An immigrant from China's Fujian province recalls her life as a masseuse in New York after the Atlanta shootings. On March 16, , eight people died following shootings at three massage parlors in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Six of the victims were Asian women. Demonstrations against anti-Asian discrimination erupted around the country.
Since the start of the Covid pandemic in , there have been at least 3, anti-Asian racist incidents in the United States. Nearly 70 percent of the victims have been women.
There are countless Chinese massage parlors in Chinese enclaves across America, and countless Chinese women working in those parlors. Unlike exchange students with their TOEFL scores, these massage workers typically have only a junior high or high school education.
Some may not have come to the US through legal avenues. In this episode, we interview one of these women, named Coco. Coco left Changle, Fuzhou province, in , when she was 21 years old.
Life there is hardly distinguishable from life in China. My parents had three girls in a row. I never enjoyed studying, and could never remember what my teachers taught me. Around 10 or so ended up coming to the United States, including seven or eight boys and two or three girls.
