D HIDEO MARUYAMA

After Alex Tizon’s article "My Family’s Slave" as regards Eudocia Tomas Pulido 

(The Atlantic, June 2017)

No one and everyone is a slave owner 
     For Alex Tizon

Lola was a slave, but no one knew it

Except the son of the slave owner mum.

After Fifty Six years of washing clothes

What else was she going to do anymore?

But what does it matter if you tell this

Story from the textual soils of one’s death?

I wonder about the housekeepers busing

Daily from Westlake to Beverly Hills.

What of this white polo shirt I am wearing?

Who sewed the sleeves and the logo with thread?

What did my Eighty dollars go to pay?

I review the white cotton fabric cloth.

Seventy Two Thai workers were enslaved 

in El Monte—behind padlocked windows.

Thais were enslaved by other Thai for cash. 

Where did my shirts come from back then?

1995, people thought, we still have slaves?

They have never gone away really.  

But who are the slavers binding poor souls?

Is it the doctor who gave you penicillin?

A Black student tells me, “When we were Slaves. . . “

But I stop her. Did you hear ‘bout Lola? 

 Your cool doctor might be a slave owner. 

“Didn’t it all end with the Civil War?"

Lola was never in chains, but the links 

That bound her to her owners were strong.

Lynch laws were not the only way of bondage.

We enslave ourselves to the powerful.

Do you have an utusan, a katulong?

Who is that person taking care of mother?

I see the Guatemalan woman push 

Her blonde haired ward on a park swing.

Depeche Mode’s Master and Servant song 

Blasts out of my car windows in Manhattan

Beach. I look at all the maids gathered

Taking care of other people’s children.

Was Lola hoping that her own personal

Jesus would deliver her from evil?

Katulong lang ako, just a servant.

Free in death like Sally Hemings’ children.

Is my Korean doctor a slave owner?

Is my Salvadoran student a slave?

Does that nice white couple have slaves?

Have I been supporting slavery systems?

What of this ode to a long forgotten slave?

Am I not doing the same as Alex Tizon?  

Enslaving her story in my bonded words;

Even in these lines, she lies in bondage. 

Lola was a slave, but no one knew it

Except the son of the slave owner mum.

After Fifty Six years of washing clothes

What else was she going to do anymore?

But what does it matter if you tell this

Story from the textual soils of one’s death?

I wonder about the housekeepers busing

Daily from Westlake to Beverly Hills.

What of this white polo shirt I am wearing?

Who sewed the sleeves and the logo with thread?

What did my Eighty dollars go to pay?

I review the white cotton fabric cloth.

Seventy Two Thai workers were enslaved 

in El Monte—behind padlocked windows.

Thais were enslaved by other Thai for cash. 

Where did my shirts come from back then?

1995, people thought, we still have slaves?

They have never gone away really.  

But who are the slavers binding poor souls?

Is it the doctor who gave you penicillin?

A Black student tells me, “When we were Slaves. . . “

But I stop her. Did you hear ‘bout Lola? 

 Your cool doctor might be a slave owner. 

“Didn’t it all end with the Civil War?"

Lola was never in chains, but the links 

That bound her to her owners were strong.

Lynch laws were not the only way of bondage.

We enslave ourselves to the powerful.

Do you have an utusan, a katulong?

Who is that person taking care of mother?

I see the Guatemalan woman push 

Her blonde haired ward on a park swing.

Depeche Mode’s Master and Servant song 

Blasts out of my car windows in Manhattan

Beach. I look at all the maids gathered

Taking care of other people’s children.

Was Lola hoping that her own personal

Jesus would deliver her from evil?

Katulong lang ako, just a servant.

Free in death like Sally Hemings’ children.

Is my Korean doctor a slave owner?

Is my Salvadoran student a slave?

Does that nice white couple have slaves?

Have I been supporting slavery systems?

What of this ode to a long forgotten slave?

Am I not doing the same as Alex Tizon?  

Enslaving her story in my bonded words;

Even in these lines, she lies in bondage. 

Are we really helping her in our distress?  

Slave and slaver are still bonded in afterlife. 

Who profited from slavery’s past?

Lehman Brothers

Aetna

JP Morgan Chase

New York Life

Wachovia 

Norfolk Southern

Brooks Brothers

Barclay

Harvard

Who profits

from slavery’s present? 

I look over my shirt

from Brooks Brothers,

I bought it

with a Barclay’s credit card.

My car payment

is a Chase auto loan.

Am I like Lola’s slave owner?

Am I really clean?

When young,

I too wanted to go

to Harvard University,

A place that was built

by slaves,

like the White House.

Thais can be slave owners. 

Filipinos can be slave owners.

Jamaicans can be slave owners.

British can be slave owners. 

To be American

Is to be bound to a past,

A past defined by bondage.

D Hideo Maruyama currently teaches English at El Camino College Compton Education Center.  He currently teaches English at El Camino College Compton Center, and holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Long Beach State, and still believes in the long poem, but now is exploring travel writing and playwriting. He has a long history with nonprofits both in the arts and in relief work.

He was the President of Aisarema during the 1990s to early 2000s (Amerasia spelled backwards) which produced yearly poetry readings and an Asian Pacific American Arts journal called dIS*orient Journalzine.  He was also the Editor in Chief of this Los Angeles Based journal for many years, which published a number of APA writers like Velina Hasu Houston, Monique Truong, Amy Uyematsu, Philip Kan Gotanda, and Elaine Kim.  Under his watch, he created dIS*courses, which was a project of dIS*orient to partner poets from different communities to create unified poetry/fiction collections.     

In 2004, he was a guest curator for a writer/visual artist collaborative project called City Dialogues at Los Angeles Municipal Arts Gallery at Barnsdall Art Park.  This project developed collaborations between such writers like Gerald Locklin, Ray Zepeda, Michael Datcher and Jenoyne Adams with visual artists.

As a playwright, he has been a member of East West Players David Henry Hwang Writer’s Institute, which resulted in a number of staged readings of full length plays:  Accidental Nexus (2003), Sato’s Dream in Blue (2006), Time After Time-A Catalogue of Traumatic Events (2007), IFDD Station (2009) and Double Exposure (2013).  He is currently a member of The Company of Angels Theater’s playwriting group, and he has staged two short plays as part of COA’s LA Views short play series: LA to Little Saigon (2014), and Nails of Little Saigon (2015).   

In 2010, he received a Fulbright Hays Group Project Abroad grant to research in Vietnam and Cambodia.  He recently was an Assistant Editor for a collection of Vietnamese Boat People stories.