When times gets rough, the poets get blogging

It's July 2013, a good time to get back to blogging.

I have to get back to writing in my blog because that's what a poet does, they fucking write in their blogs. They can't just go on walks, smell flowers, write about crushes in their diary, survive oppressive struggles. They must also follow the prompts from their hearts, "Please dear one, spend a few intimate hours with your own words before you stare at facebook."

When the vaka came to Treasure Island, and she stood on the beach with other Pacific Islanders, when she saw the vessels that were once trees, designed in the old ways, crewed with men and women from the islands, come right up to her green Adidas w/ the orange stripes, shy, nervous, she has never been the same.

The vaka came from the Pacific in August 2011. I had to take a break from law school applications. I fell in love with a navigator on the Cook Islands vaka. He said, "I voyaged 10,000 nautical miles to meet you." I have flown to San Diego 5 times, flown to the Solomon Islands and Atiu, his home country, to meet him and this August, in 4 weeks, my son and I will be going to Atiu to live with him for a year.

Although I am still thinking of reapplying to law school, I applied in 2010 and was rejected from all schools I applied to,  I don't want this blog to be preoccupied about going to law school. I do not think about law school everyday anymore. I've moved on. I should change the name of this blog.

I have many stories to tell and my body and my spirit has guided me here to tell them. So here I am again to tell more stories.    
  

Judy Clarke, defense attorney

The shooting in Tucson of the Congresswoman and her constituents, including a nine year old girl, a man just reaching his 30s and elders in their 70s, has brought my family and I to think deeper about our own lives with each other and with the larger communities we belong to. We have gathered in our living room and watched the news reports on my sister's lap top and listened to the events on the radio.

The other event that my family and many of my friends and I are entrenched in is sending in my applications for law school. I have sent out the applications for the particular schools I want to attend, but, since the deadlines are Feb. 1, Feb. 15 and some even in March 1, and since I have an LSAC fee waiver, I am applying to more schools. In this environment of applying to law school and the Tucson shooting, my sister Fui said, "I wonder who is going to defend Loughner...that's going to be an incredible case. You should follow it Loa." That's exactly what I was thinking.

Yesterday, I was surfing the car radio at Hollis and 40th in Emeryville and a law professor at Virginia and Lee School of Law, David Bruck, was being interviewed about his friend, Judy Clarke, the defense attorney asked to represent Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman. What Bruck said about his friend Judy really resonated with why I want to be an attorney and how I want to be an attorney.

Bruck said that Judy is a thorough attorney who has represented Susan Smith, the "crazy welfare mother" in South Carolina who drowned her two children and said they died in a car jacking, the "anti-social weirdo" Unabomber and "terrorist" Moussaoui, the 9-11 Co-conspirator. Most of us automatically decide that these folks rightly so will be executed for their heinous crimes and we go on with life as usual, imagining that the world is now safe. However, it's the job of the defense attorney to stand up and say, "Wait, this is not right, everybody has the right to a fair trail and a lawyer who will fight all the way for them." That's the calling of a lawyer. In hearing Bruck's interview about Judy, that's the kind of lawyer Judy is.

So I googled Virginia and Lee School of Law and found an article on Judy and read up on David Bruck, who works tirelessly to overturn the death penalty in the U.S. I read that Judy Clarke taught a Criminal Practice Simulation Class where students were given different scenarios like a who-done-it murder and an immigration smuggling case that ended with a death. The students then followed through the entire procedure of that case playing particular roles, such as prosecutor or defense. I know that law school will not be that exciting every moment, but such a class sounds amazing and I can't wait to attend such a class!

Judy Clarke was able to get Susan Smith life in prison with a parole coming up in 2024. Clarke's defense of her clients is her direct protest against the practice of the Death Penalty in the U.S. All the litigation fees that Clarke earned from defending Susan Smith, $80,000, was donated to a fund to provide free defense services for poor people like Susan Smith. Clarke saves people from the Death Penalty and also helps people to live better lives while they're alive.

In the interview, Bruck's description of Judy hit home for me. He said, "Judy really believes in the power of the personal story, she strongly believes that everyone has a story and that story is what makes a monster into a human being." As Bruck said that, I also understood that he too believed strongly in the power of the personal story. Wow, all this time I thought that only creative writers and artists care about stories and I thought the legal profession abhors and dismisses personal stories. But here is Judy Clarke and David Bruck, attorneys and law professors who hold a deep underestanding, like creative writers and artists, of knowing that at the end, it is only our personal story that we have, it is our personal story that can save us.

In writing my Personal Statement, Diversity Statement and Addendum, I know first-hand that my personal story is what I have to falala on, to depend on to get to law school. I have a low undergraduate GPA and LSAT score. However, when I wrote my Addendum and saw all the challenges I overcame that brought me to knocking at the doorstep of law schools, I fully accept and have a deep love for my struggle that has brought me this far.

Please check out the link below about Judy Clarke, an attorney I want to emulate.

The Legendary Lawyer Who Will Defend Loughner: Judy Clarke

the golden hour

The LSAT test is coming up on October 9. I feel alright about that. I've taken it once before so I know what to expect. I'm studying harder each day and fighting to stay focused.

There are difficult things happening in my own life right now. My partner and I have been misunderstanding each other for many months now. We were in a place where we couldn't communicate kindly with each other. But I lived 9 years with a husband without ever feeling satisfied with my communication with him. However, my partner said to me, "We're the kind of women that would stay together forever out of loyalty to each other, but I don't want that for you, I don't want that for me. I don't want you to only stay to be kind to me, I want us to be able to get what we want." I thought for a while and said, "You're right, I want to be free, I want you to be free."

We agreed to break up on a Friday night, after a long day at work, and right before taking a LSAT practice test at 10:00 am the next morning. I took the practice test, but by section 3, it was reading comp, I lost my concentration. I just sat at the desk for the rest of the session, wiping my eyes with my fingers.
It's been 11 and a half days.

In the last week, I've reasurred myself, "We'll get back togther." I even call her still and ask if I can go over, like last night. I leave voice messages. In the mornings, I hope she's alright getting to work and hope her day is going well in the afternoon. When the sky is a golden hue in the evening, I think of her, she told me that it's called the golden hour, excellent lighting for photographers and a time we loved walking by the water.
I call to wish her sweet dreams, and leave phone messages.

Since I first shared with her my goal to go to law school, she told me she would help me get there. She provided me with funding for private lessons. She helped to raise my son, practicing trumpet with him, doing math homework, attending school events and being his friend. She drove me to take my first LSAT test last year. I finished the test and walked next door to her job, where she was facilitating a retreat. I was hungry and she saved me two lunch boxes from the retreat.

This is the kind of partner she has been to me.

I was given this meaningful relationship as I prepared for law school last year and as I'm about to turn in my applications this October, my relationship ended. Right now, I think this is unfair to me and her, we don't deserve this kind of sadness and pain. We both gave our all to make this relationship work.

Now I'm going outside. I'll stop by the post office to pay off the other half of rent, very late this month, and going to do more LSAT practice.

I'm re-reading this post as my LSAT buddy Ruby and I are about to time ourselves on logical reasoning.
It's been another week since breaking up and my heart is still raw. Last night, I felt so angry at the pain I'm feeling. I wanted to throw rocks at buildings and break the glass walls of those tall skyscrapers. So I defriended my former partner from my Facebook. Silly, but I had to get some kind of control in this sadness. I thought, "Everything I want from this life, I never get."

I walked to the water this morning and sat under a tree. I was greeted by dragon fly, humming bird, butterfly, egret and seagull was standing calmly on a wooden post, floating on the sea.

Here I am at the library. I was blessed with a beautiful relationship to a wonderful woman for one year, and feeling so shitty today, all I got from this relationship is....staying the path to reach my goal.

Before I go to the market

I must be really nervous about applying for law school because this is my second post in a week.

It's overcast today in Berkeley, which is, I guess, the common weather around here. Just took Niko to school and back home to go grocery shopping. We need some fruits and vegetables.

I'll be going to the library today to do some logic games. At this time before app deadlines, I find the most solace in the library studying and getting my personal statement ready. I feel so sad when I have to leave the library because I know I won't be able to work on my stuff outside the library. I just can't do my studying and applications at home. Perhaps I bring all my anxiety home and leave all my anxiety at home before going to the library. Hmm, I should try to change that. My sister and my son live with me at home so if I'm bringing and leaving a lot of my stress and anxiety for apps here, that must affect them too.

Today, I will be conscious of shedding my anxiety at the door before I enter my apartment. I will enter my apartment with gratitude in my heart for a job and for compassionate co-workers, for the opportunity to apply to law school and to live with a supportive sister and an amazing son. I also think of my good partner who is at her grandmother's funeral in Arizona this week. And my companion of the road towards law school, the fierce Melissa Gant.

As I write, I watch a green hued humming bird flying around the neighbor's cherry tree, picking on the dried pits. Whenever I witness a humming bird with my own eyes, I feel very blessed. In my indigenous knowledge, which I constantly unravel each day, I learned that the humming bird is a manifestation of little people and little animals, like faeries. Part of my ancestry are little people and little animals, faeries. When I witness a humming bird, I am reminded that the ancestors are walking with me in this journey, this difficult journey, and their presence makes me humble and grateful. Their presence gives me compassion and I am reassured that law school is not just a possibility, it's mine to claim because it is a tool I will use to help my community. This is the promise of my ancestors, the little folks.

Applying for Law School

It's September 1st. The stress is settling in. For People of Color.org, the nonprofit org that helps prospective students of color to apply to law school, set the law school application deadline for Oct. 1st. The majority of law schools' deadlines for application are Feb. 1st or 15th, but most schools are rolling admissions, so it's to a prospective student's advantage to apply as early as possible. Many schools open for applications on September 1st.
I'm studying for the LSAT. Revising my personal statement for the 30th time. I need to send drafts of my personal statement to professors I've had so they can send my letters of recommendation to LSDAS. Some schools have extra essays to write beside the personal statement. Trying to start on those. Right now I'm also reviewing schools' applications online and calling their admissions's offices and asking questions about fee waivers for apps and if they're rolling admissions or not, etc. Yale is not rolling admissions. Josie at admissions told me that around Thanksgiving is a good time to turn in Yale applications.
We can use the letter of recommendation questionaire with our letters of rec. It's provided by LSDAS and it's optional. I'm thinking of not using it. I still don't know.

I'm getting short tempered at work. I'd rather study for the LSAT and work on my personal statement then do work right now. Work can wait for one month but I need the pay. It's nice that my son is back at school. We'll both have a lot of homework.

My LSAT score is still not up to what I want, but, unlike last year, I'm not scared of the LSAT and I enjoy studying it. And, I'm improving each day as I study. Right now I'm taking a Kaplan prep course that I won from one of the FPOC events. Although many prospective students told me that Kaplan is useless, I find it helpful, although I must admit that I use the Testing for the Public prep course strategies instead of Kaplan strategies.
Testing for the Public is super amazing, particularly for people of color who are women and queer and immigrants! Hehehe, but for real! It's an LSAT prep course that teaches you how to think like a white straight male who has lived in the U.S. all his life! It doesn't do that by hypnotizing you or make you deny your ancestry and personal histories. It just teaches you strategies that help you to understand how the test makers and those who do well on the tests think. Because, for real, I don't think like that. Unfortunately it's only offered in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But I'm enjoying my Kaplan class. Particularly because I take it with Ruby, a Samoan/Tongan sister who is amazingly positive and enthusiastic about life. Even when our homework isn't done, Ruby praises the fact that we at least made it to class. Even when we don't make it to class, Ruby points out that at least we're at the library studying. When we should be in class and we're not at the library, Ruby praises the fact that we're somewhere having fun instead of being unhappy. She's a great LSAT buddy!

I just wanted to write this brief post to alleviate some stress I had from not posting anything on my blog for the last four months. I hope to post more often as this process becomes more stressful. Blogging can help me keep my cool. Much love!

Traveling Seed, a blog post from April 25th

I started this post back in April 25th and added to it today.

Tonight we went to see Cherrie Moraga, one of my favorite writers!, and Celia Herrera Rodriguez's mixed medium production, "La Semilla Caminante/The Traveling Seed: A Multimedia Performance Work," in a theater in The Mission. It was a play about ceremony, particularly the kinds of gatherings indigenous women in the U.S. deliberately initiate to heal together using indigenous medicines, art and knowledge.

The central narrative in this play was the story of a middle-age woman struggling with coming to terms with healing herself. She attends ceremony after ceremony and doesn't wake up to what her role is in the ceremony yet.

As a young Tongan woman growing up in Utah, my friends and I held tight to the idea of ceremony. We imagined and dreamed with all our hearts, with all our might to gather with other Pacific Island girls in Utah who immigrated to this new country, just like us and who knew so well, just like us, how lonely it was to grow up in the shadow of memories that happened in the homeland.

Meeting at an Eek-A-Mouse show, on the steps of the Liberty Wells Mormon chapel or the Indian Walk In Center, those nights at the parking lot of the 'Unuaki Tonga Methodist Church on 4th South. When we met, we always tried to seize the moment, to continue the ceremony that is always created when we meet at the same parking lot to drink, bump music from our cars, just to be with each other. The ceremony that will fill the empty void in our lives for a moment before we returned to our white suburbs, our poor working class neighborhoods, the tokenism of our presence in white schools, the colonial teachings of our churches, the letters from our brothers in prison. We lived for those nights when everyone around us was Tongan and the jokes were Tongan; the perfume, strong and heady, smelled like a Tongan; and the hot breath of desire on the nape of the neck spoke Tongan.

It was in these gatherings that I held ceremony with Tongan and Pacific Island sisters. We stood in circles, wearing heavy coats in winter and sweatshirts in summer, with Big Gulps of Rum and Coke, passing around joints or sheets of acid, laughing out loud at Yellow Man's advice, "Girl, you can't do what the guys do you know and still be a lady."
This kind of ceremony lasted all weekend, doing beer runs after using up everyone's money. We wanted to to prolong being together, the feeling of belonging together. Everyone worked hard to pitch in and take care of each other but the void we wanted to fill with each others' presence just grew larger. Soon enough the void was partying together with us, which is no fun. You don't want to party with histories of your own pain.

I wonder what kind of ceremony would have helped to fill the void of isolation and self hate that was so prevalent within me when I was in my early twenties growing up in Utah?

What kind of indigenous Tongan healings are there available for young people in Utah, the Bay Area, the homeland today?

What role does ceremony play in my life today?




An ongoing post I'm working on: Why do I want to go to Harvard Law School?


it begins with my dad. it begins with my dad for me. all the places and things that my dad began with, is also my beginning.
i was seven, weeding my cousin Hiu's and I's taro plants in the garden. we lived in Kolomotu'a in Tonga. I saw a man standing down the road watching my home, the two room house my mother and two of my sisters lived in. this is before the two youngest siblings were born.
the man stared intently at our house, so i knew he was my father. he looked like he felt he had to come back home but really didn't want to do it.

rest in peace Howard Zinn

howard zinn passed away today. i have always felt a warm reassurance that "A People's History of the United States" existed and that it was written by a caring, smart white American male historian.

when i lived in east boston in the mid-2000s, there was a rally for the U.S. to get out of Iraq almost every other week at boston commons. i remember howard attending many of these rallies. he was the tall thin man with beautiful gray hair, constantly surrounded by students. i think i marched passed howard at 3 different marches. there was always someone talking to howard and someone waiting to talk to him. not wanting to interrupt his conversations, i touched his back and thanked him quietly. he never flinched or shrugged away because he didn't know me. he always smiled and welcomed me.

i feel very blessed and humble that howard and his work was a part of my intellectual, cultural and spiritual development. i bought my son niko the "People's History" graphic novel last year. the stories in it helped niko, who is now 11, as he continues to shape and hone his consciousness of being a boy at this time in america.

i thank howard for giving his life to the struggle for people to live meaningful and equitable lives in this country.

with howards' passing, i think about my own life and what i will leave younger generations when i die. i've been thinking a lot about my calling in life.

with missing the law school application deadlines last year and receiving a low lsat score, i've been thinking, "what if law school is not for me?" i should just be a poet. i'll put more time to writing poetry and tour as a poet rock star.

my son said to me, "but you are already a poet mama." "oh, hmm," i thought. in his prayer tonight he asked the gods, "please help my mom find out what she wants to be."

on saturday night, my sister fui and i were part of an asian artist showcase. at this event, i met a classmate from my lsat prep class last year. he's vietnamese, an undergraduate student at cal and he will be graduating this spring 2010. when we met at our lsat prep class, we were very nervous about the class expectations and the test and we talked about where we wanted to go to law school. this friend told me that he wanted to get a high score because he planned on going to columbia university. at the event on saturday, i asked him how his applications went and he told me that he was accepted to columbia and is waiting to hear from harvard. wow, this was great news from my classmate!

i thought about his great news when i came home. i did think about our differences: he's a traditional student, he's doing his undergrad at a top school, and I assumed that he does well on standardized tests. i also remembered how kind he always was to me, an older woman in the class. he is always genuine in conversation and talks to me when we run into each other in public. when i first met him, he seemed awkward to me and shy, but as i see him more, i realize that he's young and still coming into himself.

i saw my own reflection in my young classmate. i saw that i too, although much older in age, am awkward in this process of applying to law school. I am very nervous and am still coming into myself in my journey to get to law school.

talking to my classmate on saturday woke me up from my stupor of self criticism and self doubt. my classmate shared his news with me with kindness and by doing this, he allowed me to imagine myself in his own accomplishments, that his great news is an example of great news that i will receive one day too.

i'm still a little beat around the edges and my heart is still broken from not making last year's law school application deadlines, but, after hearing from my classmate that he's going to the school of his choice, i remember the great joy i felt when i realized i wanted to become a legal advocate. i'm feeling that great joy coming back. i'm scared to capture all that joy back again though because, since recently being disappointed with myself, the self doubt comes back and i say, "what if you don't do it again." sure, i guess there's always that risk that i may not apply again this year, but there's a promising possibility that i can do it and that i will get into the school i want, just like my classmate! i must choose to pursue joy, not failure.

i remember a fellow americorps legal intern i talked to back in 08. he was a young man like my classmate, but he was italian/irish from the historically irish southie neighborhood of boston. he was finishing his senior undergrad year when he applied to 50 law schools. no one accepted him. then he served as an americorps legal intern, retook the lsat, finished undergrad. and applied to 37 schools, including his dream school, bc (boston college). he got accepted to 7 schools, including his dream, bc, where he is starting his second year. it's an inspiring story!

i'm really proud of my classmate and am grateful for how his example of kindness, hard work and commitment, helps me in my struggle to pursue joy in my life.

i think of howard zinn and how his work brought joy to people, how he made it easier for us in this country. how did howard find his calling in life?

my calling for right now is to wake up to myself, my kind and hard working, committed self. to greet myself in the morning and when my heart sinks and shrieks away from the everyday chores of living and hides away from the law school process, i will hold my heart and carry her steadily with my own hands. each day, my strength will return and, each day, i will forgive myself and trust myself again.

while i do these things, i will not hate and blame people around me who see that I am engaged in a fierce struggle with myself. i will not be angry at them because they see that i am vulnerable and exposed and that they offer to help me. i will not dismiss them because i am ashamed that they witness on a daily basis how difficult it is for me to return to my own joy. i will let them help me to stand up. i will find joy in transforming my self hatred to reflect, instead, the great love my companions have for me.

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.

staying the path

I just accidently deleted a post I was working on all morning. Darnit!

I haven't blogged in a while because I was studying, had the second practice test, received my scores and then had a bout of self-doubt and depression. My score went up four points but, overall, it's still very low.

Last week, I was going to change my blog name to something that, at the time, I felt was more representative of my "reality" of low lsat scores, and therefore, bleak law school future. Something like "Dreams don't come true" or "I wish I were a butterfly."

It happened the day before the second practice test. I went to the bathroom during class break and talked with many of my women classmates. The four women I spoke to all had 150s on their first practice test. The lsat ranges with 120 as the lowest score and 180 as the highest score. You want a score in the early 170s or late 160s to go to a top school. My first practice test score was in the late 130s. You can't go to ANY law school with such a score. I felt so down when my classmates told me that they made the 150s on their very first practice test. That's when the self doubt started setting in.

I took the second practice test on Sunday and increased my score by four points but it's still a very low score. We have seven weeks to study before the actual test in June. But if I'm not ready, I will have to take the September test in order to get a higher score.

I was really down and feeling that my goals are futile. I have great intentions but they will not come true.

I went to volunteer at the community acupuncture clinic. I started a conversation with another volunteer. She asked about my lsat prep classes and I told her that I'm frustrated,

overwhelmed and that I feel that this is such an uphill battle. She told me to relax and to focus for a moment. She instructed me to talk about why I want to go to law school. I burst out talking about working with prisoners and my journey to gather effective tools to become a stronger community organizer. She stopped me after a couple of minutes and asked me questions that helped me to realize that I was so excited about talking about law school. She asked me to locate the part of my body that lights up when I talk about going to law school. I stopped and thought about this and realized that my chest was warm and was pulsating with energy. I think she pointed out that it was the fourth chakra. I pointed to my chest. She told me to say one word about the feeling in my chest at that moment. I said, "passionate."

She nodded her head and agreed, "Take that passion and let it guide you in your studies to do well on the test. Let it guide you when you're discouraged. Trust yourself." I thanked her for her healing and I thought to myself, "I'll remember my passion, my commitment, but right now, I still feel lousy." It is only now while writing this that I remember her words and appreciate them.

I was hanging out with Fui and Niko before going to class on Tuesday. We were hanging out at Shattuck and we passed the public library. There was a man who was lying on the ground near the library's tall glass windows. He was laughing loudly and boldly, then he stopped for a minute, then laughed hysterically again. I watched him for a couple of minutes. I thought of this man and I thought about my fears about law school and I started chuckling. Thank you brother for the laughter. This man illustrated a great tool for me, laugh at my seriousness. I still can see this man in my mind, and I remember to laugh at myself and everything around me.

Later that night, during my class break, I took a fifteen minute walk around Telegraph. As I became lost among the traffic of Cal students, street vendors and dread-locked white kids asking for spare change, I felt that I was in my element. I breathed in the evening air and saw myself as the ordinary woman I am, on an lsat prep class break. Wow! I'm finally taking the lsat prep class that I dreamed of taking when I first thought about going to law school!!! I am living in Berkeley, California among flowers!

Instead of bitching about all the barely twenty-year old undergrads in my lsat prep class, I thought, "Wow, I'm taking a class with kids who just turned twenty and I'm totally struggling with issues of age and I love the opportunity to have this struggle!" Wow, I'm finally here, struggling the good struggle! I dreamt of this since I was a high school student at Timpview High School in Provo, Utah. I didn't know what I really wanted when I was in high school but I was extremely passionate about engaging with the world. And I knew that that meant so many things that I didn't understand but I wanted to take it on.

And here it is man, in the palms of my hand. I have so many opportunities right now to meet new people and experience things that I couldn't even imagine.

I went back to my classroom and started conversations with the barely twenty-year old students that I like in my class. No wonder I like them, we all want to do social justice legal work when we become attorneys. Yay!! They also talked about how hard the weekend was for them. They experienced so much self-doubt and depression after taking the second practice test. I planned with one of my classmates to go drinking after class next week and talk about law schools.

As class reconvened after break, my lsat prep class started feeling different. I was no longer nervous and stressed out. I came to accept my role in the classroom as just another ordinary student who has a lot of anxieties about the test and is doing her best everyday. I felt so relieved that I no longer need to pressure myself into feeling like the "special" older student who has all the odds stacked up against her. I mean, the odds ARE real, they're not all imagined. And that's exactly what I'm relieved about! I now have the courage to look at the odds, face to face, and accept them and accept myself. Instead of running away because it's too hard and too painful. I am here to stay the course, which really, I have been doing all along throughout my life.

When I first spoke out loud about pursuing law school to myself, I was standing in the front gates of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was fall 2006. I was asking a Geography Phd student who lived in Worcester for four years about any lawyer connections she had in town. I told her that I was interested in interning at a law office to see if becoming an attorney was for me. This was the first semester of my International Development and Social Change grad. program.

The Phd student, Susan, contacted a past Phd student, Sarah, who was working at Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts (LACCM). Sarah emailed me and invited me to visit her office. Sarah was incredibly kind to me and introduced me to her colleagues. However, I was bombarded with my first semester class load and student organizing in my department, and I couldn't spare time to volunteer at LACCM.

I had also focused my attention on a local member-run organization called EPOCA, Ex-prisoners and prisoners organizing for community advancement. Anyone can be a member of EPOCA and when you become a member, you can be mentored and trained to be a community organizer. I chose to be a community organizer. Although I had been an organizer and an activist since I was a high school student, I really didn't know the ins and outs of community organizing until I worked with EPOCA's director Steve and members like Emma, Becky, Jenna, Terry, Anthony, Sarah, Delia, Carlos, and so many other folks. In working with formerly incarcerated women and men, I learned to take myself seriously as a leader and to accept the gifts I have been given from the ancestors to work honestly and kindly with people.

I was scared as hell when I first joined EPOCA. I mean fcking scared as hell. I was scared because I met very attractive people who were radically political, very loving, full of enthusiasm, carrying a lot of pain in their bodies, who were vulnerable with each other. I saw my own reflection in them and that unsettled me.

I forced myself to attend their meetings. They were my teachers, they helped me to understand my path. I intuitively knew that my freedom was directly connected to the freedom of the members I was working side by side with.

Now I can name what I was afraid of and I continue to be afraid of. It is the great shame that I carry from experiences where my freedom was taken away by the systems that promised to protect me, like the state/the church/the family.

When I meet incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people, we talk to each other from and out of the shame we hold in our bodies. When I converse with people who have been incarcerated, we are both so well versed in the pain of life, that we cut the bull shit of small talk and get to what needs to be said. We are comfortable together in silence. Every conversation, every moment together, is working out the shame that our fragile, good lil' bodies carry.

In working with EPOCA we lobbied senators and legislators to change criminal offender record information laws and to change practices by employers and landlords that discriminate against people with convictions. We organized and coordinated direct actions, meetings, workshops, university and community events. We worked with the local city workforce program to implement employment training for formerly incarcerated people. We lobbied employers to pledge to hire formerly incarcerated applicants. In 2007, I had the great opportunity to attend the 1st U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia with four other EPOCA women. My great sisters: Emma, an African American woman from Roxbury; Jenna, a white woman from Central Mass.; Becky, a Boricua woman from Worcester, and Iye, an Indonesian woman from Sumatra. This experience strengthened our sisterhood and led us all to make a commitment to be close supporters of each other for the rest of our lives. This experience also led to the early stages of creating a women's group for EPOCA women.

My work with EPOCA provided me with opportunities to work with other organizations in Massachusetts and nationwide, like Critical Resistance, a national organization that is committed to ending the prison industrial complex (PIC), based in Oakland, California. EPOCA is also housed in an artist/activist collective home called Stone Soup. The committed people at Stone Soup supported me in countless ways in being an organizer. Craig and Jocelyn, who were the caretakers of Stone Soup in 2007, took Niko in with their own boys, Ben and Johnny, while I tended to my work load. I couldn't have made it through school or work full-time without the individuals and families at Stone Soup who made sure Niko was safe, fed him, helped him to put together his first bicycle, taught him to ride a bike, helped him to improve his reading skills, encouraged him to take a main role in a play, shared their lives with his. My survival in Worcester as a student and a single parent was contingent on the community of people around me. We didn't have any family around us or a Pacific Island community so we became engaged with our neighborhood of Main South and became part of other families.

It was incredible work that we did together in EPOCA!

By the end of my first year in my 2-year graduate program, I decided that I wanted to become an attorney. I asked anyone I knew about local attorneys who do social justice work. I interned for Worcester's most popular immigrant lawyer for two months. Randy was a very kind man who always invited me to sit in on his interviews with his clients. At this time, very similar to right now, I had absolutely no clue about what happens in a law firm.

I then called Sarah back at LACCM to secure an internship for the next school year and she told me to apply for an Americorps legal internship at their office because it offered a small stipend. The money was important to me because I needed a wage to supplement my school money. I did not receive child support and money was tight after the rent was paid.

I applied for the Americorps legal internship and got it. It was tough to work the 40 hour/week load because I was working on my master's paper, classes, student organizing and looking out for Niko, who was struggling with school at the time. The scant Americorps wage made us feel rich! We bought a used car off another student, which I needed for work, and still had a couple dollars left over for Niko's pepperoni pizza.

I had no clue about law offices and legal assistance when I went to work at LACCM. This internship provided me with access to the legal world in which I had no access to before.

Like the formerly incarcerated people I worked together with in EPOCA, the only thing I knew intimately about the law was from being on the other side of it. My father going to jail in Tonga, my brother being convicted to prison in Utah, the dogs that I loved dearly were ordered to be killed by the courts because they bit a person, the countless times that my family, friends and I were racially profiled by the police at gun point, thrown against walls and side walks and being jailed on bogus charges. Being arrested and dragged to buses in the Nevada desert for protesting nuclear testing on native lands. Going to the SLC jail, that use to be at the basement of the new library, for being part of a peaceful protest in support of the Zapatista uprising in 1994.

When I was 17 years old, I accused a white police officer of racially profiling my family and being disrespectful to my dad. I defended myself because I didn't have a lawyer. I realized quickly, as I was standing in front of the entire court, that it's not against the law for a white man of authority to treat my father like an idiot child. I felt so powerless that I couldn't speak so I wept. I took in a lot of shame from that experience. I later called the courts to ask about what happened with the case and the officer's attorney answered the phone. This conservative white attorney asked me on the phone, "What were you thinking when you accused Officer __ of being a racist? That wasn't true." I explained and gave him examples of how the officer racially profiled me and my family. Surprisingly, the attorney listened to what I had to say, because, he was shocked that I spoke in English and that I had an articulate opinion.

These are the kinds of experiences I had with the law before I worked the AmeriCorps legal internship.

In my internship, we were required to write monthly reports about what we did on the job.

Here's a small part of a report I turned in. This explains the transition I felt from feeling powerless under the law when I was younger to feeling empowered when I had access to institutional power as a legal advocate with LACCM:

My new healthier relationship with the legal system resonated with me when I went...to the new Worcester Court House. (The attorneys I accompanied) were representing a group of low-income families and individuals who are trying to hold on to their current housing. It was the first time I set foot in a court house as a legal advocate for others.

We passed the check-in lines and were about to ascend the staircase. I looked around me at the ethereal colors and architecture and the many people standing and sitting, awaiting for their trials to begin. I stood for a moment and felt very humble and very grateful for the opportunity I have to be an AmeriCorps intern at LACCM. I felt so happy that I have made it to this point in my life where I don't have to constantly fear and fight against the legal system. I felt so happy and relieved that I now see the legal system as a construct that I can take part in building, reconfiguring and disassembling. I am very grateful that I am a part of this amazing learning opportunity that fuels me to continue my life's journey to be a skilled and strong advocate for myself and for the lives of others.

My Americorps legal internship was only for one year. It was a valuable experience and a great blessing to have worked among attorneys, paralegals, volunteers and to go to court everyday as a legal advocate.

Now my journey brings me to Berkeley to an lsat prep class. It's now time to sleep.