Asian American Elders: An Evolution
Who are the Asian American elderly? If I close my eyes, I remember the 1970s, and see the older Chinese American gentlemen doing tai chi at dawn in two parks named after Columbus — one in New York and one in San Francisco. Fighting off arthritis and loneliness, they dance with halting steps among the swirling autumn leaves.
I also see my isseiü(born in Japan) grandmother, Ritsu Tajitsu, making pickled cucumbers. She would move aside the soda and leftover macaroni in the refrigerator to make room for the container of cucumbers with its fermented bread-and-beer mash. While she sometimes had to hold the guard rail as she went down the wooden stairs to tend the gobo (burdock) and other Japanese vegetables in her backyard garden, she always made sure to keep her hair neatly coifed and her clothes pressed just so.
I open my eyes. It is now 2001. My nisei (second generation) mom and her sisters qualify as senior citizens. I go to the Japanese American cemetery and know just as many people whose names are engraved in stone as people who are flying kites nearby. At age 44, I myself am only six years away from getting one of those “Welcome” letters from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
As many of my generation came into Asian American consciousness in the 1960s and ’70s, we drew strength from the elders who had endured the seamless web of exclusion, disempowerment, and deprivation that had confronted all Asian Americans up until that time. “Charlie” Chin’s hauntingly evocative “Wandering Chinaman” on the pioneering 1973 Grain of Sand record album (www.bindurecords.com/music/grainofsand) was the best example of how many of us listened and learned as our elders “talked story” (to use the Hawaiian phrase) about a history that was not adequately preserved. We learned about, and eventually helped to chronicle and redress, the Japanese American internment experience, the backbreaking agricultural labor of Filipino American manongs (a term of respect for an elder in the Ilocano language), and the years of loneliness endured by unmarried male Chinese American laundry and restaurant workers.
As the years went by, however, the demographics of the Asian American community changed — and so, too, did the profile of the typical Asian American “elder.” Post-1965 engineering and medical workers from India and Hong Kong brought over their parents, who themselves were often well-educated, English-speaking and affluent. Refugees from Vietnam and immigrants from Korea brought along monolingual parents who had to deal with a world turned upside-down — mainly because of language barriers. Nisei who grew up as English-speaking Americans were able to advocate for themselves as they got older, but still faced medical and cultural barriers caused by an eldercare community still not adequately attuned to the needs of Asian American seniors.
Thirty years ago, many of us clamored for equal access to education programs and jobs. Today, these initiatives have been joined by cries for access to culturally and linguistically sensitive hospital, hospice and nursing home facilities.
One person, one family, and one community at a time, we are pushing the envelope so that our customs and values can thrive in institutions where they were not present before. For example, a Korean American friend told me how his family was barred by regulations in a Massachusetts hospital from staying with their father as he lay dying, late one night in a hospital bed. Citing the need to be with the body when the spirit left, this family defied hospital authorities and stayed on past visiting hours. My friend’s actions sparked a review of hospital practices that ultimately led to a more humane and culturally sensitive policy for all future families.
Another friend, searching for nursing home options for a parent who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, came up against a common misconception about Asian Americans: we always take care of our own. While these concepts may have been true to some extent in Asia, they are not uniformly true for a community where the American model of job relocations, divorce and parent-child relations have taken hold to varying degrees.
Ironically, while the profile of the Asian American elder has become less easy to pin down over the last 30 years, the concerns of these diverse elders are remarkably similar to the elders I saw decades ago in Columbus Park — and who were captured in “Charlie” Chin’s enduring song:
- “So I sit in this park
- Until the nighttime comes.
- I worry for my daughter
- And I think about my sons.
- I sit inside this park
- And stare into my hands.
- Oh, who will mourn the passing
- Of this Wandering Chinaman?”
|
