Joy, Erin, and Tatiana: to my Cambridge girls who nurtured me

Cambridge City Hall

On the three tiers of my childhood integration into the racializing ‘America’ of Cambridge, MA, and the gift of nurturing and caring friendships.

Joy,
When I think of Joy, I think of her smile. She was warm. I don’t remember exactly how we met. But I remember it was in 5th grade. I had been introduced by the homeroom teacher as the new student who had just moved to Cambridge with her family from India. Days, weeks, or who knows maybe months had passed, but in between those days, Joy and I had several classroom exchanges. And each time we interacted, she was gentle and warm, perhaps sensing my new-kid awkwardness anxieties. From what I remember, she was well-liked by most of my classmates particularly cause of her warmth. But she was also spunky and cute. Her not-to-be-taken-for-granted attitude won her many fans, I was one of them. I had a friend crush on Joy from afar. But it wasn’t till Erin moved from King Open to Peabody that Joy and I became close.

Erin,
I don’t remember how it started, but I remember Erin being introduced to the rest of us in class as the new transfer student from King Open. Instantly, she was a hit. She was open, talkative, and kind. Within days, her and Joy were inseparable. Somehow, one day, Erin suddenly began talking to me and she never stopped. I don’t know how, but all of a sudden it was Joy, Erin, and me. Hanging out everyday after school. The three of us did homework either at Joys’ or Erins’ while BET and MTV blasted from the television in the back. This was when mid-90s hip hop scene was blowing up. In these jam sessions, Joy and Erin introduced me to rap, hip-hop, r&b and dancehall. But it was through dancing that we connected the most. All three of us were obsessed with dancing. Joy belonged to the dance group Jamnastics, and they performed at different venues across Cambridge. She was always teaching us new dance moves because we were fast learners. It was actually through Joy I discovered my love of hip hop dance (I began dancing in groups later). Dancing has brought me joy since the beginning of time, and it was Joy who introduced me to the dance scene in Cambridge. Now I am forever a fan of hip hop and dancehall thanks to Joy and Erin.

Tatiana,
It was a friendship that began at a MIT summer tennis camp at thirteen (from which I was kicked out for calling a Chinese counselor a bitch for racial profiling). We became thick as thieves and sneaked out to basement parties in Boston during High School. Tatiana was there when I was physically attacked at Rindge (Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School). She threw down when I defended myself against two racist white girls from the projects. They targeted me randomly, not for being white or black, but for being “a Chinese immigrant who should go back to their country.” The irony of their racism was that they couldn’t distinguish that I am Tibetan and cannot return to my homeland because it is under Chinese colonial rule.

Joy heard about it later and went after the same girls. Although Erin wasn’t at the same High School, somehow she had also heard. She called to find out if I was ok, and was satisfied with Joy’s retaliation. I had not told either about the incident, but there they were, all three, making sure they had my back. I remember thinking how lucky I was to have such caring friendships.

Tatiana was nurturing, accepting, and patient, even when I was being a narcissistic teenager. She accepted me for all that I was and encouraged me to be more. But our favorite thing to do together was laugh. We loved finding humor in everything. In Tatiana, I found my twin. She and I could read each others mind like no other. We always knew we were on the same page. No explanations needed. Just love.

Joy, Erin, and Tatiana
These three friendships with Black girls, now women, were influential in the ways in which I related to the world that was Cambridge. A microscopic spec of what the United States hoped it was. A fading image now more than ever in Trump’s America, where the increasing gap in wealth continues to shape the contours of my ever-fading gentrified childhood neighborhood.

The Cambridge of my childhood in the mid-1990s to early 2000s was multi-lingual and multi-cultural, but it was also highly racial. To my 10-yr-old newly arrived Dharamsala sensibilities, I hadn’t a clue. But they were there, each step of the way. Teaching and helping me navigate a confusing new racializing world.

I realize now that they had subtly taught me about the politics of race, racism, and ways of belonging all along. In return, I taught them about Tibet. Anytime anyone mistook me for Chinese in front of them, they’d correct the other that I am Tibetan not Chinese.

My understanding, knowledge, and praxis surrounding race, class, and gender in North America has been influenced by each of them. These early introductions would encourage a life-time of learning from and trying to understand Black history and their radical movement generated intellectual traditions. And I’ve learned over time, how crucial these lessons have been in shaping my understanding of racializing developments that marginalize Tibetans in China-Colonized Tibet, and the trials and tribulations of revolutionary freedom movements more broadly when imagining sovereign anti-colonial Tibetan futures in these settler colonizing imperial times.

My childhood social landscape was filled with black and white children, with a handful of Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese students. As a Tibetan, I had trouble figuring out where I belonged. But for Joy, Erin, and Tatiana, it was easy. I belonged with them. And through their nurturing friendships a multi-racial Cambridge steeped in Black revolutionary history and culture became home.

I’m forgetful with dates and don’t remember anyone’s birthdays, but I remember Joy’s thanks to her family-filled cookout invites. Her birthday falls on the 4th of July — a date annually celebrated and mourned as the ‘birth’ of the United States and the beginning of settler invasions into First Nations territories. I’m still trying to figure out whether that timing is just a coincidence. And so, wherever and whenever “Independence Day” comes around, I think about — and celebrate — Joy!