By Wei Ming Dariotis

Sally Gin (nee Chan Shun Fan) and Wei Ming Dariotis at the Japantown Peace Plaza, circa 1974 © Bob Knickerbocker

I. I
feel conflicted

only
sometimes

when
someone asks me what my name means

I’d
like to wait a little while

before
skinning myself, that way

in Earthsea
the wizards know

true
names hold power

to
name a thing is to control it

to own
it

but my
mother named me to free me

and to
love me

[and to love herself
through me]

 

II. an
injustice, her naming was

Shun
Fan, she told me, meant only “Good

Mother,”
but you are one, I reassured her

passionate
on this subject at five years old

Even
then she did not mince words:

I was
disappointed, she told me, that my mother only thought

of my
role in the family      never              never saw me as a person in my own
right

she
didn’t care what my name was—I was just a girl

said
another way, Shun Fan sounds like

“Sour
Rice”

once
in boarding school in Boston

my
mother was named twice/her teacher saying

you
need

an
American name, your name is too hard

to
say. You look

like a
Sally, she insisted, and called her that,

from
then on.

III.
My name is not “Mom” anymore

my
mother said, impatient with my whining

I
won’t answer until you guess

my
real name

don’t
you know it?

IV. she
wrote a poem

a
treasure map

to
find my name

“Ming”
is a combination

of the
sun and the moon, together

they
are the brightest

things
in the sky: “Shining Brilliance”

“Wei”
is common in nuns’ names

topped
by two trees, a scroll

holds
the middle hanging

above
a bleeding heart

she
tells me it means to have understanding or,

she
says, to know your heart

Never
let anyone call you

a
nickname or anything that diminishes

your
name, she told me

if you
tell a child she is stupid

every
day

she’ll
believe that

I want
you to believe that you are

what
your name is

You
grow into that, you will love
yourself

---

 About the Author: Born in Australia to a Chinese mother and a Greek-Swedish American father, Wei Ming Dariotis is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. Her poetry has been published in the Asian American Literary Review, Completely Mixed Up, 580 Split, and Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women’s Poetry. She is the co-curator and co-editor, with Laura Kina, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013).