In July, an 89-year-old Chinese woman was set on fire while walking on the street
after being slapped in the face in Brooklyn, New York. The two assailants, she said, didn’t say a word before attacking her. She scrambled to put out the fire, but it left a large burn mark on the back of her pink blouse a grisly reminder of the attack.
It was not an isolated incident. Between March 19 and December 31, 2020, there were more than 2,808 “firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate,” according to a report by Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that has been tracking reports on anti-Asian violence