Chou Han - To My "Christian Brother" (1928)

Forgotten Poems #76

    
              —: To My “Christian Brother” :—

       Slap me,
       If you wish to!
       Kick me,
       If you wish to!
       I shall accept all of these
       With resignation.

       But I can bear no longer:
       Your predatory smile,
       Your calculating eyes,
       Your wooden hand-clasp,
       And your clinking alms!

       Slap me,
       If you wish to!
       Kick me,
       If you wish to!
    

This is the only known poem by Chou Han, a Chinese exchange student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, published in the school’s literary magazine, The Prairie Schooner in 1928. A stark portrait of anti-Chinese racism and religious hypocrisy in America, woven into the fabric of white American society by laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943); “Because of their non-white race, their non-Christian way of life, and their non-alphabetic language, the Chinese experienced a multiply charged hatred and discrimination in comparison with their White European immigrant counterparts.” (Mimi Yang, Tracing the Roots of Anti-Chinese Sentiments in US History, 2022)

“Like other little magazines, the Schooner was not published for money’s sake, paid nothing for contributions, and sought to print the work of new writers not yet accepted by the wealthy, policy-bound periodicals. Unlike most little magazines, the Schooner has been long-lived... and it has published the early work of more than twenty writers whose subsequent appearances in print have brought them general recognition,” (Maurice Johnson, 1937) and is still published today, under the editorship of Kwame Dawes.

       
              For Chou Han
                     by Dick Whyte

       i borrow water
       from the sky
       & place it in
       the earth,

       numb to all
       the blood
       outside of bodies
       gods
       request

       & the coriander
       grows,

       even when we
       do not
       

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