Bamboo

The term ‘bamboo ceiling’ in law refers to the underrepresentation of Asian professionals in senior legal leadership. This poem depicts the desire to make one’s parents proud, to succeed, and to spend one's entire life coming to terms with the inevitability of limitations faced by Asians. It is both a critique and a solemn acknowledgement of the racial diversity within the legal field.

Art by Jemima Kate Beehag

My mother told me to never look down,

to look ahead,

to look above,

to hold my head high,

         because your sight sets how far you can reach.

And so my neck remains straight,

my eyes never fall.

I walk.

I run,

and grow,

under a roof pieced together by my parents.

But this roof ages with them, 

with their joints that have grown sensitive to the cold, 

with their hands that have started to tremble under the smallest weight, 

and with their eyes upon my back, 

let me hope to rebuild this roof.

And so i am here now,

and i see a creeping shadow,

entering the light my parents’ roof has sheltered

And i see,

that i have stepped into a place where the light seizes only a few.

Where though my head remains high,

my hands always reaching,

this mother tongue that is defined by the language you first spoke,

the language your parents raised you in,

isolates you to a still before the language you have lived and dreamed in,

         the one you hold fluency in.

And as i remain here,

i have become rooted into a silence,

where the dust accumulated over time has reached my feet,

carrying the soil that nourished this flesh,

but not the future it promised.

With those who pass watering me with sympathy, 

with reasons. 

i swallow that moisture, paired with their detached glances, 

i swallow to realise that my time here has smothered all desires. 

And i grow into another bamboo shoot to serve the ceiling that shadows only the ones with my mother tongue.

Where, as i peer down from this height that i once strived for,

only then did i realise this field spread out before me, though holding promises, 

are promises with intentions that never favoured mine. 

For the intention that was set for me was to join the bamboo ceiling,

so that those who come in will compliment on the orientalism, 

and the ones that rest above will reply with, 

“we are inclusive”.