In this op-ed, Jireh Deng explores how the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shootings shatter an important sense of safety for Asian Americans in communities they’ve carved out for themselves.
The San Gabriel Valley is an abundance — Chinese grandmas practicing tai chi at the local park on a crisp early morning, at least one boba shop per block, nearly every type of East Asian and South East Asian cuisine represented, where I can find the best and most affordable pho in Los Angeles County. “The 626” area code (tattooed in Chinese numerals above my right knee) is where many third-culture and first-generation Americans like myself feel most at home, our people and culture making a bridge between our Eastern roots and our Westernized upbringing.
This is where I spent 18 years, raised in Alhambra and San Gabriel, attending public school, and going to bilingual Taiwanese and Chinese church services. Even for Asian American kids who weren’t raised here, many know someone who was. We were blanketed in the comfort of a place where our culture was the norm and not orientalized, a rarity in other non-coastal U.S. cities.
So, waking up on Lunar New Year — after a night filled with good food, money in red envelopes, and wishes for riches in the new year — to the news of a mass shooting in Monterey Park felt like a gross violation. On January 21, a shooter walked into the Star Ballroom in Monterey Park and killed 10 people that night, and an additional person later died of their injuries. Shortly after, CBS News reports that the suspect entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in nearby Alhambra, but was chased off and disarmed.
I watched in a haze as the news unfolded on my Twitter timeline and my friends were interviewed by local media. I felt unable to process what had just happened. I know several people who lived just down the block from Lai Lai Ballroom, and I was deeply shaken up by the horrific violence that had unfolded near the neighborhood I had grown up…
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