At 8, I sailed for America from Shanghai without a passing acquaintance of A, B or C, wearing scruffy brown oxfords. Little did I know then that they were as magical as those glittering red pumps that propelled Dorothy down the yellow brick road.
Only yesterday, it seems, resting my chin on the rails of the SS Marylinx, I peered into the mist for Mei Guo Beautiful Country. It refused to appear. Then, in a blink, there was the Golden Gate, more like the portals to Heaven than the arches of a man-made bridge.
Only yesterday, standing at PS 8 in Brooklyn, I was bewitched–others, alas, were bothered and bewildered–when I proclaimed:
I pledge a lesson to the frog of the United States of America. And to the wee puppet for witch’s hands. One Asian, in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all.
Although I mangled the language, the message was not lost. Not on someone wearing immigrant shoes.
Only yesterday, rounding third base in galoshes, I swallowed a barrelful of tears wondering what wrong I had committed to anger my teammates so. Why were they all madly screaming at me to go home, go home?
Only yesterday, listening in pink cotton mules to Red Barber broadcasting from Ebbetts Field, I vaulted over the Milky Way as my hero, Jackie Robinson, stole home.
Only yesterday, enduring the pinch of new Mary Janes at my grammar-school graduation, I felt as tall as the Statue of Liberty, reciting Walt Whitman: “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear … Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else…”
Today I cherish every unstylish pair of shoes that took me up a road cleared by the footfalls of millions of immigrants before me–to a room of my own. For America has granted me many a dream, even one that I never dared to dream–returning to the land of my birth in 1989 as the wife of the American ambassador. Citizens of Beijing were astounded to see that I was not a yang guei ze, foreign devil, with a tall nose and ghostly skin and bumpy hair colored in outlandish hues, I looked Chinese, I spoke Chinese, and after being in my company they accused me of being a fake, of being just another member of the clan.
I do not believe that the loss of one’s native culture is the price one must pay for becoming an American. On the contrary, I feel doubly blessed. I can choose from two rich cultures those parts that suit my mood or the occasion best. And unbelievable as it may seem, shoes tinted red, white and blue go dandy with them all.
Recently I spoke at my alma mater. There were many more Asian faces in that one audience than there were enrolled at Tufts University when I cavorted in white suede shoes to cheer the Jumbos to victory. One asked, “Will you tell us about your encounters with racial prejudice?” I had no ready answers. I thought hard. Sure, I had been roughed up at school. Sure, I had failed at work. Sure, I had at times felt powerless. But had prejudice against the shade of my skin and the shape of my eyes caused these woes? Unable to show off the wounds I had endured at the hands of racists, I could only cite a scene from my husband’s 25th reunion at Yale eight years ago. Throughout that weekend, I sensed I was being watched. But even after the tall, burly man finally introduced himself, I did not recognize his face or name. He hemmed and hawed, then announced that he had flown from Colorado to apologize to me. I could not imagine why. Apparently at a party in the early ’60s, he had hectored me to cease dating his WASP classmate.
Someone else at Tufts asked, “How do you think of yourself? As a Chinese or as an American?” Without thinking, I blurted out the truth: “Bette Bao Lord.” Did I imagine the collective sigh of relief that swept through the auditorium? I think not. Perhaps I am the exception that proves the rule. Perhaps I am blind to insult and injury. Perhaps I am not alone. No doubt I have been lucky. Others have not been as fortunate. They had little choice but to wear illfitting shoes warped by prejudice, to start down a less traveled road strewn with broken promises and littered with regrets, haunted by racism and awash with tears. Where could that road possibly lead? Nowhere but to a nation, divided, without liberty and no justice at all.
The Berlin wall is down, but between East Harlem and West Hempstead, between the huddled masses of yesterday and today, the walls go up and up. Has the cold war ended abroad only to usher in heated racial and tribal conflicts at home? No, I believe we shall overcome. But only when:
We engage our diversity to yield a nation greater than the sum of its parts.
We can be different as sisters and brothers are, and belong to the same family.
We bless, not shame, America, our home.
A home, no doubt, where skeletons nest in closets and the roof leaks, where foundations must be shored and rooms added. But a home where legacies conceived by the forefathers are tendered from generation to generation to have and to hold. Legacies not of gold but as intangible and inalienable and invaluable as laughter and hope.
We the people can do just that-if we clear the smoke of ethnic chauvinism and fears by braving our journey to that “City Upon a Hill” in each other’s shoes.
