Born Female, Still Evolving

As we approach March 8 and Women’s International Day, I’ve been thinking about how my understanding of Feminism has evolved over the years.

I was born female to Chinese immigrant parents above my father’s Chinese American restaurant in Providence, R.I. My mother did not know how to read or write because there were no schools for females in her little Chinese village. When I cried, the Chinese waiters used to say, “Leave her on the hillside to die. She’s only a girl baby.”

So I realized early that huge changes in women’s rights and lives are necessary in our world.

That is why as a teenager, after reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, Women and Economics, I decided I was a feminist. What I meant mainly was that I would never become dependent on a man for my livelihood.