Editor’s note: This Community Voice was one of numerous entries in our recently concluded Emerging Writers Contest.

Oct. 9, 2018

My dear daughter:

On Sept. 8, you left home to go to college. You had turned 18 a week earlier, packing your two suitcases, giving away your toys, and saying goodbye kinda sorta. You have been looking forward to your reunion with your friend from kindergarten. The two of you get to be college roommates!

This weekend, as I was preparing dinner, I saw that you had shared your first assignment: You wrote about the disrespect and devaluation of women in Greek mythology as well as historic China. I was actually thinking more or less the same, which is less a coincidence than a natural response to how Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had been treated by those in power in Congress.

Yesterday, Oct. 8, the first day of fall break, as I spent the day training new student officers and as each person stood up to share what s/he considers qualities of a true leader, more and more examples of what not to do emerged until a digression on the current president and his Supreme Court nominee became clearly tangential but yet profoundly disturbing.

Back in May at your graduation, your 87-year-old grandmother witnessed something that she never dreamt possible. She saw you standing in front of your graduating class and most of the valedictorians were girls! Upon hearing their choice of careers, college destinations, and many awards, she was beaming and so proud of you and all those to your left and right.

You see, when she was little in China, she became very sick and was moved to an outhouse where she was not expected to survive. It wasn’t because her mother did not love her; it was the custom. At the time, Guangzhou was invaded by Japanese soldiers, so instead of learning how to read and write or to play, she learned to disguise as a boy, escaping to caves in the mountains. Later, she taught herself how to read and write, and as you know, she is an avid reader. She worries about you, not for any particular reason, but because of her experience with the world.

I too know something about the vulnerabilities of being a female. I used to worry about you, especially when I see men looking at you like candy. And you were only in middle school! So instead of teaching you to do what was expected, I raised you to be smart, to speak your mind, to take responsibility for yourself, to step up. Now, it is time to raise yourself.

Dr. Ford allowed herself to be vulnerable at that Senate hearing. She recalled the predicament of her 16-year-old self pinned down by this drunken older boy. He doesn’t have full control of himself, and in covering her mouth so she can’t scream for help, he might just stop her from breathing. (In self-defense, I learned that my best chances lie in using my female hips and legs to offset the assailant’s stronger male upper body.) Dr. Ford’s pain was clear to see though it was from 30-plus years ago, but she kept her grace. The death threats against her and her family never entered into her demeanor. This is why she is more plausible and I respect her.

Instead of being afraid for you my daughter, I choose to cheer you on.

It is clear to me that sexual harassment and violence is nowhere disappearing soon, so it is a relevant concern for you. In 1990, I was one of two students who had ever filed a sexual harassment charge at the University of Hawaii. As a graduate assistant, I worked at an office where the director had grabbed me and, once, he even pushed me down on the floor, but, thanks to someone walking in, he jumped up and left quickly. But later still, I had to put up with months of his belittling me in front of the staff since I stayed on, because I did not want to jeopardize my tuition waiver and job.

I waited until my last semester before I filed the complaint. The campus equal opportunity officer investigated this case and found no direct evidence in support of sexual harassment but did identify a hostile work environment. That director was protected by the faculty union: He took a sabbatical. This occurred in the last decade of the 20th century; it is hard for me to imagine that I was one of the first to file a sexual complaint at the University of Hawaii Manoa, given that it was established in 1907.

‘Step Up In Life’

Instead of being afraid for you my daughter, I choose to cheer you on. I know your intensity. I know how sensitive you are.

Recall when you were a preschooler on that sunless Sunday afternoon? You took your brother’s hand and got both of you across the finish line for a walk-run fundraiser at his elementary. Later, you would come across injured animals like little birds or mistreated dogs, and no matter, you’d enlist Mom and we’d get the little creature to the Humane Society’s emergency clinic.

Later still, you spotted a missing classmate a mile from your campus and stayed with her until her mother’s arrival, calling off the police search. You paid attention and you listened; then you figured out what to do.

I want you to listen to your instinct. Trust her: She knows when she needs protection, she knows what hurt feels like, and together, you can figure out how to step up in life.

I have no crystal ball. As an adult, one sees much of what is unfair, unjust. So I have learned to accept “life as it is” and the many injustices with it because it is reality, but my spirit is my own and just because injustices are commonplace, it doesn’t mean that I am complacent.

I am borrowing these words from a man who decades earlier reflected on the intersection of the Harlem riot and the death of his own father just as his youngest sibling was born; at the time, 12,000 miles away, your Chinese grandmother — still a young girl — was learning how to disguise her female body, to survive the first of successive wars. My dearest daughter, your face — from the chubby toddler to the delicate young woman — is imprinted on my heart; I am cheering you on! Good luck on your midterms – 加油!