Read Amanda Lee Koe's short story, 'Not Gonna Get Us', published in The Paris Review on July 29, 2019. When I realized that the title was kinda inspired by the lyrics in a t.A.T.u. song, I started laughing. I most certainly didn't care for t.A.T.u. or Eurodance, but I still understand the references (to venues and trends) that the author used even though she's more than a decade younger than I am.
Amanda Lee Koe wrote of her star-crossed first lesbian puppy love way back in 2002. She reminisced about how she and Maidina tried to maintain a relationship full of youthful aspirations over a phone line, while she faced objections and school counseling sessions over 'unbecoming and unnatural behavior'. Of course it didn't work out and they went on to date other people, girls.
A decade later in 2014, the Brooklyn-based Singaporean author visited Maidina in Ürümqi, Xinjiang. They were both now young women in their early twenties. That visit turned out to be the definitive change in their friendship, and their lives. The huge changes were mainly for Maidina and her then-girlfriend Shadiyah. The subtle and perhaps painful changes for the author were the realization of how different their paths have turned out.
The gentle narrative bellies the political winds of the time, and social norms and expectations, and how different yet similar lives women in Xinjiang and Singapore led. It's a beautiful read. I really enjoyed it. There's so much unspoken thoughts between the lines. We make do. We all do.
We’d met a year earlier, in 2002, at the Shanghai Municipal Physical Sports School. She was fourteen, I was fifteen. She played soccer, I played softball. She was a Uighur Muslim who’d never heard of metropolitan Singapore, I was a Straits Chinese atheist who didn’t know pastoral Xinjiang existed.
Mandarin was the only common tongue we had between us, but unlike for the Han Chinese, it was the first language for neither of us. We spoke slangy Singlish; the Uighurs spoke Turkic Uighur. When the Uighur girls began singing a traditional folk song to a clapped beat, it was clearly a cultural performance rather than a social invitation, but I took my chances. I’d never once used Mandarin this way as I walked up to the girl with the palest, longest, thinnest fingers I’d ever seen and said, “Want to dance?”
A decade later in 2014, the Brooklyn-based Singaporean author visited Maidina in Ürümqi, Xinjiang. They were both now young women in their early twenties. That visit turned out to be the definitive change in their friendship, and their lives. The huge changes were mainly for Maidina and her then-girlfriend Shadiyah. The subtle and perhaps painful changes for the author were the realization of how different their paths have turned out.
The gentle narrative bellies the political winds of the time, and social norms and expectations, and how different yet similar lives women in Xinjiang and Singapore led. It's a beautiful read. I really enjoyed it. There's so much unspoken thoughts between the lines. We make do. We all do.
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “A civil partnership?”
“Oh no,” they laughed. They were marrying men.
What men?
“Whomever my parents choose,” Shadiyah said.
I looked at Maidina.
“What,” she said, offended. “You think I can’t get a man the moment I grow my hair out?”
I hadn’t realized until then that, while my resources and education would open up into choices for me, Maidina’s life could only tighten around her as she grew up. I could feel the blood drain from my face when she went on to say: Surely you don’t intend to go on this way for good? People will talk, and what about disgracing your parents?
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