The Mom Gene: From Evolution To Revolution

I think about my father’s past as I hear news of Libyan protests. Ensconced in my life as mother, writer, and educator, I’m shielded from the tanks, the shouts for justice, medicine, and mercy in the Middle East. Yet something keeps my gaze on these events.

At six, my father fled his native land, when the Communists took over China. He lived through a time of terror, the Japanese barrage of bombs, the civil war between a growing Communist party and a corrupt Nationalist government desperately holding on to power.

Violence uproots. The violence in my family history compels me towards these stories of revolution. In 1989, the protests in Tiananmen Square captured my attention as an undergraduate at Stanford. I joined sympathizers in marching through the streets of San Francisco, cheered by drivers waiting patiently for the throng to pass. I didn’t know what it was like to live without democracy, food, or safety, as my father once had, but I knew the lasting impacts of war on my father’s family.

That same year, the Berlin Wall fell. I came within 18 inches of touching Gorbachev’s coat during his visit to campus the following year, an act undreamt of during the Cold War era.

Hope for ethnic representation took hold of Asian American, black and Latino students who united to demand reform from the University. Months went by. Nothing changed. Student leaders took over the president’s office; the ensuing protest grew to hundreds by afternoon. I skipped classes that day to join the march. Standing in solidarity with my classmates, I felt the hum of defiance, an electric current fueled by collective injustices great and small. The cops began arresting students. For the first time, my ego took a back seat and I was willing, even eager to risk my life for a larger cause.

Now that I’m a mother, I have a harder time giving myself to important causes. Call it an evolutionary strategy or selfish gene, but I’m more risk-averse now. From the moment I saw the sonogram of my unborn child, a fierce desire to protect this life overcame me. Maybe a mom’s strength comes from the same instinct that rallies the Tunisians, Egyptians, and Libyans to risk their lives and stand in revolt. Freedom is their “unborn” child to defend. Courage is an impulse that arises out of necessity, when summoned.

When my son grows up, I might resume some riskier activities: backpacking solo as a woman, climbing mountains, traveling to countries undergoing revolution. My father, having survived revolution in his youth, has been risk-averse his whole life. I don’t mind standing on the sidelines of history for now. I have plenty of protests to deal with from my young son; let the agents of world change handle the revolutions at large.

Postscript:
My debut novel, “In the Lap of the Gods,” tells of farmers who rise up when the Chinese government tries to seize their land. Major protests in the book begin on January 25th — the same day as the uprising in Tahrir Square.