GENERALLY DISHONORED ANGIE LEE

GENERALLY DISHONORED

Angie Lee

My aunt is Korean. She married a Black man, my uncle. This is unheard of in Korea. When my cousin—my aunt and uncle’s son—visits our grandparents in the humid, cicada-filled summers, residents ask him for a picture. It’s likely his afro and his mochilike cheeks that make girls in their twenties want to capture a moment with him, for proof that they really did see one: a Blackorean. He is young, so when they make their unabashed requests he smiles, shy but proud, and allows them to document his mochi, mocha cheeks as they make peace signs with their fingers and stick their faces close to his. It makes him feel like a celebrity on the streets of hongdae, and as long as that’s how he feels, I am okay with being the one to take the picture.

In “Introduction to African American Literature” we learn of double-consciousness, the embattled reality of looking at oneself through the eyes of others, and the simultaneously empowering potential of having such a prophetic vision as this. W.E.B. Du Bois recalls the day in his boyhood where he realized, almost epiphanically, that he was different, shut out from the rest of the world by a “vast veil.” We close read the passage, discussing the veil as a translucent barrier, the veil as hiding an individual from the gaze of others, the veil as obstructing the vision of the subject, the veil as religious, ritualistic metaphor. “I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil,” writes Du Bois. I wonder if my cousin has yet to know the veil, double-consciousness, or if he’s peering past it, already.

My aunt is liberal in her parenting. She allows my cousin to say fuck (in the right context) and spend his waking hours playing shooting games. Round the table at Christmas dinner, she explains to him that on one hand crabs are the creatures that we know and love to eat, but on the other hand crabs are a sexually transmitted disease, a colloquial name for pubic lice. My cousin is nine. Still, when we visit the Field Museum in Chicago, my aunt guides him away from the special exhibition on slavery and the Underground Railroad, distracting him with jokes as if distracting a toddler from candy. The exhibition is in a dark, cave-like room with orange paneling and black-and-white video clips. Without a doubt, it will be family-friendly, but my aunt is adamant: there’s no need for him to see such things yet.

In “Introduction to African American Literature,” we learn the constitutive elements of slavery, as according to Orlando Patterson. 1) Power: the opportunity for one to suppress another’s will even against resistance. 2) Natal alienation: absolute and inheritable. 3) (Dis)honor: the absence of an independent social existence, the indignity of the state of indebtedness. And then the culminating definition: “Slavery is the permanent, violent domination and natal alienation of a generally dishonored people.” How does one cover such topics in a family-friendly way? It seems impossible, even to my aunt, who has broad guidelines for the definition of family-friendly. I wonder how the Field Museum did it, but what I recall from the visit is this: my aunt’s arm, firm, steering my cousin toward the dinosaur fossils instead.