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THOUGHTS OF REMEMBRANCE FOR CLARA
By MERILYNNE HAMANO QUON
This article first appeared in Gidra, May, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author
See also our review of the film When You're Smiling about this period in the the LA JA community
PREFACE: The following article reflects some of the thoughts and feelings I had a few days after Clara died..on the first night when I felt secure enough with myself to be alone..to sit down in my apartment and write. Many of the feelings I had toward Clara and my relationship with her are very painful and deep and in many ways very hard to express. My grief, my sense of fear and helplessness, my feeling that I hadn't done enough, that I hadn't done the right things are feelings that are still part of me. All I know is that for a time it hurt too much..I felt like giving up. So perhaps what I'm trying to say in the article is that somehow, somewhere along the line, I had to come to grips with myself, gain a perspective on her death-a perspective which helped me to survive, to go on, to keep on fighting and continue fighting. All I'm trying to do now is share with you some of the thoughts which are not pretty, but which I feel are for real and which I need to express.
Sometimes it's hard to integrate rhetoric with reality, to see how sexism, racism, and capitalism affect us.
Too often they seem like words uttered from far away. But at times, we SEE how MUCH they are a part of us, how they can destroy us.
A young Asian sister, 18 years old, had died taking an overdose of drugs. What would make a beautiful and bright girl take her own life? The only way something like this is comprehensible to most people is to put the responsibility totally on the individual ("she must have been sick") without seeing the forces which shaped her life.
Some say movement people blame everything on "society", "outside forces" as if "society" were some kind of abstract thing "out there". But society with all its values and pressures is concentrated in each of us as individuals and is manifested in our everyday lives. It is manifested in the way we see ourselves and others and how we act according to these perceptions. Brothers and sisters in the community EXPERIENCE sexism, racism, and capitalism everyday, but have no words or labels for it.