WINNERS

Congratulations to the winning students! Your creative piece was selected as one of the most stirring and contemplative among hundreds of submissions from students nationwide.

We want to thank all of our participants in the Bring the Noise student art scholarship contest. Your submissions on the subject of AAPI mental health were brave and awe-inspiring. We heard you. And we look forward to you continuing to Make Noise Today and every day!

MemorialCare

Platinum Prize

The Marionette by Grace P.

As a Korean American, I struggled to strike the right balance between two distinct cultures. Growing up in a conservative Korean household taught me to be deferential, reserved, and mature “unnie” (i.e., older sister), whereas American culture emphasized a socially adept lifestyle. Having been exposed to cultural differences since a young age, incidents such as being chastised for bringing my mother’s homemade kimchi and kimbap to school caused me to further isolate my two identities. My piece depicts my internal conflict, a struggle to break free from the grip of my insecurities and fears about how different communities of people perceive different aspects of myself, and to find the courage to overcome them. Furthermore, my piece depicts different stages of emotion, such as frustration, loneliness, and relief. Ropes are prominent in my piece, and they represent the restrictive force that untangles through each stage. As an Asian American, I have discovered the value of combining qualities from both cultures to bring out the best in myself.

The day that I brought Vietnam home

by Taylor N

It took many years of growth and hours of introspection on my own part before I finally realized the reason why my grandmother would search through the trash every week before she took it out to the alley. To a young child, the war-hardened survival techniques that she had never unlearned had just come off as oddities that I could never shake. The houses my friends lived in were clean, white- without shriveled ladies with discerning eyes that would pick through the garbage can after every meal to make sure we never threw anything away.

Popo never liked to talk about Vietnam. At least, not unprompted. It wasn’t a part of her life that she liked to remember, and for the longest time, I was unsure of what exactly my family was. I knew that we were Chinese, the red and gold calendars on the wall reminded me of that every day. They always had scripts that I could never understand, holidays that I had never heard of. For the time, being Chinese was a way of eating my food: never leaving rice behind in my bowl, picking apart oranges and saving the peel, dropping crab shells onto the plates of my grandparents, who would suck on the cartilage until they could gum the legs into paste. China was not a place in my head, nor was I sure that it was exactly where my family came from.

In the seventh grade, I was assigned a project from my physics teacher: make a roller coaster with a central theme. My current obsession that year was TellTale’s series The Walking Dead, a game focused on a world overrun with the undead. Many of the scenes depicted in the games resembled war-torn battlefields, overrun with the bodies of the damned. That was what I had based my entire project on. Melted glue held dirt and moss to a flat piece of cardboard, with sticks that attached themselves to a pool noodle that I painted with various shades of brown, red, and black. I used small props to represent the items left behind by victims in the video games- reminders of the inspiration I had received from them.

While the poster was drying, my Popo had come downstairs to bring me some tea. She has this wonderful habit of putting an amalgamation of herbs and fruits into a pot of boiling water and then claiming it would cure any disease imaginable. I used to be irked by these cups of broth. They were too bitter, and I would gag on the debris that floated at the bottom. But now, I miss them dearly. That day, the tea was sweet.

She paused when she opened the door to the basement, looking squarely at the project that I had put my entire heart into. I thought for a moment that she was disappointed in me, with the way that her thin lips pressed together and turned down. Her legs had given out under her, and she moved to sit in the doorway, looking with exhausted eyes toward my science project. Then, she told me all about Vietnam.

“Yunyi, you do this?”

“Yes Popo, is something wrong?”

“Look like Vietnam,”

It was then when she told me of the past I had no idea existed. Of a time where America fought a war that they were bound to lose. Of a time where my grandfather was a man of grandiosity, and spoke much more than he does now. She told me of the boat that she took my mother on immediately after the fall of Saigon, and how a woman died aboard their ship, leaving them with no other choice to abandon her body or risk illness by leaving all others exposed to it. She told me about the burning fields and the torn-up casinos, and of the police that raided her home.

Somehow, she managed to say this all with a smile on her face. When I had asked her in a hushed tone if she was alright, she waved her hand at me.

“Chinese never cry. We grateful,” she placed her hand over mine, “grateful because America take care of us.”

For some reason, those words stuck with me. I felt like all of the suffering that I had endured in my own time was nothing, that I would never be allowed to feel pity for myself when my grandmother had already lived through fifteen lifetimes of trauma. It didn’t feel fair.

So, when I ended up in the hospital for a suicide attempt, I had never expected to hear anything from her or Gonggong. I was ashamed. I knew I could never face them after what I had done. After all that they’ve been through, what did I give them to show for it? A destroyed daughter and miserable grandchildren. While I sat in bed for the week I was mandated to stay in the hospital, I kept repeating to myself: “Chinese never cry.”

I told the doctors that I was better, that everything would be okay when I returned home, and that I would not need any further intervention. There was this aching fear inside of me that my mother had told my Popo and Gonggong that I had failed them, that I was not the American dream. I tried everything I could to make my return as normal as possible. I wanted to pretend that nothing had ever happened.

But when I got home, Popo was waiting for me upstairs, sitting next to my bedroom with her hands clasped in her lap. I smiled sheepishly at her and tried to push past silently and just settle into my bedroom, but she called out softly for me not to close the door.

“Mat yeh?”

“Taylor- you not happy?”

Five minutes passed before I could even begin to think of anything to tell her. Of course she noticed I was gone, I lived with her for god’s sake. And why wouldn’t my mother tell her? She was her daughter, she had to tell her mom. I wondered if my Popo held my mother as she cried, just as my mom did to me.

“No, Popo, I’m not happy.”

“Popo loves you, we all love you.”

And that was all I needed to hear to know that everything would be okay.

“I love you too, Popo.”