Michael Chen on Collective Trauma, Margins and AAPI.Liturgy

Find Michael Chen on instagram @aapi.liturgy 

Michael Chen lives in Philadelphia with his wife Rachael and their two boys.  He is a graduate of Princeton Seminary earned his Master of Divinity, and is currently working on a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy at Eastern University.  As a long time campus minister, he has a heart for helping people live more fully into their  unique identity and vocation.  In his free time he likes exploring cities and eating dumplings.  Also, he is a karaoke champion. 

Maggie had the privilege and honor to meet Michael at Allender Center where they were trained in Narrative Focused Trauma Care - Level II.

Michael is coming in tired and grateful. He’s coming off of a few late nights but also good conversations and meaningful work. He’s been in quarantine lock-down since the beginning (March 2020). Having married his wife Rachael in October of 2019, they enter their first year of marriage and hit the “accelerator” to get to know each other: getting to know all the quirks and dynamics of newly married life during the pandemic. They’ve hit wall emotionally and spiritually in this season. They’ve definitely triggered each other but have so much faith, trust and love in one another. He is looking froward to Philadelphia opening up a bit more. His boys start hybrid school next week and baseball season is starting up.

Maggie checks in with Michael around how he is holding the Derek Chauvin verdict. He’s angry that his Black siblings felt so much relief at something that should have been a “no brainer.” And he certainly has mixed emotions because he too felt relief. There was this sense of, “how can it be the case that something so seemingly straightforward and clear would even be in question?”

Danielle says that white folks talk about justice in a way that they are entitled to it, that justice is a right. This exposes historical narratives back to Emmet Till, people along the border, and so many others that have been murdered… But justice is not a built in right for all people. Michael adds, “and hence the relief…I don’t like that.”

Michael asks how Danielle and Maggie processed the verdict and also hearing the news of Ma’Kaia Bryant on the same day, and what a tail spin that was. Maggie agreed that tailspin is a perfect way to describe her feelings — it was a sense of not knowing which direction is up or down. She too held a mixed bag of emotion - A sense of relief at the accountability, a small measure of justice, at the guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin, as well as anger knowing how much work there is to be done with police reform, gun control and white supremacy in our country. And then feeling the overwhelming sense of, “How long, Oh Lord?” When hearing the news of Ma’Kaia Bryant. Watching videos of her showing her peers how to do hair… She wept. The only thing she could say was “How long?” Because there was no knowing of how to make meaning or sense of all that had happened in that one day.

Michael believes that, “we were not built to take in this much information this quickly without a sense of ritual, a sense of grief, or a space for mourning.” There is a feeling that our bodies can not process the amount of trauma in the news at the rate and intensity it is coming at us. He reminds himself to stay cognizant of that.

Danielle wrote an essay on April 19th about Adam, Dante and the impact of the massacre in Atlanta along with her journey to become a therapist. No sooner had she sent it off to get published when the verdict came in and Ma’Kaia Bryant was killed. She went to bed and felt like “this essay is no longer true.” She pulled the essay, edited it and resubmitted it today (April 23) to be published on May 3rd and her thought was, “Oh Lord, will I have to change this again? Will there be more stories to tell? I already know in my bones that it won’t feel right to leave a name out…”  She agrees with Michael, it is too much to take in. And sometimes she says feels like all we can do is to say their name. Michael adds, which feels like another injustice or violation.

Maggie mentioned Michael’s new work with AAPI.liturgy on instagram and read a recent post about looking at trauma in a way to include collective trauma. The post says: “A group experience of pain, loss or catastrophe that shatters the social bonds that form a community, resulting in loss of trust, dissolution of roles and boundaries, and the breaking of group identity.” - Kai Erikson

In beginning to define trauma with the collective, it is expanding our idea of trauma from an individual felt embodied experience to “as individual bodies experiencing trauma collectively.” Maggie said that is in fact what we just described as we have processed what it has been like to live in our bodies even just the last few days with collective trauma.

Michael has thought for a long time that he does not know what it means to be Asian. He has grown up in a predominately white spaces in Minnesota and had taken a position in an a ministry organization as the director for cross cultural ministry, where he functioned as a mediator between white leadership and predominately Black staff. It felt like he had to do a lot of work on African-American History.

Race as a construct in his experience has been a binary between Black and white.  He has been inspired by his friend Cole Arther Riley of Black Liturgies in bringing Black history, identity, literature and poetry into liturgical spaces of prayer and spiritual formation. He thinks that the people he is talking to, whether that is professors or people on instagram, are still asking the question: what does it mean to Asian American and Christian?

Michael believes that we are in a coming of age moment; people are seeking identity right now.  So it is with that in mind that he started aapi.litgury with a sense of openness. He believes there is something to be explored around trauma, history and trying to formulate and articulate a way of being that might be helpful to Asian Americans as they grapple with their identity.  He says, “What if we started with a collective definition to the question, what is trauma? Would that change our ideas of how we conceive of healing?” He doesn’t have the answer but he found the quote provocative as it was shared by Kai Cheng Thom, a Trans woman, at a trauma conference called Tending the Roots. It has been a journey for Michael to put himself in spaces and places to listen and learn from folks at the margins. And then at the margins of the Asian-American Community. The margins of the margins.

Trauma primarily as collective is the violation of boundaries and the breaking down of roles and identities. He still has a lot of questions about gender and sexuality, but it is his understanding that in traditional Asian cultures there is evidence that trans individuals, those with more gender fluidity, took on the roles of priests and mediators for the community. They mediated between binaries, they had roles and identities, and there is a sense in these cultures of not letting people fall  into the margins: People get a place in the community. Colonialism and Western Individualism holds us back at some level to imagine people with various identities having roles for healing and connecting.

Danielle says there is a unity in viewing the collective trauma that has a way of stripping shame of its power; the shame for the trauma you’ve experienced as an individual. Shame weds us to beliefs about ourselves and communities. There is something powerful about coming together.

Michael notes it is a different perspective to think of trauma starting from the collective standpoint. To figure out how to deal with rules and shame with the collective in mind is a different emphasis and a different way of seeing trauma.

What Maggie likes best is about this new way of looking at trauma is that it is expanding outside of ourselves. There is a tendency in Western Culture to think of only how we are individually impacted by trauma, and certainly trauma is an individually felt and embodied experience. But to open it up to a broader, bigger felt experience of connectedness shows our beautiful interconnected nature as human beings.

Maggie as a witness to Michael’s offerings on aapi.liturgy sees how he has named and acknowledged some of the common felt experiences of the Asian community. His recent post, “Appeasement and apology have been too much a part of our daily liturgy. These are our survival instincts. The new AAPI liturgy will be full of quiet strength and holy wonder.” She says it is a way name and reclaim, and move forward the experience of Asian Americans.

Michael recalls a book his professor wrote called “At the Margins: Asian American Theology.” It is a theology of liminality and being caught in the margins. One part that Michael got stuck on in the book was that his professor was a US Citizen for 50 years and still felt unwelcome; Like an outsider, he was still needing to defer and appease those around him. This resonated so much with Michael’s own experience; The most current iteration for himself was the experience of volunteering to be a baseball coach. He was the first one to respond to the email and the commissioner made him the head coach. Immediately Michael said no, he could not take on the role. And feeling like he still has that voice of “sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.” Or “Don’t take up space.”  “I’m not going to get in your way.” “I’m not a problem.” It is such a survival technique to not be a destructive presence and there is also something honorable in pursing harmony and equanimity and peace, but Michael asks, at what cost?

Danielle says she imagines that the minute you don’t enter the space with appeasement and apology, there is disruption for dominate culture folks.

Michael responds, “Yeah absolutely and then we have to decide. And typically we haven’t been in power, we’ve been more at the margins, at the periphery of society, organizations, the church… Then we’re gonna decide how much we’re gonna bear.”

Danielle names that as soon as the disruption happens, then there is so much more that follows if you then additionally say something.

In a previous Christian ministry employer, the role of director of cross cultural ministry, people would only last a year or two. Michael stayed for five years. A lot of that time he said was appeasement and sometimes apology. He said, we tend to ‘eat it.”

Danielle said that someone once asked her, “how much sin do you want to eat from a white folk?” And that stuck with her because sometimes we (as People of Color) just do. We eat the sin of white folk.

Michael said it is a continual calculation of the costs of do I want to stay in this context or be ostracized, marginalized, off on the periphery again?

Danielle named that even as we talk, the center is still whiteness. Even the conversation, it is still whiteness at the center. She asked Maggie what she is thinking.

Maggie said she is pondering the cost for Michael to show up in spaces and bring the fullness of who he is. First in the very public space of his work on the AAPI.liturgy and but also in the pursuit of his PhD.

Michael says his PhD cohort is another space where he is the only Asian: Amidst a beautiful diverse group of black and white, the only Asian face. He has learned to try to advocate for himself and his people in ways that feel potentially costly. He said it is a safe group, but there is the fear that is still there for him. 

With respect to instagram, he does not feel he is in danger. Michael wonders who is this for? He reminds himself when posting, if it can be of meaning for other Asian Americans trying to figure out their identity in God, then beautiful. But is it also for him. He has to ask himself, “How much teaching do I want to do? How much work do I want to do in explaining?” Overall he feels that if there are a number of people who are benefiting, and it is putting words and language to help move them through trauma and bring healing, to be seen and heard, then it’s worth the cost.

Michael is curious about where we grew up and our experiences of Asian Americans, the narratives that came out in our growing up. Part of what he is doing on the instagram account is trying to name some of these stereotypes and narratives and then deal with them, engage them. “Asians are good at math,” so the wrote a post about math.

Maggie has grown up in the PNW and has had many interactions with Asians, but one of the posts that he put about Asians being silent hit her: “To be Asian American is to be silent. Silence has been both our greatest feat and our worst fear. Silence grounded in mindfulness brings unflinching fortitude. Silence driven by fear leads to an even deeper shame.” When Maggie thinks about interacting with Asians as a child she does think of that stereotype of Asians being quiet. And into her high school years, one of her best friends was half Chinese and she was not quiet at all. She recalls, “We tore it up.. We would have a good time and were kinda wild.” It was interesting because when she read the post she had the sense that it was true but that she didn’t even know where that stereotype came from (and certainly didn’t fit her experience with her friend). She asks, what is the history behind the idea of Asian’s being silent?

She mentioned that Michael, in advocating for himself to his PhD cohort, suggested they watch the PBS documentary called “Asian Americans.” Maggie went and watched the first (of six) parts as well. Being from the Northwest there is so much Asian American History here, she says. When her family moved to Bainbridge Island she learned about the Japanese internment. One of the properties that her parents were looking at purchasing was previously a strawberry farm owned by Japanese farmers who were interned during WWII. To know the history of the land, that two irrigation ditches went unkept for so long that they connected at the ends forming a long lake with a long skinny island in the middle, was to have a deep sadness. She remarks that Bainbridge Island has done a phenomenal job of marking the history with a Japanese Internment Memorial (Nidoto Nai Yoni - Let It Not Happen Again) and also at the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. She recalls a haunting set of pictures (in the museum) of the school house on Bainbridge the year before internment and the year after — a beautiful mix of diverse face before and the next year completely white.

Michael feels like he wants to make a pilgrimage to Angel Island, outside of San Francisco. He didn’t learn about it’s history until recently.

Danielle says they could have a whole conversation about Asian and Latinx history. She recently had her DNA done. She recalls a cousin who often received derogatory remarks about her eyes, racial slurs of Asian eyes. Her family would always say no, there is no Asian ancestry. Danielle would think that the cousin did indeed look like she could be Asian. [She mentions the book Brown Theology by Robert Chao Romero]. Well her DNA confirmed she (Danielle) does have a percentage of heritage from the Northern Philippines. She said, so it is there! Besides that, her DNA is a tour of colonialism. She said, that’s a part of me and she wonders if what’s in our bones, what we’re attracted to, where we feel at home, is in the DNA. She gravitates towards her Asian brothers and sisters. She has always felt a kinship. Maybe there is some evidence.

Michael says, yes the Chinese diaspora is vast! There could be more intersectionality between Latinx and AAPI communities. It would be worth doing a bit more research.

Michael says AAPI, the term, has become a demographic term. It was invented in the 1960s as an activist term for Chinese and Japanese people join in during the Civil Rights movement. It was so they could have a collective term to take up this movement towards justice. But it has become a bland and/or meaningless term because Asian Americans are so diverse with something like 58 countries represented and just as many languages.

And so it starts with the collective and then moves into particularity.

Join us for part two...

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.