Yellow Jacket

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Written by Priscilla Wong

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My childhood memories of my father had a lasting impact he had on me. Despite facing many hardships while raising me, he hoped his presence would remain with me even as I found my own path in life. Yellow Jacket explores the challenges of bridging Eastern and Western cultures. As someone who speaks both English and Cantonese, I've experienced how meaning, wisdom, and cultural nuances can be lost in translation. Much of the charm and warmth that exists in one language doesn't fully carry over to the other. Through my writing, I aim to create understanding between these two worlds, preserving the essence of both cultures while making them accessible to readers from different backgrounds.

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Pulitzer Prize nominee.

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The old man, my father, carried China's ancient wisdom in his bones. He was like those weathered oaks that stand alone on California hills, refusing to bend to foreign winds. His truth about men was simple and terrible, learned through years of watching them pass like seasons.

 

We'd sit together in those red-lacquered dim sum houses, where the air hung heavy with grease and waiting. The fluorescent lights caught the gold dragons on the walls, making them dance like fevered dreams. "McDonald's is cleaner," I'd say, young and foolish as spring wheat. But Pa would quiet me with those dark eyes of his, teaching me to watch the parade of men like a farmer studies his livestock.

 

"Look there," he'd whisper, his voice low as evening fog rolling over the Bay.

"See how that one moves? See his eyes? That's no man - that's a shadow of one."

 

And I'd giggle, knowing when I shook their hands, I held a secret bigger than my small years could properly carry.

 

We made a study of men, Pa and me, from the safety of our rusted Toyota. Through the Financial District's glass canyons, past the rainbow-painted Victorian ladies of Haight-Ashbury, into the concrete valleys of the projects - all while Mama did her endless errands. Every street was a classroom, every passing face a lesson in the terrible arithmetic of masculinity.

 

"Too soft," he'd say, watching the parade of Chinese men who'd lost their steel somewhere between the old country and the golden shore. After seeing the silver screen giants - Bond, Schwarzenegger, Indiana Jones - Pa would grow quiet, like a man counting his losses. "Kung fu looks like a dance," he'd say, "but a gun in a tall man's hand, that's the song of power."

 

Then he'd look at me, his girl-child, with trouble in his eyes deep as the Pacific. The blood of Northern China's warrior class ran thin in America's gentle valleys. What chance did his daughter have, this strange shoot from an ancient root?

 

Sometimes I caught him studying me like a puzzle he couldn't solve, wondering if the gods had played a joke, sending him a daughter who carried herself like a son.