disappointment, postponement and continuing the path

Yesterday, after tough conversations with my sister and thinking deeply about where my life is at, I wrote to my undergraduate professor, Dave Stanley, and said:

Hi Dave,

I'm so sorry that I had you working on my letter of rec. I kept pushing myself to apply this year (for law school) but, after many conversations with current law students and a few law professors, I have decided to postpone my application until this fall, Fall 2010.
My LSAT score was low (145 out of 180) and I am going to retake the preparation class and retake the test.
I do want you to still write a letter of rec for me in September 2010.

I am very sorry for putting this extra stress on you Dave. Thank you for all your support throughout my attempt.
I look forward to your continued support this year and, together, we will make attending law school a reality for me!!!

Dear readers,

I apologize for not writing on my blog. I thank readers for congratulating me on taking the LSAT and wishing me luck on my score. I thank all of you for your encouragement.

I am not applying this year. My score of 145 is below the average. I was going to apply anyway to a program that would accept my score because I didn't want to repeat the grueling and painful experience of retaking the preparation classes, studying constantly at the library and the anxiety of retaking the test. I really wanted to avoid all this.

I spoke with a recent graduate of UCLA Law School who was a student representative at UCLA's Law School Admissions Committee and now working as a Public Defender. He challenged me to take the LSAT again to improve my score. A current Boalt Hall Law School student advised me to retake the test too and to apply no later than Thanksgiving. I didn't want to hear this advice.

My mind was preoccupied with my apps. I worked on my personal statement and applications but I didn't feel inspired and motivated anymore. I hit a brick wall with trying to finish my personal statement. I couldn't even write on my blog. I felt very disappointed with myself in receiving a low test score and I couldn't look beyond my disappointment. I started to feel depressed and became very angry and put my anger unfairly on my sister and my relationship with my girlfriend.

I did not spend time with myself to think about my disappointment, to evaluate what happened. I did not thank and acknowledge myself for working hard and earnestly. I judged myself harshly and buried myself in work.

I received a consulting job in late October to help City of Oakland planners to designate neighborhoods in order for these neighborhoods to more readily receive regional funding. Although the research for this project spanned two months, it took me three days to finish the document I was contracted for. I marveled at how fast it took me to finish this City of Oakland document compared to the months upon months I have taken on my personal statement.

Throughout this time, I insisted on applying to law school anyway. I felt that I had to be committed to my goal to apply in 2009 for the 2010 school year since that was my original plan.

On Friday, my sister Fui and I were driving to the KPFA Community Radio Station to do an interview on the Hard Knock Radio Show about an anthology we are helping to edit called, "Uso's on Freeways: An Anthology of Pacific Island Writers from/in the Continental U.S."

That morning I woke up angry. I didn't know why I was angry, but like many times before, the anger was just there. I felt very uncomfortable with the anger that was in my bones and that filled each cell of my body. I have felt this anger for most of my life. Although it brought great discomfort and hurt, I never talked to anyone about it before.

My sister tried to talk with me about ideas for the radio interview and I found it difficult to just chill out and enjoy myself. I became very critical of her suggestions and I exuded uncomfortable vibes.

On our drive to the KPFA studio, a feeling of great anger came upon me as I sat next to my sister. My sister felt it and could not understand why I would be so angry at her, especially when she secured this interview for the anthology and treated me kindly. She began to cry and she postponed the interview because we weren't in good terms. She told me to go home, but then called me a few minutes later to talk about what happened. I immediately changed my attitude because I could see how I hurt my sister. For the first time in my life, I took the anger that was inside me and held it outside of myself so I could see it, so I could look at it as something that I had carried but I do not have to carry for the rest of my life.

Fui asked us to try to solve our differences, particularly since we promised my son Niko that we were going to watch Avatar 3D for the first time that night. We didn't want to create family drama for Niko, and also, for ourselves.

I told Fui about the great anger that I carry. It was the first time I had talked about the anger itself. An immense anger that is a burden on me but that I have carried since I was a young child. Fui (and Elisa, my girlfriend, has said this too) said that the anger I carried helped me to survive in the past, but it now hindered my development to find joy and happiness.

I looked at the gigantic, calloused and hardened ball of anger I held away from myself and let it go. It melted like snow and flew away like dust. The memory and habits of the anger I carried for so long, returns many times and I have to put it outside of myself again and give it to the universe.

In my conversation with my sister, I found out that my ball of anger was full of my disappointment of my low LSAT score and the fact that I didn't apply to law school this year. I wept out loudly and horrific screams wailed out of my mouth as I came to terms with the reality of my law school process. I received a low LSAT and I did not apply to law school in 2009.

The reality of my law school applications is also the reality of what happened with the rest of my life, because my law school application does not exist in itself, it is part of me and I am part of a family, a community and a world.

As I wept in disappointment and shame for not having applied to law school in 2009, I cried out angrily and said, "I'd give up coming out queer this minute if Harvard accepted me right now." When I feel great anger boil in me, I blame and become distrustful of things I love the most and those who love me the most, like my sister, my family, and, as I cursed out, my girlfriend.

Would I really give up loving and accepting my queer self, which is the difficult work I did in 2009, for a place at a law school?

My commitment to become a lawyer for disenfranchised people and things comes from having grown up as a kid who honed a keen understanding of power disparities from being treated unfairly and silenced by people who were uncomfortable with my "weirdness."

I am humbled that I will become a queer lawyer one day.

Lawyers are legal advocates for people and things. On my journey to become a lawyer one day, I must be my strongest advocate. That's why I must set aside the ball of anger that has festered in my life. I must let go of my anger, which includes my shame, my embarrassment and my disappointment. All these things stop me on my tracks from continuing to reach my goal.

I am applying for law school again. I learned many things from my first attempt that were important lessons. I also have a bigger and stronger posse to help me on this journey. I thank the members of my posse who are present all the time, in body or spirit, and are committed to seeing this journey through with me.

2010, what a great year to try again for law school!!!

law school workshops for people of color, that's us!!!

For People of Color. Org Law School Workshops

go to forpeopleofcolor.org to register

Tomorrow, October 10, 2009 (I'm going to this one!)

8:30-4:00pm.

UC Hastings School of Law

200 McAllister Street

San Francisco, CA. 94102

Saturday, October 17, 2009

8:30-4:00pm.

UC Davis School of Law

King Hall

400 Mrak Hall Drive

Davis, CA. 95616

Saturday, October 24, 2009

12:00-3:00pm.

UC Merced

5200 North Lake Road

Merced, CA. 95343

Halloween is coming up and my friend Tiffany is having another one of those infamous garage parties at her house! For those of us applying for law school this year, Halloween signals, "get your application the f in now!! or you're going to miss out on your top choice schools!"

For prospective law students, we have the people of color law school workshop parties coming up!!! These are the For People of Color.Org (FPOC) workshops where we meet other folks who come from immigrant, poor and working class families and families of color and we listen to motivational speeches and make new contacts and new friends. We also get free lunches!

My first FPOC workshop was in LA in April. I was blown away by Anthony Solano's, FPOC's founder, speech. This Latino man, who grew up in East LA and was the first to graduate from college in his family, breaks it down for us. Through his speech, Anthony told me that I have a place in the courts and legal field in this country and in my homeland of Tonga as an attorney or a judge, not just as an accused prisoner. Me, a Tongan queer woman, who finally finished her undergraduate degree at the age of 32.

I attended an FPOC workshop a few weeks ago at Berkeley's Boalt Hall. Same thing. I received the courage to keep going on my application and I witnessed that thousands of students are going through the same struggle that I am. I love seeing older people like myself at these workshops because I can relate to what they're going through in this process. Young, traditional age students always seek me out and ask for my advice and I pretend to be wise.

If you're thinking of going into law and wondering about law school, come join the party. They say you're suppose to register but they don't take names at the door or the lunch lines.

This is the party to go to this fall people! No heart aches at this party, only motivation and healing to get you going on your goal to become a lawyer!!!

life after taking the LSAT

Wow! I feel so much weight taken off since I took the LSAT on Saturday. For the newcomers to this blog, the LSAT is the admittance test for law school and it can determine which law schools will accept you. But, there are other factors too that can be just as important.

It's the Monday after and I'm so relieved that my relationship with LSAT is over. I sat closest to the door at the testing center and when the folks who administered the test excused us, I flew out the doors faster than Flash Gordon. I was like, "f lsat!!!!"

Since March, my life was devoted to LSAT. Even when I wasn't doing logic games and logical reasoning problems, and partying instead with my friends, my mind and my heart was with LSAT. Dramatically true. I posted my ideal score on my bedroom wall as my daily affirmation. The heavy LSAT prep books cluttered my room. I stepped on used and unused answering sheets on my way to the bathroom. In the recent past, I loved watching videos, but when I started preparing for the LSAT, my appetite for watching films waned. I even went to the video store today to rent the Che movie with Benicio Del Toro that I told myself I would enjoy watching when the LSAT was over, but, I held the video in my hand and then put it back and walked out of the store. After meeting LSAT, some of my hobbies and patterns , like avid video watching, have changed.

There's a tight knot, right at the top of my spine at the back of my neck, that, when I press on it with my finger, I yelp in pain. I felt it yesterday, Sunday, right after the Saturday LSAT test. I feel like I was waiting for the Blue Line at State Street and the train hit me up against the wall. My body feels bruised, fatigued. All the excitement in me burned dry. I feel crabby and grouchy. I wish I could sleep for a whole week. Maybe I can. My post-LSAT blues. I am relieved I took the test but all the stress and anxiety I had all these months are manifesting as illness.

All I got for taking the LSAT was this lousy sore throat and a cough.

Now's the next round in the law school apps process: getting the applications in. I'm now working on my personal statement, addenda, resume, diversity statement and I'm gathering my letters of recommendations from professors who I know for sure like me and don't mind lying about my abilities. Hehe.

The personal statement, that's what's as important as the LSAT score. The personal statement, I've been told, is what can save me and get me into a top school, although my grades and LSAT scores aren't perfect.

An open letter to Ellie, the leader of the Pacific Island sisters in Chowchilla Women's Prison

Dear Ellie,

Wassup, howz it going sis?

What a great opportunity it was to finally meet you last week! I felt that I knew you already when we met because a photo of you and other women in Chowchilla that Maryann sent us is up in our kitchen. We show that beautiful photograph to everyone who comes to our house.

Our homies in the photographs I sent you have seen your photo and now they connect your photo to the stories Fui and I tell them about Chowchilla.

The program you and the women set up was beautiful Ellie! The dance performances showed that you practiced hard and the bright costumes were well coordinated. Those of us from the outside were amazed at how y'all gave us so much: so much joy, so much beauty in the dances, costumes and music; and so much courage in sharing your knowledge with us.

I thought of how you spent hours together trying to remember those Samoan, Hawaiian and Tahitian songs and dance movements. You all were on your own, depending on memory from perhaps dancing at church and with sisters and cousins, moving your bodies to a familiarity you grew up with that may not be available anymore since you entered prison. When Fiji's E Papa started playing and the young butch black sister D softly sang along on the microphone, while another sister performed a beautiful hula, I began to cry and I had to look at the floor.

I was overwhelmed with the memories and the meanings that surfaced as this Maori song played with all of us sitting in that hall, "E papa waiari/ taku nei mahi/ taku nei mahi/ he tuku roimata." When I was a child in Tonga Ellie, we learned this song in class 2, when I was about 7, and we did a stick dance to it. My aunt Salote, who passed away when I was a teenager, helped my mom to make me and Fui's dance costumes. I think of my aunt Salote, who cussed a lot and loved us unconditionally. She passed away due to cancer, and my dearest cousin Hiu, her eldest son, still a teenager then, was left to care for his three younger siblings.

E Papa is like my family's theme song because it's about a hard life. When it comes to heart aches and difficulties Ellie, I think that you and I, and our sisters in Chowchilla, have a lot in common. E Papa will be our song. It's our Pacific Island/ Oceania family theme song. In the beauty of it's storytelling, it reveals the heartbreak we have lived and the love we hold onto to live this life. I don't speak Maori but I know Tongan and I can pick up the essence of the meaning of the song. This is my translation of its essence: e papa waiari/ my love/ taku nei mahi, taku nei mahi/ there is only sadness/ he tuku roimata/ no end to the tears.

E aue, aue/ oh lord! oh lord!/ ka mate ahau/ i will perish/ e hine hoki mai ra/ woman come back home to me.

When I heard that song at Chowchilla Ellie, my heart jumped. I was lifted back to Salt Lake City, hanging out with my oldest brother, drinking and playing cards, and chopping onions and cilantro to garnish the tacos his wife prepared. Before the tacos turned cold, a threat of infidelity would escalate to the cops knocking on the doors. I was back in Glendale, Salt Lake City, huddled in blankets during winter in yet another house we were squatting at with my homegirl Nia, who passed away in a car accident, reading Sonia Sanchez poems. This was before her three boys and my son. In between poems and hits on a joint, Nia would smile and say, "that ones kool."

It reminded me of the time my sister Fui and her ex-husband Mo were living in Sunset in San Francisco. E Papa would be bumping from the speakers of Mo's Ford, while he was driving through the Mission to pick Fui up from work at New College. Niko and I would be along for the ride. All of us would feel safe and proud that our Oceania music was so gorgeous and could evoke so much feeling. On Friday nights, Mo and Fui drank wine and listened to E Papa, talk about Cal football and the Raiders. Now on Friday nights, my sister still drinks wine and while E Papa plays, she feels something that brings her to tears.

E aue, aue, our Oceania music reminds me of this struggle that is life. It is being true to our hearts during the struggle that will deliver us back to our true love, to our true homes. Being true, because it requires us to sit everyday with our ordinary, vulnerable selves, will give us our freedom.

Today I am struggling to write a personal statement for my law school application. I am in the process of applying to law school right now. I get so hard on myself for not being able to write a perfect statement that I give up. The personal statement has to show who I am and why I want to be a lawyer and why I think I will do well at law school. I get so frustrated with having to write about all my failures Ellie that I give up.

Well, this gives me an idea! I will no longer spend all my time explaining about failing high school, failing college, failing jobs, failing relationships.

I'll focus the personal statement on the work I did that led me to envision my becoming a lawyer and focus on the work that I'm currently doing that shows how I will do well in law school. That will be a better way to write my personal statement.

I regret that my sister Fui wasn't able to make the visit to Chowchilla with me. I'll make sure that she will attend all our visits from now on.

Please give our love to all the sisters, including Chi, Good, Carol and Mapa. Tell them that we love them. Thank you so much for the beautiful candy leis!

I will go and visit Sala and get to know her. It was a great opportunity to meet her in San Francisco when she brought all the food for us to take. I hadn't eaten taro and green bananas in a while. Man, that pulu masima (that's what we call salted beef in Tongan) was hella good. I wish Rudy let us know that we could take food so we could've added more to the food Sala brought.

I love you Ellie. Follow the beat of your strong heart.

'Ofa lahi atu,

Loa, Fui and all the homies

getting back on the lsat path

OLO (One Love Oceania, Oceania queer women's group) at San Francisco Dyke March, June 2009. Jean, in the middle, designed and painted this banner.

Displaying this banner in San Francisco, against Prop. 8, was crucial to OLO members. We wanted Pacific Island people to know that it's possible to be against Prop. 8 and still have a PI community behind you, and we wanted mainstream media and the white gay press to see that Pacific Islanders are critical, political people who are also very capable of organizing social justice movements for ourselves and our communities.

It's been a while. I've gotten off the lsat studies and thinking-about-law-school path for over 3 months now. It's almost September, the month when most law schools begin accepting law school applications. September, the month that I envisioned turning in my own application.

I didn't take the June 7th lsat exam because my score was still low. And I haven't studied since June 7th either.

June and July were turbulent, scary and exciting months. There were the events of my sister and her husband, my roommates, separating. I worked together with friends to create a Bay Area Oceania queer women's organizing group called OLO, One Love Oceania. A lot of our organizing required eating, drinking and partying together to create support and trust. I attended some queer women of color events that challenged and shifted the heteronormative narratives I had for my own sexuality and the ways that I identified myself as a woman. These included Pride week events, the Queer Women of Color Film Festival and events that OLO organized.

At the Queer Women of Color Film Festival in San Francisco, I met a queer Chicana woman who I am in an intimate relationship with now. This is my first intimate relationship with a woman but I feel that I've known this way of loving and living all my life. To me, being a woman who is in love with another woman and the everyday acts of caring and being responsible for each other, is what I've learned and practiced my whole life as a loyal confidant to my sister Fui and a friend to my sisters Moana and Amelia; befriending and taking care of my brother David when he was young; being a daughter of my father Tangata and a daughter of my mother Litia; being a hard working and chaste wife to my ex-husband Filipe; struggling hard to be a decent caretaker to my son Nikolasi. I know the everyday survival of queer, gay, dyke loving well. I've been fighting to love and live on my own terms since I was a kid growing up in over developed Tonga and Mormon Utah.

The London Missionary Society and its Wesleyan counterparts, the trillion-dollar-profiting Mormon Church, prevailing White Supremacy and omnipotent Patriarchy could not kill the dyke in me. I wasn't studying my lsat in June 2009, but I reclaimed my queer, beautiful, handsome dyke self! If I can reclaim my dyke self as a dyke who spent almost 40 years growing up as a heterosexual woman on this planet, as a Wesleyan girl and woman in Tonga and a young Mormon woman in Utah and can still be humble and courageous enough to accept queer love, then I will, steadily, one day at a time, turn in strong, solid law school applications.

I would not have been able to recognize this love if it were not for the strength of my sister Fui, my son Niko, my sisters Moana and Amelia, my dear OLO homegirl/boys, my fellow thunder beings Tree and Venus and facebook friends Luisa and Sangeeta, my mother's relentless joy and hard work in challenging the status quo although she feels defeated today, the spirit of my grandmothers and grandaunts who have past, my father's allegiance to the arts and creativity, and that matter-of-fact dyke who follows her intuition, Elisa.

I wish my relatives and Tongan colleagues, both Wesleyan and Mormon, could be shocked by this, but they've known I've been pequeerlier all my life. I feel that for most folks, they're relieved that I've returned to myself. I called my mother and told her about my girlfriend. She was "very happy that you're happy." She said, "So you don't want to be a lawyer any more?"

at QWOCMAP picnic. laura, elisa's sister; loa; elisa; emily

Part II. My first visit to San Quentin State Prison

Part II of Part II

There are so many constraints to saying what I want to say in writing. I have been blogging this post for forever without ever getting to the part of how it changed my life, again, to meet brothers in prison.

How do I write about sitting by a Samoan prisoner, with soft eyes and a soft smile, I don't even know his name, for about 30 minutes, mostly in silence. The only thing he reveals to me is that he would like to get a college degree at San Francisco State because they have a re-entry program with former prisoners. Then he shook his head and said that he probably couldn't do it because he heard it's too hard. He is serving 2 four year terms.

I see N, a Samoan reading a newspaper. I go up to him and tell him I'm Tongan. We talk and talk and laugh loudly and happily. The other prisoners smile at us and laugh along. I tell N that I want to be a lawyer. He tells me, "Fuck that, become a judge, that's what matters." "OK," I say, "I'll do that." As I am about to leave, I thank him for the good time we had talking, and he gives me a blessing. "I see you have a good heart Loa and you care about people. You can get what you want because you're kind." I thank him and give him an orange (then I remember that we were instructed not to give things to prisoners or take things) and he takes it thankfully. N likes to call me "Loa." I like being in a new place where people call me by my name. I feel very comfortable here.

S., the Cambodian prisoner, meets me for the first time and tells me about these people called Tongans who can be deported back to Tonga so they don't have to live in this hell hole of San Quentin. He tells me that he wishes he were Tongan so he can take off instead of staying in prison. I think to myself, everyone would like a choice.

I enjoyed spending time with S too. I think, "Cambodians are like Pacific Islanders." When I talk to S, men walk by say that S is a faggot and because this is a health fair, he should check out the HIV/AIDS table. S just smiles and continues talking about hoping to get deported back to Cambodia, a place he left more than twenty years ago.

I felt comfortable in San Quentin, particularly surrounded by colored people. I live in neighborhoods like this and choose to live in neighborhoods of color, poor places, with immigrants, like myself, and queers for the rest of my life.

The prisoners were very courteous and respectful towards us.

The Samoans told me that some Tongans, new arrivals, were held in H Block, which was being searched. H Block is a part of San Quentin for prisoners only staying a couple of months. We were in the lifers section, men serving sentences that required years to life.

San Quentin is a microcosm of a working class, poor neighborhood. There are men of color everywhere and poor whites. There are immigrants. There are groups of men organizing for prisoner rights and men joining programs to improve themselves and to increase their chances of getting out.

H. is leaving San Quentin in one month. He is being released to a half way house in Oakland. Every prisoner I talk to wants to be free but they are also afraid that the outside world may not be welcoming of them and will not offer assistance to a brother getting out of lockdown. Re-entry is constantly on the prisoners' minds.

We hope H will get out in time for Eddy's 40th birthday party which is a celebration of the struggle to live a dignified life for former prisoners.

In Tongatapu, the main island of Tonga, there is one prison, Huatolitoli. In Tonga there wasn't a prisoner problem because there weren't prisons built to be filled. We didn't have to manufacture criminals to fill up the prisons we built and expected to make profits from them, for generations to come. But Tonga has changed today.

The Tongan government is currently manufacturing criminals by being a puppet of the colonial governments and by privatizing public works. A perfect example of the Tongan government manufacturing criminals was its choice to ignore the people's call to institutionalize an elected government. In 2005, beginning with the demonstration in May to stop the privatization of electricity, there was mass mobilization for the government to change their system of mis-representation. This led to the Public Servant Strike. Despite Tongan people mobilizing across traditional lines that had not been crossed before, like Nobles and tu'a coming together, elite Tongans and Tongans surviving on a subsistence livelihood coming together, the Tongan government refused to give full government representation to the people.

This refusal of the Tongan government to dialogue and to implement what the people are begging for to better their lives, creates a perfect division. A dichotomy that is separate as night and day. So instead of creating a partnership with the people and blurring divisions, like the Public Servant Strike did, the government's policies and the media they are embedded with, call people who do not question government policies "good and outstanding citizens" and the people who question the government are called "criminals."

In the Nov. 16, 2006 Riot, everyone who questioned the government, even long time advocates for peace, were criminalized and were ushered to court by the government who accused them of being criminals. All the media that questioned the government was criminalized and shut down or heavily fined.

At this time, the Tongan government had manufactured too many criminals for their own military and police to handle. The government was all of a sudden alive to the possibility that the Tongan people were angry and that they were serious when they demonstrated and sent petitions to the Palace and Parliament.

The Tongan government immediately gave full power to Australian and New Zealand forces, with the aid of U.S. weapons, to come and declare Marshall Law in Tonga and to take care of the criminals. Our own Tongan soldiers and policemen beat and mutilated their own brothers and threatened their own sisters under the command of colonial military.

The criminals being our young Tongan boys, our Tongan men and our Tongan sisters.

'Oiaue Tonga e.

The issue of incarceration does not begin only when you're in lockdown or, as the brothers at San Quentin know so well, it doesn't end after you're let out.

Where do our prisons begin, what leads to the making of a prison, how am I contributing to

a creation of a prison and the criminalization of people, both women, men and children.

We each have to stop contributing to the building of prisons, the making of something to be so different and separate from something else that one can be said to be good and the other bad.

I am grateful that I wrote this blog because I learned that my commitment to question and to challenge the way we criminalize each other started long before I joined EPOCA and worked with former prisoners in Massachusetts.

In finding myself writing about Tonga, my homeland, the place of my birth and my childhood, I realized that i learned about fighting against systems of imprisonment since I was a girl child in a Tongan family, going to Tongan churches, obeying the laws of the Tongan government, listening to Tongan teachers.

I realize that it is in Tonga that I experienced my first prison and I have been fighting ever since to be free. This brings home the truth, that, like it or not, because we all know how fcking hard this is, it is also in Tonga that I must do a lot of the work to free myself and I must work with Tongan brothers and sisters.

I left some of my heart and soul in San Quentin Prison. I left it there for my homies under lockdown, and for some who, perhaps are custodians, cooks, wardens, teachers.

But I also left a little of myself there to get acquainted with the place, because with the commitment I have to working with others to change the systems that imprison us, I most surely will be spending time in prison myself. This is a knowing I have come to understand and accept.

Eddy Zheng signs off his emails with the salutation "Breathin." After going to San Quentin and feeling the neighborhood and talking to the brothers there, I get what he means now.

Living is a breath at a time, sometimes the breathing is so hard to come by, but steadily, it gets easier, to breathe.

I look at life a lot different now after leaving San Quentin. I only say good things about the lsat now and look forward to the opportunity to take the test.

Breathin,

Loa

Part I of Part II

I've been sick since Sunday. I'm always tired and I have a runny nose. I know it's from not having a coat or an umbrella during the San Quentin visit. We were outside in the yard talking to the men for many hours and when we were inside, my clothes were soaking wet from the rain.

I'm missing my lsat practice test 3 tonight but I will take it at the library tomorrow morning. I'm staying home to finish up my blog and sleep early.

Sun picked Ben, Kasi and I up at the Mcarthur Bart Station. We drove up to San Rafael, the town where San Quentin sits by the sea. The literature calls San Quentin Prison's location a "coveted real estate seaside property."

I asked S, a Cambodian prisoner, where his cell was located in this huge lockdowned city. He said, pointing, that his cell overlooked the water. He would easily trade his coveted seaside view for the streets of his hometown any day.

San Quentin Prison is a city on a hill. Like any city, there are thousands of workers. Right now, there is a hospital being built. That will bring a thousand more employees.

In our way in and out of San Quentin, I observed that there are many people of color who are employed in the prison. There were many Asian employees who carried large lunch boxes. Many of the guards inside the prison were Latinos, Blacks and Whites.

When you walk through the front gates up to the prison itself, you see the Pacific Ocean to your left side, dotted with guard towers. It is a startling scene of the strength of nature and the authority of men, laying bare, uneasily together.

As we entered the prison, after three check-ins, we walked into a gigantic neighborhood encased in high walls. We walked through a courtyard of small offices, one with a sign that read, "Native American Friends House" and class rooms with signs that read, "Chapel."

We walked into an open area that reminded me of the fields that Niko played baseball at. This was the yard the fair was going to take place at; there were other yards in the prison. There were white men playing tennis. An elder black man, sitting on a bench, filled the yard with a blues song from his trumpet. We passed two young Latino brothers benching weights. A black man was standing at the edge of the grass, mumbling words to the wind. There were many elderly men. The majority of the men in the prison were in their thirties and forties. There was a very young Latino brother who spiced up his prison garb with a gorgeous light green stone hanging from a chain around his neck.

It was 10:00 am on Friday and it was raining on and off. We were told that the amount of prisoners attending the health fair was small compared to the huge crowds out in the yard on Saturdays. A lot of the prisoners were at their 9-5 jobs, at programs and many wanted to avoid the cold weather and the rain.

There were tables lined up in the yard for each group to use. Behind us was a chain linked fence where we posted our sign, "Asian Prisoner Support Group."

Our table was across from the most popular attraction, the chiropractors. This meant that every participant had to walk by our table. That's how we talked or said hi to mostly everyone in the yard that day. That's how we met up with Asian and Pacific Island prisoners. That's how black brothas engaged Sun in a discussion about Korean history and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. And as they were talking,

something happened that made all the prisoners crouch down. It was a drill to count the prisoners in the yard and to differentiate them from the volunteers. This happened every 30 minutes out on the yard. If you were walking, you would stop and squat. If you're talking to a friend, you both would squat and continue your conversation. If you are a prisoner who refuses to squat down, you are shot standing.

Part I. My first visit to San Quentin State Prison

May 1st! I was hella excited for this day! Yes, it was International Workers Day, which has also become Immigrant Rights Day! And, it was the day that I was going to visit San Quentin State Prison with APSC, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, for a big health fair. We didn't go as health workers but as prisoner support advocates.

We were part of a larger group of volunteers that also included the Black Nurses Association, chiropractors, yoga instructors, health practitioners from various hospitals, state health department representatives from Alameda County, and med. students from UCSF. Folks from a Latino Oakland based HIV/Aids education and prevention organization were sporting Super Hero Condom t-shirts, that I mistook for the Ghostbuster movie icon. Alfredo, an adorable member of their crew corrected me, "No, no, this is not Casper." "It's been a really long time," I admitted, "I forgot what those were."

I wish I had some photos to post of our visit but we couldn't take cameras into this maximum security neighborhood.

The group I went with, APSC, is a prisoner advocacy grassroots group that meets in Oakland. The group developed out of Asian activists organizing support to release Eddy Zheng, a Chinese American man who spent 21 years in prison, including almost two decades in San Quentin.

Eddy went to prison when he was 16 years old for kidnapping with intent to rob an immigrant Chinese family who owned a prosperous store in Oakland's Chinatown, and was released when he was 35. In prison, Eddy received his GED and an associates degree. He became a poet and organized a poetry slam. He was put in "the hole," solitary confinement, for rallying prisoners to petition for an Asian studies course to be included in the college curriculum. He self-published his own writings in a zine that he circulated in and outside of prison. Under lockdown, Eddy became engaged with the world around him, beyond his maximum security neighborhood. He sent writings to be published in newspapers, kept a blog (www.eddyzheng.blogspot.com), joined several self-improvement classes in San Quentin, conducted radio interviews, conducted workshops for youth, wrote curriculum for youth education and built allies by corresponding with poets, politicians, lawyers, students, scholars and activists. While serving his time for the atrocious crime he committed, he felt that the biggest step towards retribution to the people he hurt was to change his own life.

After serving a decade in San Quentin, Eddy applied for parole. He was denied over and over. The Bay Area community, led by the Asian community, mobilized to support him and that's how APSC was born.

Eddy was finally released from prison only to be transferred to Yuba County Jail as an immigrant detainee. As a green card holder who was convicted of a felony, Eddy was held for deportation to China, a country that he had not visited since he was a child. He was released in 2007 while the U.S. government continues to process his deportation order.

Eddy is now working with a non-profit for youth in San Francisco and actively shares the story about his transformation with youth groups across the East Bay. Whenever China and the U.S. processes Eddy's deportation order, Eddy will be removed from the Bay Area and taken to China.

In February, my sister Fui forwarded me a Cal Berkeley email about an upcoming lecture at Boalt Hall Law School. The title was "Deporting our Souls: Values, Morality and Immigration Policy." The email explained that the lecture would feature legal scholar Bill Hing, talking about the U.S. government's practice of deporting permanent residents who were convicted of felonies, back to countries where they don't have family or community support.

I thought of Tongan American brothers who are deported to Tonga after they served their time in U.S. prisons. For the majority of these Tongan American men, being forced to return to Tonga and to leave their families and systems of support in the U.S. is devastating, and many men commit suicide in Tonga. It has to be understood that these men already served their sentences in U.S. prisons for the crimes they committed. They are only sent to Tonga because the current U.S. immigration laws, in compliance with the Tongan government, require that they be sent there.

Under Bill Hing's biography in the email, was the second speaker's bio. This man's name was Eddy Zheng. I read about Eddy's pending deportation to China and his 20 years in incarceration. I recognized that Eddy and I are around the same age. I thought, "Wow, what does a Chinese American prisoner look like?" I had never met one before.

My brother-in-law Mo, who is also interested in attending law school, and I attended the lecture together.

It was a very compelling talk. Bill Hing was a very knowledgeable and caring professor who started by telling Boalt Hall law students and the larger Cal student body that they're really missing out by not protesting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan like he and his colleagues did when he was a young Boalt law student protesting the Vietnam War. "We shut this place down," he told us passionately, "You all are missing out on a really great time." And then Eddy spoke.

Eddy was amazing! He was well versed in laws pertaining to prisoners, immigration policies, the economic effects of globalization and gave thoughtful responses to questions from the audience. I saw that Eddie, having spent 20 years in prison, took on the persona of his maximum security neighborhood. He had a particular swagger that a Chinese man can only adopt from living day to day among black men. When he spoke there were detectable cadences of ebonics, street Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, etc. What does a Chinese American prisoner look like? A Chinese American prisoner looks a bit like everyone else he is in prison with.

We weren't able to talk to Eddy after his lecture because we had to be home when Niko came back from school.

I returned home from seeing Eddy inspired to begin a Prisoner Support group for Tongan and other Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area.

Two weeks after this lecture, I volunteered at a workshop that Youth Court in Oakland was hosting. At the lunch line, I recognized Eddy Zheng standing next to me. He's an extremely accessible guy. We talked over our sandwiches and I expressed to Eddy my desire to join and learn from prisoner support groups in the Bay Area. Eddy invited me to the next prisoner support meeting and that's how I became part of an Asian prisoner support group.

It hasn't been easy being a member of an Asian organization. This Asian prisoner support group does not use "Pacific Islander" in its name and explicitly states that it is an Asian prisoner support group. They provide support for Asian prisoners, but they also provide support for non Asian prisoners, including Latinos, Whites, African Americans and Pacific Islanders.

As many Pacific Islanders have confronted and experienced in working under the U.S. government rubric of API, Asian Pacific Islander, that the "Pacific Islander" part is not taken seriously and not given full representation. API organizations serve Asian communities and do not address the particularities and complexities of Pacific Island communities. The API rubric can never adequately represent Pacific Islanders. It is important to have organizations and government and private funding for Asian people. It is just as important to have organizations and funding for Pacific Island people. There are movements led by Pacific Island activists that call to stop the

use of the API label because Pacific Islanders are silenced and invisible under it. These movements have fought for the inclusion of the "Hawaiian Native or other Pacific Islander" category in the race sections of public applications. I feel much more comfortable checking this box. There are no limits to the possibilities of challenging census makers and race cartographers about who we are and what we need for the survival of our people.

The members of this Asian prisoner support group are Asian folks who are incredibly committed, intelligent, experienced, educated and enthusiastic. Although I had a great time at the first meeting I attended, I went home deciding that I would stop going and spend my energies on working with Pacific Islanders instead. I felt resentful that I was the only Tongan in a room of Asians who were always talking about API, Asian Pacific Island work, yet they weren't working with Tongans, Samoans, Hawaiians, Fijians, Maoris, Chammoru, etc. I thought, "Hell, I'll do "real" PI work by soliciting Pacific Islanders to begin a PI prisoner support group."

However, I was still on the group's listserv and I read how these Asian folks were trying hard to help Asian prisoners, and non-Asians, including Pacific Islanders in prisons. I started to cool my anger and to view these Asian activists, like the prisoners and ex-prisoners at EPOCA in Worcester, Massachusetts, as potential teachers and essential allies.

And, Fui reminded me, "Loa, go and have that conversation (about APIs and real representation for PIs). It's important that those Asian activists, who sound like great people, understand the issue from your point of view."

So when the April monthly meeting arrived, I caught the bus at San Pablo to Oaktown.

This Asian support group gave me access to visit San Quentin.

There were four of us who went to San Quentin. May 1st was a cold and rainy day. I didn't realize that when I rushed out of the house without a jacket or an umbrella. I was running late and wrongly predicted that the sun would eventually show up for the rest of the May Day celebrations later that day.