Yeo Yong Kiat shares about his family’s experiences navigating California’s landscape.
During a break this summer from my UC Berkeley graduate program, my Singaporean family fled to the serenity of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. As we drove into Yosemite Valley, my son exclaimed, “Woah, Papa, it’s your computer screen!” He saw the coarse-grained granite monarch rising from the valley — the sheer wall cliff that was El Capitan.
If, like me, you have an Apple computer, you’d have spent hours staring yearningly at the default wallpapers of the Californian landscape. Majestic snow-dusted peaks. Lush enticing valleys that stretch for miles, and cliffs that plunge into the Pacific Ocean. Timeless redwood cathedrals. My family has also been drawn to the historical urban environments and quirky community spaces of California, which are a world apart from the controlled efficiency and orderliness of the city-state of Singapore.
I see the footprints of community in Oakland, a city we call friend on weekends. When I bring my curious toddlers to Big Frog Park in the shadow of Highway 24, the playground is littered with carefully placed children’s toys. Play kitchens. Shovels in the sand. Batman buggies. Well used, but certainly not discarded. Free loaner toys line the Rockridge-Temescal Greenbelt, as if a silent, invisible community knew that my children and many others would come.
The park is a vibrant and living testament to community action. And back in Berkeley, we find ourselves in a restless hum of struggle to create a place where everyone can be themselves. Tibetan prayer flags flutter beside Black Lives Matter murals, and a Vietnamese Pho restaurant beside a Mexican one. It is part celebration, part rebellion. California. It’s more than pretty landscapes etched on screens. With a Perspective, I’m Yeo Yong Kiat.