I started planning this piece back in May of 2020, when I saw the news that an 84-year-old elderly Asian woman was jump kicked in the face by teens at a bus stop in Minnesota for absolutely no reason other than her looks. When COVID first reached the US, I was consistently seeing my Asian friends suffer from harassment because of it, whether it was from homeless people yelling slangs at them or people making slant-eyed gestures towards them.
These stories brought back many memories from my childhood growing up in Pennsylvania when others bullied me for being Chinese. As a kid, I thought it was normal for people to treat me this way because I looked and behaved differently. Even as a young adult, I contently accepted the idea that there are negatives to being human; and that my experience - although unfortunate, was typical due to my ethnicity.
The recent absurd attacks on Asians, especially the elderly, made me realize that the reality is much more horrifying. Apart from the physical assaults, many of my family members and community lost their businesses because people feared them when the pandemic started.
To them, we represented the virus. Behind all the protective gear, through the masks, the gloves, they saw what was left - our eyes, and they feared, they hated.
This is not okay.

Graphite on stonehenge, 44''x 30'', 2020-2021