Marie Wenya Burns is a Heartland Journalism Fellowship recipient and resident of St. Louis’s Bevo Mill neighborhood who works for the St. Louis County Library. She was a Sparks Fellow at Park & Fine Literary and Media in New York and an editorial assistant at Notre Dame Review. Her writing explores the intersections of history and fiction genres in Asian American communities, forming a novel-in-progress she hopes to complete during her fellowship.
Immigrants seeking refuge in the country responsible for their humanitarian crisis is not new. Particularly for America. What was new, however, was the largest human zoo in the world modeled in our own backyard, two years after the Philippine-American war ended.
Witness the “woman” of “Asian descent.” Is this the face of waiting? Of looking? Of becoming? Of otherizing? Did she shuffle to the chair before sitting? Did she walk quickly?
When I was little, I had a recurring nightmare. I would float to the laundry room, a small tiled room next to the kitchen, and open the door. Or try to. I would push the door handle down, throw my body against the wood but it would not budge, only wobble a bit as if something else pushed back. Then wind or an unseen hand would seize and suspend me in the air.