WRITTEN BY: INGRID AU YEUNG EDITED BY: SILVIA XIE and JACK HILLIS wrath
I’m so tired, of countless days and eternal thoughts,
so fed up with feeling like I'm secondary.
so tired of slathering cream on my face,
‘whitening’ serums sitting
on my counter, with my foundation
two shades lighter than my skin, five shades lighter
than my tan, my battle scars, my affliction.
so tired of massaging my eyes, different styles of eyeliner to enlarge my eyes.
do my eyes look too slanted?
is my skin too dark?
hiding in the shadows of lighter
and lighter skin, bluer and browner eyes,
where the everlasting sun hits their perfect hair.
so tired of messages in my inbox,
the ‘bend over a chair for me’, the
‘strip bare’ and just to dream
to not be deemed, your key to an ‘exotic woman’.
I am not your ‘kawaii schoolgirl’,
nor am I yours to fetishize, to say,
that I am submissive, law-abiding.
my eyes, my skin, I’m a proud creation of nature;
my people, my culture, is not yours to sexualize, not yours to scapegoat.
our bodies may be smaller, but our voices ring loud.
we are no longer your model minority.
we will no longer erase our culture, to accommodate,
your illusion, the pot of gold at the end of white supremacy.
I hope you feel the ground below
rumbling,
for the backs of Asians you have long built, your skyscrapers
of bigotry and supremacy,
are to one day collapse, under the raging screams of our
anguish and agony.
I'm Ingrid, a 15-year-old high school student from Hong Kong, and will be doing the sixth form in England starting from September. Art is an outlet for me to express my emotions, and writing for social justice is one of my favourite things. I hope people find comfort and resonate with my writing, and stand up for what they believe in.
my Instagram handle is @ingrxd_a.y :)