Asian-ish
Hey APC 🙂 My name is Amanda, I’m seventeen years old, and I’m from the Bay Area, California. I identify as Filipino-Chinese-American, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I wrote “Asian-Ish” for an English assignment, where we were asked to reflect on our experiences during our junior class trip (referred to as the “Global Investigator Trip” at my high school). My piece was my attempt to put some of the emotions I experienced as an Asian-American existing in Asia (without sufficient language skills) into words. IG: @amanda.kc ASIAN-ISH By Amanda Khu As many Silicon Valley teens do, I own a Hydroflask, plastered with various stickers I’ve accumulated through the past years. Among the soccer tournament, mildly political, and…
Standing on Two Plates
Hello, APC! I’m Emily, a Korean-American, junior in high school, and Maryland resident. Firstly, I want to share that I had the amazing experience of attending a diversity conference, the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC), for two consecutive years. There we were split up into smaller affinity groups, mine being the East-Asian group. Secondly, I’d like to share with you all a short reflection piece of my racial identity I wrote after my experiences: “How could you be considered a Person of Color? You’re way lighter than white people anyways.” “Okay, but where are you really from? China? Japan? “How can you call yourself Korean if you can’t even speak…
Thoughts on Creative Careers
Hi APC! My name is Taylor Wang and I am a 16 year old Seattle-based artist and activist. As co-founder of Student Art Spaces, I lead a youth initiative to uplift underserved artists through events and education. Beyond that, you can find me working on my latest oil painting at the studio, or sketching up ideas in my notebook. I hope to foster community wherever I go, using values of inclusivity and honesty! Find me on Instagram @_taylorwang or @yingshiart. In the early days of the railroad, the Chinese were rewarded for their dedication and willingness to work under the white man. Our moores of Confucianism and filial piety have…
Durian
Hey APC! I am Caitlyn Phu, an 18-year-old filmmaker, and writer from Huntington Beach, California. I’m a first-generation Asian American, with Vietnamese-Chinese immigrant parents, who is currently attending college with a major in Television Writing and Production. My short film, Durian is extremely personal to me because the challenges that Clara Chu, the protagonist, faces throughout the film are all based on my own life experiences and real interactions I have had with both friends and family. The screenwriting process for Durian initially began as just a way for me to digest and dissect my own cultural identity crisis that I was struggling with, so I basically laid out experiences…
Where Music Meets Activism
Hi APC! I’m Aoi Tsuda, an 18-year old psychology student from Japan, living in California. I am a mental health activist and musician. I grew up in Japan, Indonesia and now, the United States, which had blessed me to be surrounded by different cultures and learn multiple languages. However, when I moved to California at the age of 13, I was struck with culture shock and I had a difficult time adjusting to American culture, I started developing some mental health issues and my Asian family had a hard time understanding my struggles. Throughout high school, I spent a lot of my time battling anxiety and depression, and it weighed…
Living in the Hyphen
Hey Afro Puff Chronicles! I’m Emma Chan, and I’m 15 years old from Chester, NJ; I go to Kent Place School. I’m half Chinese, half Hong Kongese, and 100% Asian-American. One important issue that isn’t often addressed in the Asian-American community is homophobia. The hardest part about living in the hyphen is having to reconcile the values of two completely different worlds: the conservative Asian culture and the more accepting Western viewpoint. LGBT+ members of the Asian-American community specifically highlight this problem, but I believe it gets little coverage in the media. I often integrate themes of identity and self-love in my writing. The pieces I submitted focus specifically on…
Fractured Identities
Hey APC! My name is Lu Garcia, I’m Chinese and Vietnamese, in my senior year of high school. I live in New York City, but I was born in China. I was nervous as I was writing this essay on my struggle with my identity because I felt as though it was a common struggle, but then I realized that it was important to write about my struggles because they are unique to me. Nobody else can tell my story, only I can, and I should want to share the battles I have endured because they have made me who I am today. Two Christmases ago, I celebrated the holiday…
The Relinquishment of the Yellow Myxo Cell
Hey APC! I’m Trang Nguyen and I am a sophomore at Columbia University’s Engineering School. I a proud STEMinist studying computer science and hope to one day work with AI to close the education gap for kids who came from poor communities like the one I grew up in. Despite being a STEM kid, I have a love affair with the humanities and find myself drawn to creating and expressing my complex identities through writing and photography. Below are two writing pieces that explore my identity, the first about my experience growing up as an immigrant growing up in the United States, and the second about healing after being sexually assaulted.…
How They Cooked
Hey APC! My name is Sela Dingpontsawa (@sela.dingpontsawa). I am sixteen years old and I’m from Palo Alto, California. I identify as Asian American, and more specifically Tibetan American. Tibet was a country that is now an autonomous region in China. This year I have thought a lot more about my identity and what it means to be Asian American and an ethnic minority without a country. This piece is something that I wrote for an English project. We read We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, and were instructed to write a piece in a similar style to one of Bulawayo’s chapters. I decided to write “How They Cooked”…
Happy Hapa
My name is Angela but I am called Angie. I am 19-years-old, and I live in Los Angeles California. I identify as a hapa. In Hawaiian that means white foreigners. It usually refers to anyone who is half white and of island decent. I am Japanese and white. I’m not more of one. I was culturally raised Japanese during the weekdays but on the weekends I was a very American girl. My dad took my siblings and me to a lot of free concerts in the park during the summer and weekends to see, not the rolling stones but their tribute “the Hollywood stones”, and it was not Led Zeppelin…
Kindergarten Play
Aloha APC! My name is LeNora Suguturaga, I am 18-years-old, and I am currently taking a gap year in Hawai’i before I head to Brown University next fall. Some quick facts about me: – I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. – I am Tongan, Fijian, and a little bit of Samoan, Jewish, and Swiss-German. – I have 8 siblings and 4 dogs. – And I have a YouTube channel that I just started! Subscribe to me @norasugu 🙂 The piece I am submitting is actually my Common App essay that got me into 12/13 schools I applied to. The common app essay is one…
Islam and Asian are not Mutually Exclusive
Hey, APC! I’m Angel Samsuhadi, a 15-year-old aspiring journalist born and raised in Northern Virginia. I’m fully Indonesian. My mom is from East Java and my dad is from Jakarta. This piece was inspired by my struggles with being Muslim, Asian, and a Muslim-Asian. It isn’t a very relatable experience, considering that Muslim Asians are such a small portion of America, but I still find it necessary to let our experiences be heard. Islam and Asian are not mutually exclusive “What the hell are you wearing?” He was referring to the hijab that I was wearing for Sunday school. I’m not sure, and I’ll never be sure if this was…
