Celeste Ng has detailed the abuse she faces for having an interracial relationship.
In an article for The Cut, Celeste Ng detailed the abuse Asian American women face when dating other races.
Ng, who is a Chinese American with a white husband and multiracial son, said her harassers often tell her, “you hate Asian men, you hate your own child. You hate yourself.”
One harasser sent her 27 tweets calling her “everything from “irrelevant” to “liar” to “coward” to “neglectful gaslighting mother” — in 48 hours.”
Ng has been receiving abuse ever since her first novel, Everything I Never Told You (which won Amazon Book of the Year in 2014). The author revealed she documents every abusive message. “I save these messages in a folder on my computer to document the abuse,” she wrote. “Whenever I upgrade my laptop, I copy them over, little packets of poison I must keep and carry forever.”
However, one message she recently received stood out. “I’m a huge fan of watching your son develop mental illness because of your internalised self hate. Your Asian looking son will grow up knowing his mom thinks he’s ugly, and his dad won’t be able to relate,” wrote Brandon Ho in an email to Ng.
Ng received the in August, amidst the success of Asian-American films Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
When Ng posted the message on her social media, she realised she was not alone in receiving such harassment. She spoke to 13 women about their abuse for her article.
“Targeted harassment from Asian-American men toward Asian-American women over choosing a non-Asian partner or having multiracial children, I discovered, is widespread, vicious, and devastating,” Ng wrote in her article.
Ng shared the abuse Appropriate writer Jenn Fang experienced on Reddit for having a black husband. “Perhaps she settled for a black guy because she couldn’t snag a white boyfriend?” suggests a thread on writer Jenn Fang.”
Ng went on to add that harassment is often targeted at women’s multiracial children. In one email sent to writer Christine Tan, a harasser said they planned to kill Asian women and their interracial children. “We are going to get their kids heads and smash them into the concrete pavement, and get a baseball bat and smash all their fucking bones and grind them up and feed them to their disgusting sell out ho mamas.”
Ng hopes to encourage other women to speak up about their abuse and share the harassment they have experienced. “The best way to combat this type of harassment may be bringing it into the open — with the entire Asian community, men included, speaking against it wherever it occurs,” Ng concludes.
She calls for the Asian community to come together and support each other to combat such harassment. “Empathy and thoughtful conversation must be the goal, and the entire Asian community must work together to end the misogynist harassment that prevents it. It is, in this way, a family matter: We have to support each other.”
