You Gave the Enemy a Face—and That Face Was Mine
In America, we like to be heroes—to find our enemies and defeat them. So, in a pandemic where the enemy is not visceral, we create one that is.
We Asian Americans need to embrace and prove our American-ness in ways we never have before . . . we should show without a shadow of a doubt that we are Americans.
[In contemporary narratives] the monster, while initially perceived as terrible and an outsider, proves himself through his actions and his ability to care for othersThe Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore
Who is sickWho is ?

The intriguing part of disease legends,is that in addition to fear of illness, they express primarily a fear of outsiders.
It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American community . . . They are amazing people, and the spreading of the Virus is NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form. They are working closely with us to get rid of it.
about to They are working closely with us to get rid of it. They who is ?
real
Los Angeles TimesA viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched. A leopard’s spots are the same and its disposition is the same wherever it is whelped.
You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned into hell!
It was in the afternoon when we reached [the camp]From there we first got a glimpse of the center. I was wondering how will they ever put all of us in a small place that small . . . What surprised me most was why did the soldiers have to stand guard with guns . . . and to tell you the truth the way some people stared at us, it chilled me a bit.
Each block had a town hall meeting to discuss whether to volunteer The Issei , our parents, they said, ‘Why should our sons fight for a country that put us in a concentration camp?’ But the Nisei , we thought,‘This is the only country we know.’

race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.
circulated to promote capitalism and to undermine the credibility of black civil rights,
Reality is not the purpose of disease narratives,Instead, one population tells these narratives about another population, thus giving the stories a focus that is elsewhere and defining the infected population as something that is definitively Other.
We:
We [Asian Americans] are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, that we will disappear into this country’s amnesiac fog

Individual Japanese Americans were quite willing to go to HBCUs,
Jami Nakamura Lin writes the Catapult column "The Monsters in the Mirror." Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Electric Literature, Passages North, and the anthology What God is Honored Here? (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
She is Senior Editor at Anti-Racism Daily and is represented by Stephanie Delman of Greenburger Associates.
She was the recipient of a 2016 Creative Artists Fellowship from the Japan-US Friendship Commission and the National Endowment of the Arts and a 2015 Walter Dean Myers Award from We Need Diverse Books.
Twitter: @jaminlin / jaminakamuralin.com
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Jami Nakamura Lin
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Jami Nakamura Lin
More by this author
The Three Corpses
From the beginning, I knew that terror is a god. But now, I also believe that what might sound like a death rattle is merely the echo of ancestral song.
How I'm Learning to Manage Rage as a Bipolar Woman
Are these the only two stories? The one, where you defeat your monster, and the other, where you succumb to it?
What the Religious Right Gets Wrong About Monsters
Perhaps the certainty that you are not the monster—that no matter what you do, you will never become the monster—is what gives rise to monstrous behavior.
More in this series
Dreaming Machines: Fairy Tales in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
What, exactly, are the building blocks that make a fairy tale a fairy tale? And who—or what—might be making them in the future?
After Divorce and Postpartum Depression, Work (and Bees) Brought Me Back to Life
It is no wonder that I am so in love with my bees. They fight for their lives.
Remembering Matthew Shepard’s Legacy in His Own Backyard
In this small town of Laramie, what you say matters. It gets around. The only way to combat the misinformation is to keep telling the truth.