This weekend, I watched the breaking news reports from Southern California with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anger. On Saturday night, what had been a gathering to celebrate the Lunar New Year in a Los Angeles suburb became the scene of a massacre. By Sunday, President Biden had issued a statement, noting: “While there is still much we don’t know about the motive in this senseless attack, we do know that many families are grieving tonight, or praying that their loved one will recover from their wounds.”
I am from Monterey Park, Calif. I am struggling to process a reality that has become familiar to many Americans: The horror of a mass shooting has come to my hometown. And this diverse, vibrant community will never be the same.
I know the area surrounding the Star Ballroom Dance Studio — the site of the attacks — very well. The church where I made my First Communion is down the street, and the public park where I learned to swim is around the corner.
Until Saturday night, people outside of Southern California had likely never heard of Monterey Park. It is the birthplace of designer Bob Mackie and home to some of the best Chinese restaurants in the country. Once a sleepy white middle-class suburb, the city was transformed in the 1980s by an influx of Asian immigrants. A 1994 book about my hometown was titled “The First Suburban Chinatown,” because it was the first city on the U.S. mainland to have a majority Asian American population.
Monterey Park is now 65 percent Asian, according to the U.S. Census. Given these demographics, it is understandable that, for many observers, the massacre initially seemed to be an anti-Asian hate crime. Acts of violence against the Asian American community have been on the rise since the pandemic, and have been reported from Atlanta to New York City. Yet authorities have identified the shooter as an elderly Asian male, and his motives are unclear. The gunman was pronounced dead…
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