Fever Blister: Burlesque Performer

Hollywood, CA 2010

Shanghai Fashion $3

Shanghai Metro

China 2009

“”You’re Practically A Man” is a personal essay about identity. The scars are from Abdominal Myomectomy, Uterine Fibroid Embolization (unseen) and Partial Hysterectomy, and represent the efforts I went through to try and keep my womb. I lost that fight to a fibroid the size of a six-month pregnancy. The fibroid weighed down on my bladder and I was lucky to get one hour of unbroken sleep at a time. I couldn’t go out anywhere because I constantly needed the bathroom. And once a month, during my period, I would bleed non-stop for two days and lose so much blood that I was too weak to stand. Hysterectomy was the final option.

The title of the essay refers to a woman’s comment made to me after I told her about my operations and represents the consequential view from some people that women are not whole unless they have children. A male friend of mine also commented that my hysterectomy was no big deal because I am a gay woman and gay women don’t have children.”

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Ginger Liu will revisit Shanghai and its surrounding areas in May 2009 for a story development, photojournalist, and documentary project. She will join her aunt, Doctor Marjory Bong-Ray Liu -one of the world’s most eminent musicologists,  for the 130th anniversary of St. John’s University in Shanghai. Both Dr. Liu and my  father graduated from this top University during the invasion of the Japanese army and what became known as the “Rape of Nanking.”