles she looks like her mom. I know she has my eyes. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to see her, wondering if we'll ever share the simplest of glances.

I have a photo. Her honey-gold hair curls down to touch her smile. This is my secret treasure. Sometimes I pull the picture out and just look at it. I wonder what she looks like when she sleeps or what the expression on her face is after a joke. I wonder what her laugh is like. Is it sweet and soft like her mom's laugh? Or is it abrupt and a little high-pitched like mine--the laugh I inherited from my father.

Sometimes I think of my release and our meeting. She'll be practically a woman then, and maybe a parent herself. Would it be by chance, and as I pass her on the sidewalk I'll just know through some overwhelming feeling? Or will she try to find me? In her little box is all that information, and why I'm not in her life now.

These thoughts I keep secret. I keep them locked in my heart to keep them safe. To keep me human. Protected from the daily events that harden me, in the hope that one day this toughened skin can be shed and reveal the heart that still loves her so much after all these years. In this way my little girl is my secret, and keeps me from letting go.

My love for her is not a secret, and the little box containing fragments of my life will continue to fill in the hope that one day it will spill over into her life, revealing every moment I thought of her, and maybe through these moments she'll see me.

--Adam Anderson, Pendleton

Published in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of Oregon Humanities.

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