prism - ISSUE 04

PORTRAIT

PORTRAIT

issue #4 : spring 2020

prism

cover

model Nanako Kurosu

photo Am Chunnananda

A Word from the Executive Staff

The articles and art for this issue were completed prior to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the subsequent protests that have been occurring since. Nevertheless, it is vitally important that we, the staff of Portrait, take the time to say this clearly: Black lives matter. For centuries, Black people have been fighting for their right to live in a country that has been built on their subjugation, and the brutalization of Black people at the hands of the police is an issue that can only be solved with the abolishment of the police as an institution.

It is the unfortunate truth that Asian Americans have been a part of that; the involvement of an Asian officer in George Floyd’s death is only one part of the long legacy of tension between Asian and Black communities in America, continually reinforced by stereotypes such as the model minority myth. Anti-Blackness in Asian and Asian American communities has continued for too long, and we at Portrait can and will do more to combat this wrong. This magazine was created to give Asian and Asian American students a place to tell our stories and speak our truth, and we acknowledge that this is possible because of the struggle of Black people, both at Vassar College and in larger American society.

This fight extends far beyond these few months, both into the past and into the future. There are no neutral parties here, and as you enjoy the work of the creators that are included in this issue, please remember to always be mindful of how we have benefited from the activism of Black people (i.e. the 1965 Voting Rights Act), and whether or not you have made a conscious effort in your own life to do better. We will not see the future we want without action, and silence is surrender to the white institutions that have enacted so much violence against Black people for the past 400 years.

Finally, please take care of yourself. There is hard work to be done and reparations to be made. See this issue of Portrait as an opportunity to rest, to take in the beauty of this community and breathe for a moment. Then, remember that even this moment of rest is a luxury, and the struggle for justice is far from over.

Thank you to all of you, the readers, and to our contributors and creators. Portrait is lucky to have you.

June 2020

Working as a contributor to Portrait for the past two years has been one of the greatest prides of my Vassar career. Since its conception, this space has brought so much joy and light into my life. This community has given me incredible friends and an opportunity to create something unlike anything else that exists on Vassar campus. As such, I was beyond excited to step into the role of Editor-in-Chief for this issue. It would be an understatement to say that Portrait is near to my heart, and I came into this semester hoping to continue to build this space that has been so important to me.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go according to plan, and this period of time has taken on a shape that none of us could have imagined when we held our first meeting for this issue back in January. It’s been a rough time, but I am so honored and thankful to be working alongside an executive board and a general body that have continued to put their hard work and time into this magazine despite, or perhaps because of everything. This issue’s theme, “prism,” is about both similarity and difference, how people who come from the same background, people who all call themselves “Asian,” can experience life in a thousand different ways just as a prism splits light into a rainbow. I’m a strong proponent of the idea that sharing stories is one of the fundamental ways in which we connect with other people, and I think that is more important now, in this time of crisis, than ever.

I am proud to present this collection of work, ranging from an epistolary narrative to discussions of disability in the Asian American community to our very first comic. Portrait is so lucky, especially now, to have such a wonderfully talented group of creators. Thank you to all of you.

I hope that experiencing this work brings you as much joy as it does to me.

With thanks and love,

Emma Chun Editor-in-Chief

May 2020

opening photographs / design Am Chunnananda

FAMILY PORTRAIT

Editor-in-Chief

Emma Chun

Content Editor

Jane Ahn

Creative Director

Am Chunnananda

Publicity

Manager Emily Zihao Yang

Janus Wong

Katherine Lim

Writers

Isabelle Paquette

Jessica Li

Annie Xiyang Xu

Elena Furuhasi

Jiaqi (Julia) Peng

Jess Liu

Josh (Seungjun) Kim

Tamika Whitenack

Janus Wong

Kara Lu

Assel Omarova

Jay Zhang

Shreya Suresh

Ceci Villaseñor

Ananya Suresh

Alexander Pham

Editors

Ceci Villaseñor

Evelyn Li

Gabor Fu Ptacek

Janet Song

Jessica Li

Joshua Kim

Joy Yi Lu Freund

Kaylee Chow

Phoebe Jacoby

Designers

Lauren Yung

Griffin Wells

Joy Yi Lu Freund

Alexander Pham

Sharon Nahm

Jenn (Xin Rui) Ong

Taylor Gee

Phoebe Jacoby

Jay Zhang

Am Chunnananda

R E A R V I E W

N A N Y A

S U R E S H

ability of the ride.

Edited by Joshua Kim

A rich, pristine, blue lake marked the halfway point of our ride. It stretched as far as the eye could see. My sister and I would strain our eyes in the hopes of seeing what treasures laid on the other side of the lake’s banks.

Designed by Lauren Yung

Every day we would notice something new in the landscape.

I ride through the roads of Bangalore protected by a sleek, champagne-colored Toyota Innova. It is the same route I have taken for eleven years. The car starts in the basement of a complex of four hundred apartments, and stops just long enough to drop me and my sister at the rusting gates of a private school seven kilometers away.

Eleven years ago, the drive had taken over thirty minutes each way because of bad roads. The roads were so narrow that only one car could pass through at a time. When a cow crossed one of these narrow roads, we had to add at least ten minutes to our estimated time of arrival. But I didn’t even think of it as a delay. Numerous potholes had made the car ride feel like an adventure instead. Although each bump had my father wondering if this would be the time that he would break his back, my sister and I loved the unpredict-

Once we saw a saint telling people their fortunes under the shade of a big Banyan tree on the banks of the lake. His tree was next to the age-old temple, where my father would make us say an equally old prayer thrice over as we passed it.

After an exciting adventure, we arrived at school— a mango grove that had recently been converted into a school. The school had tried to preserve as many mango trees as possible and branches often grew into our classrooms. During the mango season, all of us little children would try our luck at getting a mango by throwing stones at a tree or asking a teacher to lift us up. Delicious mango juice would dribble down our chins as we went back to our English classes. We would then read stories of New York City and London and wish for a way for us to live there. They had such juicy mangoes all year round!

After school, when my grandmother picked us up, we would sometimes go into the red and white temple, say some evening prayers

and eat the temple-made prasadam. My favorite was the brown and tangy puliogare. We would always pack some in steel boxes that we brought from home and take the bumpy road back home.

The ride changed five years ago when a progressive government had finally paved the roads and filled some of the potholes. Instead of driving our old car, our family decided to buy a foreign-made Toyota Innova—a car too big and unnecessary for our family. But the salesperson convinced us that we needed the space and the prestige, and before long we rode a shiny new car that matched the shiny new roads.

As the year passed, the lake’s water slowly turned brown. Garbage and plastic lined the lake’s banks until one day we could not see any water anymore. We asked around and found out that a real estate corporation had bought the lake and drained the water to build a new complex of luxury condominiums on the land. When the condominiums were built, traffic increased so much that a shorter road to school had to be laid across some old farmland. I have not used the lakeside road ever since.

Today, my ride to school is very different. Our Toyota Innova drives over the wellpaved roads in fifteen minutes. We play American music on the radio each morning. The landscape is one of a globalized Bangalore, a concrete jungle. There are two McDonald’s, two KFCs and one Taco Bell on the road that did not have any foreign restau-

rants eleven years ago. Every traffic signal counts down the seconds before the next green light. That’s the only green I have seen on this road for at least three years.

The left-over mango trees at school have been cut down to make space for renovations. The private school wants to accommodate more students so that they can make more money. The little children go to a shop near the school and buy sleeves of Oreos and plastic bottles of Coca-Cola. They go back to English class and read stories of New York City and London. They wish for Hershey’s kisses and Cheetos to come to Bangalore. Their wish will soon come true.

After school, my sister and I ask our grandmother to stop at the supermarket and we buy American-brand chocolate, ice cream, and Lay’s chips. Some days we stop at Taco Bell or McDonald’s and gorge ourselves with prepackaged, frozen cheese shipped to us from countries far and wide. We pack our leftovers into large plastic boxes and carry them home in even larger plastic bags.

I still live in the same three-bedroom apartment. Eleven years ago, it was on the outskirts of Bangalore. Today it is city central. It took eleven years for a sleepy village to become a part of India’s newest, globalized, consumerist city. I witnessed what it took for Bangalore to get to this place. It took the death of a Garden City to make way for a Silicon City. Yet, even as I grieve the loss of my garden city, I ride through its roads hidden inside a sleek Toyota Innova.

The Silent Song of the Steppe

WRITTEN BY Assel Omarova

EDITED BY Janet Song

There is a Kazakh legend about Korkyt-ata, a man who spends his whole life trying to find the secret to immortality. However, death follows him wherever he goes. In every village, he meets people who are digging a grave. When he asks who the grave is for, he always gets the same dreadful answer: “For you.” Out of despair, he climbs the tallest mountain he can find, foolishly believing that death will not reach him there. Death finds him in the form of a poisonous snake. While dying from a bite, he creates kobyz, a Kazakh music instrument, and his song lives forever in the hearts of the people. The song tells that no one can escape their fate. It whispers to every young kazakh,“You can’t run away from the truth”.

These exact words were written on a poster put up by activists, Asya Tulesova and Beibarys Tolymbekov, at the Almaty Marathon on April 21, 2019. The two were then sentenced to 15 days’ detention for violating the public assembly law. How could one mildly provocative poster make such a fuss? The poster conveyed the

message that the Kazakhs had a real chance to change their country’s political situation that spring.

Let me start with the history. On April 24, 1990, Nursultan Nazarbayev was named the first President of Kazakhstan by the Supreme Soviet. Thirty years later, Nazarbayev resigned on March 19, 2019, and assigned Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev as the interim president. The news froze the nation in disbelief as citizens watched the first and the only president of Kazakhstan recited his resignation speech on every national TV channel.

I remember getting a shocked message from my friend and rushing to the TV. I remember my mom running out of the kitchen and my dad straightening up on the couch. I remember the feeling of witnessing a history in the making. The president is retiring! That thought was terrifying, unsettling, and exciting, because everybody felt that the change was coming. We knew that tomorrow we would wake up in a new different world.

DESIGNED BY Alexander Pham

And we did. That night I went to sleep in Astana and the next day I woke up in Nur-Sultan. The name of our capital changed over one day without a referendum, and something changed in people’s hearts too. The noise from the first waves of discontent barely reached 70 decibels. It started with displeased tweets, posts on Instagram debating if changing the city’s name violated the Constitution, and sarcastic stories with a new geolocation, “Nur-Sultan.”

Soon, however, the noise slowly loudened. On March 22nd, I heard the rumbling cackle of fireworks for Nauryz, a celebration of welcoming spring. But in this spring, instead of the rustling of leaves, I heard the rustling of footsteps on the streets. People were rallying. And the noise of discontent continued to build. The world outside Kazakhstan joined the chorus of the protest. The Guardian wrote, “Little change expected despite Nursultan Nazarbayev stepping down after 30 years in power.” The Washington Post reported: “It’s a conflict familiar in post-Soviet nations: Democratic expectations meet unreformed police forces.”

When the presidential election came on June 9th, 2019, the protest peaked. The “Oyan (Wake up), Qazaqstan” movement emerged. Videos with people exposing their opinions on Kazakhstan’ politics flooded our Instagram feeds.

On June 12, 2019, Tokayev became the official second president of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The OSCE final report on the election stated: “The counting of votes was negatively assessed in more than half of observations, including cases of deliberate falsification, raising serious questions about whether ballots were counted and reported honestly.”

I was terrified that we were on the edge of a destructive storm, fueled by a power of thirty years of silence, but the winds suddenly calmed down after. People stopped rallying. The posters ceased to appear. Those outraged videos disappeared in the internet void. The international press moved on to another conflict, much more interesting and radical. The revolution ended without even starting, but there was something in the air, whispering “It was just a beginning.” While this silence continued, I wrote my address as “Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan” on my college application, and traded it for a new residential address - “Poughkeepsie, NY, USA.”

Iflew across the globe in a pursuit of the different world that I had hoped to wake up in last March. Unfortunately, wherever I went, I was haunted by unsettling thoughts about my faraway homeland. The year I came to Vassar, there were around 1700 other Kazakhs who came to attend universities in the United States. When they hear of students freely protesting for climate change protocols around the United States, I wonder how many of them think of the man in Uralsk who was detained for holding a blank poster. Or how many of them stop laughing at mean memes about Trump when they remember that Kazakhstan’s Criminal Law states that a public insult of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan could deprive them of liberty for one year. How many of them tried to silence these thoughts when they arrived in America?

We are escaped children of nomads raised on the story of a man trying to run away from his fate. Running away from our own thoughts should not be an issue, but it is, because we have other legends that remind us about the fire in our hearts that demands justice.

There is the legend of Queen Tomiris who protected our steppes against the army of Cyrus the Great and drowned his head in blood with the famous cry: “You wanted blood so much, so drink plenty.” There are stories of Panfilov’s 28 warriors who endured an attack from 54 tanks that lasted several days within World War II. These warriors did not back down because they were protecting Moscow full of innocent people. These stories remind us that we are descendants of warriors who fought in the battles against the enemy a thousand times and saved our lands.

My mind reminds my heart that fighting bravely against the outside forces to protect your home is one thing, while starting a war within your country takes a different kind of courage. There are so many questions that are yet to be answered.

Who is the enemy?

What change should we demand?

And, most importantly, what will survive these liberations?

The last question makes me shiver. I think about my home where everybody can pronounce my name right. I think about the country with 120 nationalities where Christmas and Easter, Nauryz and Aid, New Year and International Women’s Day are all official holidays. I imagine the straight streets of my city, the glittering lights of the skyscrapers, the smell of fresh baursaki, and endless yellow steppes. I see boys opening doors and standing up to give you a seat, young people helping the elderly, and warm tea in pialas on the table anytime guests come over; I hear laughter of my parents from our dining room, familiar words with scratchy қ and soft ә, English rap mixing with sounds of dombra coming from cars on the streets. I think about my friends, whose parents might end up on a different side of the fight.

I think about all of that disappearing in smoke. I think about all the noble wars that started as a means of freedom and justice and ended as yet another bloody campaign for wealth, land and oil. These thoughts made me bite my tongue and not join when I heard the first notes of the protest.

I remember the first time I had these mixed feelings. I was very little, but old enough to know that a presidential election was coming. I was pestering my parents to go and vote for Nazarbayev, because I, a child, believed that he was the only way to preserve the peace in our country. My aunt looked at me and said: “Well, balam (child), but you do not know anything about other candidates. If the other president promised to give out free ice cream every day, would you vote for him?” It made me think a lot about who I should stand for, and I feel that I still do not know my answer.

So, I keep quiet and I wait for the truth to come and bite us in the ass. Maybe a Kazakh can really only sing the truth after that.

But here I am in America, standing on the land of freedom of speech, hearing so many brave and loud songs calling for justice. Native Americans, African-Americans, LGTBQ, women, young people — they’re rallying, screaming, voting, and not letting anyone silence them.

I pray one day to find the same light that bravely cutting through a muting block becomes a rainbow, and refuses to disappear in a silent trap of a prism.

Image of horseback rider by Charlotte Venema on Unsplash Kazakh ornaments by dilaia on iStock

The Beech Tree

Jess Liu

Edited by Joy Freund

Designed by Jay Zhang

BY: JENN ONG

Edited by Ceci Villasenor

There is a scene in the 2019 film

The Farewell where Billi, played by actress Awkwafina, decides to tell her mother, Jian, that she’d like to move to China to take care of her grandmother. They’re in Changchun to see her, as she’s been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, but under the false guise that Billi’s cousin is to marry. The wedding they’ve set up is only an excuse for the extended family to say goodbye, as the family has decided not to inform the grandmother, referred to in the film as Nai Nai and played by actress Zhao Shu-zhen, of her diagnosis. The weight to bear such information, Billi’s uncle tells her, lies on the family, and not Nai Nai, who cannot spare the energy of worrying. When Billi tells Jian of her plan however, Jian is dismissive. “You stay? For what?” She asks, “You can’t cook, you can’t clean. You barely speak Chinese!” This is when Billi begins to cry. They moved from China when she was six, she reminds her mother, and she had no idea what was going on. When her grandfather died, her parents decided not to return for the funeral, and so now as she returns more than twenty years later, everything is different. Her ye ye is gone, their house is gone, Nai Nai’s old neighborhood in Changchun is gone; paved over to build skyscrapers. Soon, Billi realizes, Nai Nai will be gone too.

My dad and his family escaped Vietnam in 1980, settling in a small majority-white college town in

eastern Washington. While applying to medical schools, he met my mom at a party. She was an ESL teacher, and gave him her number because she had Vietnamese students of her own and wanted him to come in to speak to them. When he introduced her to his parents, my bà nội cried, not because my mom was white, but because she wasn’t Catholic. After medical school, my parents moved to Minneapolis for my dad’s residency, where I was born. Two years later, they moved to Portland and had my brother. We continued to move—San Francisco, then Seattle, then Baltimore. My brother and I grew up away from my bà nội and ông nội, or any of my dad’s relatives. When we did see my grandparents, a sort of crash-course in culture occurred. It was mostly through my bà nội’s cooking—we’d wake up every morning to her cooking bánh bao and bánh tiêu, and as we sat with her at dinner she’d scoop whatever dish she had cooked that we had strategically avoided due to its appearance and encourage us to try it (it always turned out good, because it was Bà nội who cooked it)—but it was also in other ways. We attended midnight mass with them, and listened in as they spoke with my dad, catching the small scraps of English my dad would toss in if he didn’t know a word. That, combined, was what I saw as my Vietnamese experience.

The summer before my seventh grade, my family flew to Orange County for a wedding of one of my dad’s cousins. There were to be two ceremonies—a

Designed by Griffin Wells

Written by Alexander Pham

traditional Vietnamese wedding at a rental house and then an exchange of vows at the church nearby. At the rental house, I found myself crammed between relatives I had never met before, watching as the couple made their way through the house to an altar. I remember my ông nội handing me an iPad and telling me to film the ceremony, and me waving the iPad around wildly with no idea what to focus on.

In The Farewell, based on director and writer Lulu Wang’s own experience, Billi comes to understand that lying to her grandmother to spare her the pain of knowing she is dying is something she’ll never fully get, and yet it’s not her place to say her family cannot do so. This realization, perhaps, is a culmination of her trip to Changchun where she’s been confronted at every turn with reminders that this former home is not hers. That sort of comprehension—of knowing there’s a tradition, a culture, a language, a way of life you’re a part of yet will never fully understand—is one I had never before seen expressed, and yet it was something I had come to understand early on, and subsequently felt shame for. For me, watching The Farewell was like looking into a mirror on-screen. And as Billi reached her moment of catharsis, I felt something settle in me too. There was something so achingly specific in the film, for any immigrants or children of immigrants, about the question of belong ing.

In attempting to get

The Farewell financed, director Lulu Wang noted that she came across pushback from both American and Chinese financiers, who wanted her to add a white character with

a large supporting role to her script. In an interview with The New York Times, Jon M. Chu, the director of Crazy Rich Asians, revealed that an early suggestion from a producer was to make the main character and audience surrogate of the film, Rachel Chu, a white woman. The goal with both sets of requests is painthese financiers audiences would unable to late to the stories on screen if there was not a white character present that everything could be easily explained to. And while these concerns per- haps had little faith in white audiences, they are even more marked in their disregard for Asian audiences. Adding a white character as the audience surrogate inevitably changes stories like The Farewell and Crazy Rich Asians from observations on what it means to be Asian American to examinations and dissection on our culture from the outside looking in. In The Farewell, Billi, acting as the audience surrogate, is able to learn about the reasons her family have for lying to her nai nai and process her own emotions as a member of the community. Thus, the angle for the story never skews into demonizing or exoticizing the situation at hand as it might have done had there been a white character standing in for the audience and reacting to the conundrum. Furthermore, having a white character stand in for the audience invalidates the central conflict of both Crazy Rich Asians and The Farewell, two films that investigate the feeling of alienation that being a member of a diaspora can bring. These inner turmoils are

disregarded if instead the story is retooled to focus on explaining Asian and Asian American life to an outsider. All in all, in suggesting that a white audience surrogate is needed for the films’ success, these financiers are showing both their view of Asian Americans as the other, as people who need to be explained to general crowds, as well as their mistrust in Asian creators like Wang and Chu in their ability to tell their story on their own.

The Farewell has faced criticism itself for its portrayal of China. (Having no Chinese ancestry or relation to China, I feel I cannot speak on this aspect, but found the article by Qin Chen in Inkstone News, “Is ‘The Farewell’ problematic? For some in China, the answer is yes” helpful in breaking down another perspective on the film.) Similar to Crazy Rich Asians, which faced criticism for its failure to include aspects of Singaporean culture beyond the upper-class, this issue brings to light the dearth of Asian and Asian American films being produced and screened in America. When only one or two make it to general audiences a year, this itself only being a recent phenomenon, pressure is added for them to act not only as films but the Asian films. Crazy Rich Asians goes from a fun, glittery rom-com to a movie that stands for the entire Asian population and diaspora. The Farewell is lifted from a small independent feature about a personal history to a representation of Asians everywhere because it is the only film out that year with an entirely Asian cast, telling an Asian story. Not only are these films supposed to act for the entire, diverse Asian community, the chances for future projects getting greenlit and produced then hinge on their success and their ability to get audiences to come out. And when film producers, financiers, or distributors either can’t relate to the stories being told or doubt audiences’ ability to relate, either the artistic integrity of the story or the story’s chances at ever getting told are hampered. And in no way does the blame lie on the films themselves, but rather the situations

surrounding them.

And yet, perhaps the watershed moment for Asian and Asian-American stories in Hollywood is already here. Parasite’s win marks a new Oscars, one where foreign-language films are now in consideration (the fact it took 91 years is perhaps less of a celebratory fact). Recently, a group of Asian-American film and media veterans founded AUM Group, a fund dedicated to telling diverse stories. Four days before AUM’s announcement, producer Mary Lee announced her new production company A-Major Media, which is set to focus on producing film and television content centered on Asian-American experiences. At the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Minari, a film by Korean-American director Lee Isaac Chung based on his own experience growing up in rural Arkansas, picked up both the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Dramatic Audience Award. Tigertail, Alan Yang’s fictionalized retelling of how his father came to America from Taiwan, was recently released on Netflix. More stories are coming, highlighting more backgrounds and more perspectives, from our own storytellers.

On a website set up by The Farewell’s distributor A24, www.mynainai.com, users could upload a photo of their grandmother and what they learned from them, which they could then share to their Instagram story or post. On The Farewell’s Instagram page you can still see them. Grandmothers, grandmamas, bubbies, abuelitas—these images prove that The Farewell isn’t just relatable from an Asian perspective. The love for family is universal, and despite the financiers’ worries about Lulu Wang’s story, there was a large audience receptive to it. So perhaps these financiers were wrong in assuming a white character was needed for the audience to relate, as it is only crystal clear in many ways that these stories, while being slices of Asian and Asian American life, don’t need any reframing to be understood and enjoyed by all.

In Between Worlds: Gathering Thoughts on the Coronavirus Outbreak back in China

Jiaqi (Julia) Peng Edited by Joshua Kim Designed by Am C.

Writer’s Note: I wrote this piece around the end of February, when COVID-19 was affecting my home country China the most, and it focuses solely on the situation there. Given where we are now, however, readers will find it different from the global perspective they might expect from the topic.

When I left home the morning of January 20th, everything seemed normal. The country was in the hustle and bustle of getting ready for the Lunar New Year just four days away. I’d probably seen something about an “unknown pneumonia” online but didn’t pay much attention. Even after I landed in the US to hear that a highly respected doctor had just confirmed this new virus could spread between humans, I still didn’t think it was a big deal.

The next day, headlines of the first cases of “new pneumonia” across the country dominated the top 50 trending topics on Chinese social media. Fear lurked behind us.

On January 23rd, the city of Wuhan was in lockdown. Intracity public transportation froze. Highways, train stations and airports were shut down. No one could get in, and no one could get out. That was the day most Chinese people realized that something was very wrong.

A website posted daily official statistics of newly confirmed and suspected cases, as well as number of deaths and cured patients. It also showed a map marking China’s provinces with different shades of red, depending on the number of confirmed cases. Compared to other provinces, Hubei was colored with a very dark red. I watched as confirmed cases grew by hundreds and then quickly by the thousands, until the numbers slowly lost their meaning to their immense size. Eventually, the last uncolored bit of the map disappeared. I was convinced that for a long time onwards, these light and dark

red patches would be the first image that comes to mind whenever I see a map of China.

On January 24th, Lunar New Year’s Eve, the day of reunion and happiness, social media was flooded with announcements from hospitals in Hubei requesting medical supplies such as masks and protective suits. Due to their short expiration date, hospitals carry small stocks of supplies, but have to replace any removed mask or suit. Unfortunately, factories couldn’t start production at once since workers were back in their hometown, and the lockdown hindered the transportation of supplies.

Still, people managed to send everything they could find, but only to have their donations disappear into the void of Wuhan Red Cross Society. We watched donated masks somehow find their way to the market. We watched CCTV journalists blocked from further investigations. We watched a driver of a high-ranking official leaving the Red Cross with a whole box of masks, while doctors silently waited outside, unable to access supplies with their “letters of introduction”. We watched all this happen while medical workers covered themselves with plastic file bags and garbage bags, while they begged for supplies in desperate tears as their colleagues were infected, while they were soaked in sweat--not daring to waste any protective suits for the day. They were heroes, but just like you and me, they, too, were scared.

People often quote this saying: “The dust of an age falls upon the shoulders of an individual to become a mountain”. It couldn’t have ever been more true now. A 17-yearold boy with cerebral palsy died 6 days after his father was quarantined because social services didn’t take care of him. A father jumped off a building in constant fear of spreading the disease to his family. A mother, unable to be admitted into a hospital due to lack of diagnostic kits and hospital beds, slit her wrist to end the pain she had been enduring. Migrant workers stranded in Wuhan collected leftover food on the streets and slept in parking lots because they lost their jobs.

I would often read about these events on my way to Blodgett Hall, when I wait in line at Global Kitchen, and before my next class on the French Revolution. Whenever I looked up from my phone, I would have these moments where my mind would freeze, because I couldn’t perceive the simultaneous existence of the two worlds. One in which medical workers worry about supplies, pa-

tients die at home, and countless families are shattered. Another in which I worry about my reading assignment for next class and chat about the Oscars with my friends. How can the two possibly exist at the same time? Which one is my world? How do I connect the two?

At first I tried to discuss COVID-19 in China with my friends, but soon found myself at a loss for words. How would I describe the desperate medical workers? What would I say about that 17-yearold boy? How would I explain the stranded workers sleeping in parking lots? I was speechless as I myself could not comprehend what was happening in front of my eyes.

I hardly recognized my country anymore---the country booming with industrial manufacturing, steadily progressing towards a “moderately prosperous society by 2020”, and boasting of the second largest GDP in the world. I’ve never blindly believed in everything about my country, but the living hell in Wuhan still caught me off guard and burst my bubble. It gave me a glimpse of where my country is truly at in terms of wealth, healthcare and administration. To talk about COVID-19 in China is to discuss our flawed social and political structures that led us here today --- the product of

an inefficient epidemic response system, a stratified bureaucracy that puts power before people, and an ideology that prizes stability above everything else.

Do I really want to discuss this with my classmates?

Being at the intersection of the two worlds makes things difficult in a nuanced way. The truth is, no matter how angry and disappointed I am, I’m not ready to criticize my country with people from other countries. No matter how secure I feel about my national identity, I don’t know how others will associate what my government does with who I am, and that uncertainty scares me. Besides, the gap between the two worlds is just too wide to overcome.

In Chinese, “新冠肺炎”(COVID-19) is the wailing of the girl chasing after the mortuary van that carried her mother away. It is the cry of the woman striking a gong on her balcony because her infected mother couldn’t receive medical attention. The letter a film director wrote before passing away, after his father, mother and sister all died from infection. It’s the national grief that drenched China’s winter with tears and forever took the spring from many.

In English, “coronavirus” is a time bomb that makes me tense up because I don’t know what will happen next. A mockery against Chinese people for “enjoying bat soup”? A complaint on us for being “dirty” and troublesome? Or perhaps just a normal, harmless discussion?

In the end, it comes down to finding a balance between two worlds: too much of one makes me an “aggressive nationalist”, while too much of the other makes me an “unpatriotic traitor”, and to be honest, I never found that balance. I ended up switching abruptly between the two worlds: I’d put down my phone, close my eyes to the tragedies I’d just read, and immediately engage in a light conversation with people around me. I felt guilty for being able to do this so quickly because it felt like I wasn’t being genuine to either world, but there

seemed to be no other way to handle their simultaneous existence. This was disheartening to say the least.

There was one thing that helped me come to terms with myself, though. Throughout the epidemic, I witnessed an immeasurable amount of kindness and courage. Farmers from all over the country, many of them in poverty, delivered their vegetables to donate to medical workers. Women founded organizations to purchase menstrual hygiene products for female doctors and nurses. Volunteers provided free rides for medical workers, delivered medicine to long-term patients and purchased groceries for elderly people. These acts of love transcended nationality and provided something for me to hold onto while I walk across the tightrope over the gap between two worlds. They reminded me to believe in humanity, and offered me strength and hope regardless of where I lie in between the worlds.

I’ve always heard that the city of Wuhan has breathtakingly beautiful cherry blossoms in the spring. When all of this is over, I’ll go visit with my family someday.

I will never forget the winter, but I know spring is coming.

Disability, Invisibility, & The Model Minority

When people look at me, they’ll see my most visible identity, my Asianness. What they might not see are my hearing aids hidden underneath my long hair, allowing me to essentially “pass” as someone with normal hearing. I don’t use sign language, and I don’t have a “deaf accent” that people with hearing loss might have. But even though my disability seems invisible to others, the internal conflict I once felt between my Asian and hard-of-hearing identities did not. During high school, I always felt that both identities intersected to give me a sense of invisibility. I was aware of the stereotype that Asians were supposed to be smart and excel in school, so I felt that my own academic achievements would render me as another model minority. At the same time, I wanted to prove that I could excel in spite of my disability, fearing that society regarded me as less capable because of my disability. But I did this by acting almost as if I didn’t have a disability, staying quiet about my struggles to hear during class discussions where I couldn’t hear everyone clearly or see their facial expressions for

context. As I fought against being relegated to one stereotype, I found myself entrapped by the other one. Looking back, my perception of these two identities was simplistic and lacked nuance. I’ve learned more about both my identities since then, and have come to appreciate how each label does not adequately capture how diverse individuals really are. Asian Americans aren’t a monolith, and disability isn’t either; in fact, the word disability encompasses a hugely diverse group of people. I don’t have to feel pressured to excel in everything just because I am Asian, and there are plenty of high-achieving students with disabilities, including those with hearing loss. There was also the fact that hiding my hearing aids meant that my experiences with being hard-ofhearing remained hidden, while my Asian identity was always visible. Outside of the classroom, there are subtle ways that being hardof-hearing affects my life: I prefer my 3-syllable full name over the nickname “Jess” so I’m more likely to hear my name. I might seem shy in loud settings because I’m afraid I’ll mishear what people say and respond with the wrong thing. If I kept my disability hidden, it prevented others from communicating with and understanding me better, adding on to my self-perceived invisibility from the model minority myth. I’m now much more comfortable talking about my hearing loss - making what was once invisible visible.

I’ve realized instead how being hard-of-hearing and Asian American has come together to give me a unique perspective in different situations. This “prism” of mine is best reflected in my experience of watching the now Oscar-winning movie Parasite. I was captivated not only by the sheer cinematic genius of the movie but also my sheer joy in being able to completely understand the movie through the subtitles and pick up all the subtle foreshadowing in the dialogue. It was such a contrast to all the other times when I’ve watched movies in theaters, when I’m not able to pick up everything that’s being said because there aren’t captions for English. Watching Parasite, I was essentially at the same level as any other moviegoer who didn’t understand Korean, relying on the captions for translation. Most people need subtitles for translation; I need them by default—even in my native language. Subtitles help confirm what I think I hear and have become my preferred way of watching media.

When Parasite won Best Picture, I screamed in excitement with my fellow Asian friends. It was a groundbreaking achievement of many firsts, for not only Korea, Asians in film, and foreign-language movies, but subtitle-users of all kinds. Every time I saw a headline or social media post celebrating the awards, I felt a wave of pride and emotion. The cherry on top was that Parasite helped to bring the importance of subtitles into popular discourse, and legitimized the normalization of it.

Sometimes I do wonder what it’d be like to hear “normally”. Wouldn’t it be so much easier, to just hear people instead of feeling exhausted from hours of intentionally listening to people with my hearing aids? But without my experiences, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. I wouldn’t be as empathetic, or adaptable in different situations. I wouldn’t recognize situations that aren’t conducive to clear communication, and attempt to find better, accessible workarounds. I wouldn’t appreciate the diversity of people’s individual experiences, or understand that others may have struggles that I don’t know about. In the end, the experiences that result from my identities have shaped me into the person I am today, and I wouldn’t trade that individual for anyone else.

QUESTION

How does Youtube as a media platform act as a prism for Asian representation and visibility? Where can we find the Asian community on Youtube and what videos can we go to see ourselves? Do these videos provide a “clarifying” or “distorted” message about our identity?

It’s no surprise that with the popularity of social media and a growing worldwide interest in creating content, YouTube has been at the forefront for many when sharing their passions with others. Since its launch in 2007, this video-sharing platform has established itself as one of the most popular news, entertainment and everything-in-between media sources everyone loves to watch. Have you ever fallen down a YouTube hole? I certainly have—and will probably continue to do so—because sometimes, it’s just that addictive. YouTube has proven to be more than just another way to watch videos; it’s become a melting pot of cultures, identities and shared creativity. YouTube is a place where anyone from any background can create content, something that has greatly helped diversify and increase representation of minorities in other media sources as well. I know one of the reasons why I love YouTube is because it was one, if not the only way I could see myself or people that looked like me in mainstream pop culture. Asian identity is something I didn’t really care about while growing up until I started watching YouTube. It was through watching videos like Michelle Phan’s makeup tutorials and Ryan Higa’s comedy sketches that made me realize just how important YouTube has been for the Asian community in providing visibility and success. Some of my favorite Asian celebrities are YouTube influencers. However, visibility is a two-way street, and YouTube is no exception. As a social platform, controversy or offensive content is inevitable. Just as there are many videos that showcase Asian Americans in a positive light, there are those that cast a negative light. When viewing videos such as Asians making fun of their own racial stereotypes or news reports of the Coronavirus, I asked myself in what areas has YouTube shaped both the good and bad parts of the Asian American experience? What subgenres of YouTube has the Asian community been particularly influential in? I’ve tried to answer these questions as best as I could by highlighting some of them below, along with some key creators. The next time you’re looking to see more of the Asian community on YouTube, you can start here.

ASIAN IDENTITY

One of the positive ways in which YouTube has highlighted the Asian community is through videos addressing what it means to be Asian American. You’ve probably already stumbled upon this identity genre relating personal experiences with trending topics from channels like BuzzFeed, Jubilee, Refinery29 and even TEDx talks. More and more Asian and Asian American creators are opening up discussions on both their pride and insecurities regarding their race. It’s a good thing. In 2015, As/Is by BuzzFeed, a channel with 10.7 million subscribers, came out with a video titled “I’m Asian, But I’m Not…” In the video, Asian Americans are interviewed about the stereotypes they are faced with but don’t embody, such as being good at math or an aspiring doctor. The video has over 3 million views. Similarly, one of Jubilee’s (4.9m) popular social experiments titled, “Do All Asian Americans Think the Same?,” asked different Asian Americans with opposing viewpoints the same questions about their race. It has over 2 million views. Even Asian American influencers like Domics, Jenn Im and Weylie Hoang, have started a more intimate conversation of their experiences with their viewers with the video tag, “Growing Up Asian (or specific Asian ethnicity) American.” No matter the way into the discussion, what’s important is that it is continuously being made, opening the door for Asian Americans to tell their stories and be heard through YouTube. Here are some other great videos to check out:

“What Does The Word ‘Asian’ Mean To You?” … BuzzFeedVideo

“Asian American Women Share Their Body Insecurities” … As/Is

“I Am Not Your Asian Stereotype | Canwen Xu | TEDxBoise” … TEDx Talks

“Asian Americans Try To Speak Their Native Language” … As/Is

COMEDY & ENTERTAINMENT

It’s not every day we see a lot of Asian Americans in the world of entertainment, comedy or general videos of enjoyment. People don’t typically think of Asian Americans at the forefront of creative artwork, whether that be music, stand-up, dance, gaming or just funny content. But YouTube has proven that Asians, given the chance, can be incredibly successful in these fields Channels like nigahiga (21.3m), Markiplier (25.1m), Liza Koshy (17.8m) and Domics (7.1m) have all made household names for themselves on YouTube either through comedy sketches, gaming videos or cartoon animations. Many of them provide Asian representation in multiple ways. The channel Wong Fu Productions (3.3m) has created videos parodying western films and TV shows with Asian characters, such as the “Asian Bachelorette” (5.9m). Some channels have chosen to use stereotypes about the Asian community as a way to humorously relate and connect with audiences, like the Fung Bros’ (2m) video, “18 TYPES OF ASIAN GIRLS” (4.6m) and “THINGS ASIAN PARENTS DO” (8m). Some successful Asian comedians have reached YouTube’s spotlight, including Ali Wong, Ken Jeong and Ronny Cheing, and have all been featured on popular channels like The Laugh Factory and Comedy Central.

MAKEUP & FASHION

My favorite subgenre to feature significant growth regarding the presence of Asian Americans is the makeup tutorial and vlog-style fashion videos of YouTube. Growing up in America, I faced a lot of western ideals of beauty and fashion standards that were heavily centralized around fair complexions and similar-looking models advertising new clothing collections. Only in the past few years has the call for diversity grown in these industries on an international scale, yet YouTube has already made these strides. One of the first YouTubers I ever watched was Michelle Phan. She was memorable not only because of her incredible talent in transforming into characters such as Lady Gaga or Barbie, but also because I saw a woman who looked like me look and feel beautiful, and others thought so too. It was more than just equating self-worth with validation, it was visibility I had never seen before. Every tutorial

Phan posted made me, a hopeful 12-year-old sitting in my bedroom, believe that I could be that beautiful too. Her skin tone was my skin tone and her eye shape was my eye shape. With 8.9 million subscribers and her own makeup line, Phan is one of YouTube’s biggest stars in the beauty world and she still hasn’t stopped. Here are some other popular Asian American beauty and fashion influencers to check out:

Patrick Starr (4.4m)

Jenn Im (2.6m)

bestdressed (2.8m)

Nikita Dragun (2.6m)

Asian food and culture has become popularized through YouTube in multiple ways. Food, in particular, is something we hold close to our identities. YouTube is allowing us to now see more representation of what can be on the menu, not just a burger and fries. Just take a look at how many mukbangs, a Korean term for eating show where someone eats food in front of an audience or camera, are out there right now (there are a lot, and many from non-Asian creators). Any fan of the ASMR community can attest that this way of producing a good “sensory” experience highlights Asian culture’s influence. The foods that get eaten in videos also span many ethnicities and include Chinese mooncakes, Japanese mochi and ramen, Indian chicken tikka masala and Taiwanese boba. SASASMR, a popular Thai ASMR channel with 8.4 million subscribers, showcases many Asian foods in her mukbang videos. There are also channels that teach viewers how to make Asian food, like JunsKitchen, with 4.5 million subscribers. All of his videos are rooted in his Japanese heritage. If you’re a lover of “food-hunters” on YouTube, you know that some of the most popular foods these videos focus on are from the streets of Asian countries, like the Japanese souffle pancakes that rack up millions of views. Here are some other favorites:

“Korean Street Food” ... Luke Martin

“Chinese Street Food Tour in Shanghai, China” ... The Food Ranger

“Street Food Japan” ... Street Food World Seonkyoung Longest (Asian cooking show)

“Extreme Asian Food Challenge • Try Guys Feast Mode” … BuzzFeedVideo

I mentioned before that there are negative aspects of the Asian American experience shown through YouTube, and it would be ignorant of me to gloss over them. Just like any other viral social platform, YouTube has videos that will offend someone, and the Asian community has taken the heat. Most recently, I remember two videos I watched that contained racist content: one being a Global News report on the widespread fear associated with the Coronavirus and the other of President Trump criticizing the South Korean film Parasite’s Oscar win for best picture at a rally in late February 2020. The former, with more than 185,000 views, talks about the damage fear and racist mindset have done on many small businesses in Canadian Chinatowns, most of which are now practically deserted. The video also showed social media’s influence on public attitudes, with trending tweets blaming Chinese food, specifically the consumption of rats, as part of the problem. In the latter video, President Trump seems to go off on a tangent when he talks to his audience about the South Korean film Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho. In the Guardian news video, with over 112,000 views, he can be quoted saying, “...and the winner is a movie from South Korea, what the hell was that all about? We got enough problems with South Korea!” among other mocking comments about foreign films in general. Although it is never easy seeing these videos on YouTube, I find it incredibly important that they are there so that we can directly address these problems and spread awareness on how to better these situations. We as viewers can become informed about not only what is happening in the world, but how we can talk about it with others and open discussions. Here are some other recent controversial incidents I’ve watched on YouTube regarding the Asian community:

“Asian-Americans accuse Harvard of bias” … CNN

“The Chinese students fighting racism - BBC News” … BBC News

“Racist Driver Berates Asian-American Family” … HuffPost

“‘Saturday Night Live’ fires Shane Gillis amid controversy”... ABC News

“Shane Gillis Chinatown” … Jomny Failsunn (podcast)

“Watters’ World: Chinatown edition” … Fox News

Written by Isabelle Paquette

Edited & Designed by Phoebe Jacoby

Written by Shreya Suresh

Edited by Evelyn Li

Designed by Griffin Wells

Senior Spotlight

Curator/Writer: Josh Kim

Editor: Jessica Li Designer: Taylor Gee

What colors do you associate with the colors of the rainbow? How has your time at Vassar shaped or transformed your perspectives about your Asian identity in relation to one or more colors you described in the previous question?

heathernguyen

vietnamese american (she/her)

media studies major, asian american studies correlate

interests: sports anime, boba, community building, AAPI organizing, cat cafes, cultivating kindness

I love Trixie Tang with all my heart, and I firmly resonate with her character. I mean, an Asian character with bangs? We’re pretty much the same person. Trixie always dons a purple turtleneck sweater, and wears every facet of her identity with confidence. I’ve come to associate the color purple with her, and subsequently confidence with the color purple. My time at Vassar has definitely shaped the way that I regard my Asian American identity in many regards. I mostly grew up in Utah, in a predominantly white area where I felt disconnected from a larger AAPI community. It wasn’t until I joined ASA during my freshman year that I gained the relationships, tools, and vocabulary to describe the experiences and emotions I had been feeling my entire life. I had AAPI role models to look up to and gained access to spaces where my thinking was challenged and reframed. When I was ASA President, I was exposed to many different Asian/Asian American experiences through general body meetings and realized that each one is interconnected, and that

none is better than another. For the first time, I was able to recognize the power in owning my narrative as a first-generation, low-income, Vietnamese woman. I used to not really understand my Asian identity besides recognizing that I was “othered”, but now I know that my identity as a Vietnamese American is rooted in so much more than ostracization; my identity is a story of love, of growth, of community, of resilience, and it’s one that I can now proudly wear with confidence - just like Trixie Tang and her purple.

VIETNAM (ANY)

STUDIO ART MAJOR

INTERESTS: food, cooking, Vietnamese Rice Paper Salad, Dried Seaweed Snacks, Seafood Boil, Ocean Vuong Poetry, Dancing, Exploring Gender and Self-Presentation through fashion and makeup, Dissociating, and Hot Takes

hiennguye n

I think my time at Vassar transformed me in many ways into a person that I am much more comfortable with than I was before coming here. This is not to say that I am satisfied with my experience because to be quite honest, I would rate it a hot 6.5/10. I grew a lot and went through a lot here, but a community that I felt like I could belong in was Transitions. As a Senior Intern for Transitions, I’m around the community a lot—I always have been. I have always been around other Transitions folks and community members because I think I found really amazing connections in people who share such similar experiences to mine: being low-income and first-generation. The color for the Transitions Program is purple, and I think I have slowly begun to associate the color with that community. There is love, wideness, and excitement in that color for me.

I chose to be more involved with Transitions than, say, ASA because I think there is also a long conversation to be had about what kind of shared experiences one can have based on race. I do think that coalition is important and learning to talk about the Asian identity in American context is crucial but I am much more interested in the kind of work that needs to be done for poor/low-income first-generation Asian immigrants like me. East Asian Americans continue to dominate the Asian American conversation. I know

that work is being done to undo this but there is just so much to talk about: the erasure of West, South, Southeast Asian folks; Post-Vietnam War diasporic trauma; the class tension/difference between East Asia and the rest of Asia. I am also more interested in Asian Americans’ relationship with other racialized/ marginalized groups especially in tandem with class.

A fun fact, I once made a sculpture installation about the differences the color white and red have in American context, and in Vietnamese context. Red in Vietnam is a color for luck and happiness, and white is the color of death. Whereas, I feel like, white in America is a color of purity (you wear white to weddings), and red is the color of blood. And when I submitted it, the professor referenced a bunch of things that the colors could have meant, and she clearly couldn’t get or understand that the project wasn’t meant for her (a white American woman) to understand. Anywho, it was then that I realized none of these white professors will really ever be able to understand who I am and how I move through this world.

Seungjun ( J o s )h miK

In Korean culture that I grew up with, “Red” often represented power and authority to fend off evil and unjust spirits and forces in society. That is why we traditionally eat red bean porridge during Winter Solstice to send off bad luck. Red also symbolizes “unity” manifested by the 2002 World Cup hosted in South Korea and also the candle lights of peaceful Korean protests which led to the ousting out of the president for her misdoings and corruption. I still remember vividly the scenes of baby Josh from 18 years ago wearing the “Red Devils” T-shirt and cheering on with my parents and the massive crowd of people in public squares. That sense of unity and solidarity is what I feel the most nostalgia for in this increasingly individualistic and fragmented society.

I would say, gratefully, that my longing for this “closely bonding community” was well satiated during my 4 years at Vassar. Like any other Asian identifying student on campus, I experienced microaggressions targeted towards students of color and was exposed to varying stereotypes of being Asian, such as the narrative that “Asians are nerdy”. Nevertheless, the Asian community I was part of was very welcoming. I am very glad that I had a safe space that organizations including the Asian Students’ Alliance created for

KOREA (HE/HIM)

MATHMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR; CHINESE CORRELATE

INTERESTS: Body Building, Percussion, Experimental Cooking, K Dramas, Music and Beat Making, Singing, Data Science, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence

students like me where I could freely express my enthusiasm for the side couple in a K drama, my guilty pleasure for animes like One Piece and pure curiosity in cultures from various Asian countries.

Furthermore, the Asian community at Vassar also expanded my horizon and views on what “Asian-ness” means. As a Korean international student who spent most of his life in Korea with one homogenous heritage, I realized that I was the frog in the well which believed the small patch of sky it saw through the well was everything there is to “Asian-ness”. Being able to understand that Asian Identity is not a black and white concept but rather a spectrum was a huge lesson I learned from Vassar’s Asian community. I came to learn that there are various kinds of Asian identity from first generation Asians, to international Asians, to Asian Americans who have lived in both America and some Asian country for equal periods of time. But regardless of how you define your Asian identity, the conversations we shared, the intercultural events we hosted, and the time we chilled together in the ALANA center will be stuck in my head for a long time, allowing me to have pride in my Asian heritage, humbling me to rectify any obnoxious traditions that exist in my Asian heritage and culture but also acknowledging that “difference” is not something wrong but a major asset.

alex sun

Chinese (he/him)

asian studies, french, and japanese major interests: Playing Guitar, Knitting, Watching YouTube

“What does it mean to be Asian American?” is a conversation I have had numerous times with my Asian American friends at Vassar. And even if we may not have come to the same conclusions, I am deeply thankful because they have given me insight on perspectives that I would not have been able to encounter otherwise. For many of them, having been born and raised in the United States, Asian Americanness has always been contingent on a geographical certainty: being in America. They were and are the outsider trying to ascertain their place in a space that in many ways sends mixed messages, welcoming them in certain instances, then shunning them in other moments.

I, on the other hand, was born in the United States, but raised in China, where everyone walked and talked just like I did. Perhaps one could call this a privilege because I never grew up feeling like I did not belong, at least not in the sense of being too Asian. However, I still felt like the Other, just in an inverse way: whereas my friends felt differentiated because of their Asian identity, I was the Other by virtue of my American identity. Even stranger was the fact that I had only spent the first three years of my life in the

U.S. prior to moving to China, so I did not even feel as American as people around me believed I was. So, even if I might not necessarily relate to the personal identity politics of each person, I definitely understand and sympathize with the frustration of being inexplicably different.

Yet, I have learned something from these not so inherently contradictory sentiments: there is such a variety of Asian American experiences to be shared and understood by not only the general public, but also by fellow Asian Americans. If my friends and I only represent two types of experiences, who knows how many more perspectives we are missing out on. Just as a prism refracts the colors of the rainbow, the term Asian American encompasses a wealth of backgrounds and heritages that deserve a voice. And that, this desire to understand all the hues of being “Asian American,” is what Vassar has imparted onto me over these last four years.

Ginto: From Yellow to Gold

When I was little, my teacher from Filipino school told our class a story about baking. Once upon a time, God really wanted cookies. And so, as one does, he went ahead and made some. Unfortunately, while God was very good at being a divine and loving entity, he was not so good at checking the timer, and his first batch ended up completely burnt. Have you ever wondered why some people have dark skin? Well, blame God’s baking. God didn’t have much luck on his second try either—the cookies were raw, creating fair-skinned people. But finally, God perfected his baking skills (and his timer-checking), and voila! A perfect batch of beautiful, golden-brown treats. And those cookies, my teacher said, were Filipinos.

I’ve gone back to this story countless times. I’ve told it to my friends, to people I’m trying to get to know, to complete strangers; this story opened my college application essay. It’s a cute little anecdote that’s laughably problematic, ready to be used and then brushed aside. Because while I had always laughed at the idea of Filipinos being “golden” and put on a pedestal, it was only re-

Ceci Villaseñor

edited by Emma Chun

designed by Am Chunnananda

cently that I began thinking about what it actually means to be “golden-brown”—neither yellow nor brown, but something in between. Here are three facts about me: My name is Cecilia Quisumbing Villaseñor. I’m Filipino American, and I’m from Acton, Massachusetts.

Acton is a little town around twenty minutes from Boston. It’s your standard upper middle class suburb with good public schools that draw people (read: Asian immigrants) in, my parents included. As of 2018, twenty-five percent of Acton’s population, and almost all of its minority population, is Asian.1

The fourth fact about me is that almost all of my friends from high school are Asian American—Chinese American, that is.

Growing up, I was usually content to just be “one of the Asians.” Sure, maybe my last name was more than one syllable long and sounded Hispanic. Maybe I was always more comfortable with a spoon and fork. I still ended up with the Huangs and the Xiangs and hung out at their houses, dandanmian slipping from my chopsticks. I knew that I was different, but it didn’t really matter. We had a lot in common: we were grade-driven, we never partied, and we bonded over being “generically Asian.”

1. https://www.towncharts.com/Massachusetts/Demographics/Acton-town-MA-Demographics-data.html#Figure9

Sometimes it was a little lonely. Most of my friends and their families spoke Mandarin, so I couldn’t chat with their parents or relatives, or even know what they were talking about when a side conversation broke out. When I was in fourth grade, I even asked a girl on my bus to teach me Chinese so I could finally understand what my friends were saying. In eighth grade, our social studies class did a unit on Chinese history and religion, probably because of the large Chinese American population. Given the seemingly single-digit Filipino American population, I realized then that I’d never get that moment of sharing my culture with my peers in class. When my high school history class glossed over American colonialism in the Philippines—a fairly easy opportunity to include Filipino voices—it all but confirmed that feeling.

Looking back, these memories of not fitting into the Asian category I had defined for myself jump out at me, but at the time, they were mere blips. Being “yellow” felt like a given, and my friends and I had bigger things to worry about, like getting into college. It’s only when I got to Vassar that I began to question whether I could call myself an Asian American.

There’s a lot to unpack. Let’s start off with the history of colonization in the Philippines.5

In 1565, Miguel López de Legazpi established the first permanent Spanish settlement, beginning the period of Spanish rule in the Philippines. Spanish colonialism had a profound impact on Philippine culture, changing its clothes, political institutions, and even language, to name a few examples.6 In 1902, after the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, American colonization began.7 Like Spain, America had a huge influence on Filipino culture, especially since the US implemented the American educational system in the Philippines.8 As a result, being Filipino has always meant reconciling different cultures, even before immigration to the US.

Here are some fun facts I discovered while doing research this year: The majority of Filipino Americans identify as Roman Catholic.2 The Filipino American ethnic group is currently the second largest within the Asian American racial category.3 And—this is the really fun one—in a study of over eighty Filipino Americans living in Los Angeles, where participants were given five choices to describe their racial background (White, African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander), only about half of the Filipinos in the study chose “Asian” as their racial identity.4

3.

On one hand, you could argue that because the Philippines is a country in Asia, Filipinos are therefore Asian. On the other hand, you could also claim that Spain’s legacy makes the Philippines and its culture decidedly different and un-Asian. Filipino culture is also extremely Americanized, further distinguishing Filipino Americans from other immigrants. Situating the Filipino American identity is tricky, to say the least.

This weird tension between being and not being Asian American is what I began to experience after coming to Vassar. For one, the campus felt a lot whiter than Acton. The first few people I met were

5. Gregorio Borlaza, Carolina Hernandez, et. al., “Philippines,” Encyclopædia Britannica, last modified December 20, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/place/Philippines/The-Spanish-period.

6. Leslie Bauzon, “Spanish Influence on Language, Culture, and Philippine History,” University of the Philippines, 1991, http://filipinokastila.tripod. com/FilSpa.html.

7. “Philippine-American War,” Encyclopædia Britannica, published October 24, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/event/Philippine-American-War.

8.

http:// www.econ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/projectcenter/Paper/e-15-004.pdf.

2. “Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths,” Pew Research Center, July 19, 2012, https://www.pewforum.org/2012/07/19/asian-americans-a-mosaicof-faiths-overview.

Xavier Hernandez, “Filipino American college students at the margins of neoliberalism,” Policy Futures in Education, 14, no. 3, 327, https://journals. sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1478210316631870.

4. Anthony Ocampo, The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 75.

John Lambino, “Political-Security, Economy, and Culture within the Dynamics of Geopolitics and Migration: On Philippine Territory and the Filipino People,” (discussion paper, Kyoto University, 2015), 11-12,

white, and I quickly surrounded myself with nonAsians. (I’ve realized that if there was a sitcom based on my friend group here, I’d definitely be the token person of color.) Unlike with my friends from home, I felt like I had to actively identify as Asian American. But that label, of course, became more complicated after coming into spaces that felt more East Asian rather than just Asian.

Colorism also has played a huge role in this ambiguity. Mestizos, or people of mixed race, were associated with power. Spaniards inherently had this power, being the colonizing force. And, due to their trade relations, Chinese individuals were understood to have economic power in the Philippines.9 To this day having lighter skin implies superiority within the Filipino community and is a reminder of interracial relations of the past. “Full” Filipinos, however, are “brown” and have darker skin.

Until this year, I’ve always considered myself yellow. When I told my parents this over Christmas dinner, they reacted poorly: “We raised you better than that! You’re brown!” I still don’t know how much they were joking. It’s true that they raised me to think a certain way about color—when I was little, I used to tell people that my dad was coffee, my mom was milk, and I was milk coffee. I never would’ve called myself brown, though, despite seeing my skin as a shade of brown. At my high school, that term was reserved for those of Indian descent, or maybe those who were Latinx. Besides, when I went to a party over the summer, a guy (who, incidentally, is half Filipino, half Chinese) told me I was too light to be Filipino. My place on the yellow-brown spectrum remains very unclear to me.

Whether because of my culture or my color, the tension of ambiguity, of not being able to fit easily into a label, is always there. Even my name can’t be neatly categorized: “Quisumbing,” which is my mom’s last name, comes from the Fukienese pro-

nunciation of “Guo Sun Ming”

(郭荪明), reflecting Chinese immigration to the Philippines. “Villaseñor” is clearly a remnant of Spanish rule. I carry that tension with me every day, right on my Vassar ID.

Here’s another fact: Filipino students from geographic locations in the United States where there are large concentrations of Filipino Americans “are distinctly racialized as gang members, criminals, and deviants.”10 In fact, in a comparative study of eighty Chinese and eighty Filipino high school students in California, Filipino students recalled “a persistent pattern of being criminalized and school staff assuming they lacked academic potential.”11 And unfortunately, many Filipino Americans, and Southeast Asians in general have lower socioeconomic status in the US than their East Asian peers.

These facts, fun and not fun, are what I learned when I decided to write my final paper on Filipino Americans in my civil rights class last semester. It felt like a privilege to learn more about people like me in a formal educational setting—something I had never done in my time at high school. It was empowering to suddenly have the knowledge and language of academics to describe my experiences. In a way, it validated the persistent feelings that crept around in the back of my mind: that Filipino Americans were somehow different from the Asian American monolith, that Filipino Americans thus needed to be included in the discussion, and that when our class ventured into model minority and affirmative action territory, it was even

10. Tracy Buenavista, “Issues Affecting U.S. Filipino Student Access to Postsecondary Education: A critical Race Theory Perspective,” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 15, 121, https://doi. org/10.1080/10824661003635093.

11. Buenavista, “Issues Affecting U.S. Filipino Student Access to Postsecondary Education,” 122.

9. Joanne Rondilla, “Colonial Faces: Beauty and Skin Color Hierarchy in the Philippines and the U.S.,” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 32 https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Rondilla_berkeley_0028E_12807.pdf.

more necessary to have Filipino American representation.

Yet, I feel uncomfortable arming myself with these facts. For one, I’m definitely not the type of Filipino American these studies are talking about: probably from the West Coast, lower middle class, within a large Filipino community. The idea of having so many Filipinos near me is kind of baffling—the only Filipinos I know are people I’ve met through my parents’ friends or at Iskwelahang Pilipino (IP), the nearby weekend culture school. And imagine having Pinoy stores! When I visited Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, I was amazed by the existence of Seafood City, which is essentially the bigger, Filipino equivalent of H Mart, complete with its own Jollibee, a very famous Filipino fast food chain. In Boston, if we have a Jollibee craving, we have to make a pilgrimage to New York City.

I say “we” like I think of myself as part of the Boston Filipino community, or even the IP community. In some ways, I am: my parents are extremely involved in the school and have both taught classes before, I play in the rondalla, a musical ensemble of traditional instruments, and I can understand some Tagalog (emphasis on “some”). But for the most part, I feel pretty distant from IP. I barely graduated from the school because my attendance was so spotty (I usually was at ballet rehearsal or a debate tournament instead), and so I missed out on learning about Filipino culture and bonding with my fellow Fil-Ams. Rondalla is enough of a connection for me to call the IP kids my friends, but it’s not enough for me to be

the people line dancing, the beloved Bruno Mars’s “Treasure” blaring through the speakers.

I’ve clung on to being Filipino and using that identity to explain why I feel different, but sometimes, I don’t fully feel like I am a Filipino American who has lived “the Filipino American life.” I’ve been incredibly privileged to have been brought up the way I was, but the question lingers: How can I insist that the Filipino perspective be considered when I don’t feel enough like a Filipino American to share my own experience?

What strikes me when I go back and reread my college essay is how tidy it sounds. Limited to 750 words, it’s a very cookie-cutter piece—start with an anecdote, talk about some bigger issue, leave with a vaguely optimistic resolution. “I feel golden,” I concluded after gushing about how I wasn’t alone in learning to embrace my Filipino identity.

Reading that essay makes me sad. It makes me sad because I know how conflicted I felt writing it. It makes me sad because I was lying when I said I felt supported by the Iskwelahang Pilipino community. It makes me sad that I thought I had to, and that I could, finish with a neat ending, even when I hadn’t come close at all to understanding myself or my identity.

I’ll always be proud of being Filipino American, but will I ever fully grasp what that means? Prob ably not. Maybe that’s not what’s important any way. Maybe it’s about learning more and trying to reckon with what that knowledge brings. And maybe it’s through that process of digging deep and sifting through whatever comes up that you

backgrounds.

edited by:

Isabelle Paquette

Chinese adoptee

Both my parents love to cook; home cooked meals and family recipes have always been a staple growing up. For the past couple of years my mom has made probably one of the simplest yet delicious rice dishes I’ve ever had, though I might be biased. It’s a simplified version of an Asian egg and fried rice bowl, except minus the vegetables and added soy sauce. She makes it for me and my sister, who is also adopted, all the time, and it’s one of my many favorites that I have of her cooking.

Ella Xiao Chinese American & biracial

My favorite is fried rice made with lap cheong (chinese sausage), marking the rice with its strong and distinctive flavor. It’s something that’s been enjoyed in my family consistently despite migrations: my Nainai and Yeye ate it growing up in Hunan, my Baba and Auntie and Uncle grew up eating it in Hong Kong, and now it is something I eat it in our home in Seattle and have even made for my friends here at Vassar. Everytime we eat lap cheong fried rice, my Baba will make the whole table laugh, talking about how as a young child, he was terrified of the giant dried sausages hanging from the ceiling at the butcher’s. “The dish is worth a childhood fear,” he says.

Akansha Goel

First Generation Indian American

Kheer is a dish that’s been passed down from generations on my mom’s side. Oftentimes, when we think of rice dishes, we imagine them to be salty rather than sweet. While it’s true that kheer is often made for celebrations, at least in my household, ever since I came to Vassar, my mom has been making it for me when I come home for breaks since she knows it’s my favorite. After hours of traveling and months of college food, walking into my house and immediately smelling cardamom, saffron, and other spices from the kheer that’s probably been cooking on the stove since morning, I instantly feel at home and reminded of all the great food that I get to enjoy because of my culture.

Gabor Fu Ptacek

Taiwanese American & biracial

Lǔròufàn is a comfort food that is tied to good memories and feelings of home and family. I have been trying my best to learn to cook more Taiwanese food. I have yet to try making lǔròufàn, but it is high on my list. My mom is Taiwanese and my dad is white, but my mom does not enjoy cooking and never cooked for our family while I was growing up. Because of this, I never ate home-cooked Taiwanese food in America, but we knew of one restaurant in San Francisco that made traditional Taiwanese food that we went to frequently. However, this restaurant recently closed, and that’s what pushed me to start learning how to cook Taiwanese food and lǔròufàn!

Arroz a la cubana is a dish that’s served in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries. It reflects the colonial influence Spain has had on Filipino culture. This is a recipe my grandmother used to make and that my mom now uses, often repurposing leftover sauce from pasta bolognese for arroz a la cubana. My mom grew up in the Philippines in a large family with 8 siblings, and while I don’t think they were very poor, they certainly weren’t wealthy. I’ve been fortu nate enough to have lived a really comfortable life here because my mom worked really hard and as a result of that (plus luck), had a lot of professional success. I think the fact that my mom uses the leftover bolognese sauce is a remind er of her history and success, and so I associate arroz a la cubana with pride for my mom.

Curd rice is my comfort food and I crave it all the time! It is one of those rice dishes that is not hot, so it goes so well on a nice, sunny, tropical afternoon. My favorite memories of it are when we would pack a whole box of curd rice for long road trips. We would stop during lunchtime, park near a shady tree and as a family, gobble down the entire serving.

The name of the fried rice is the recipe - rice, egg, soy sauce (specifically ginger), and green onion (scallion).

Tory Horner

Chinese adoptee

Samata Bhattari

Nepali

Rice is an integral part of Nepali culture and a part of almost every meal. The most popular dish is dal bhat. It is steamed rice (bhaat) served with lentil soup (dal) and a variety of vegetables or meat of your choice. Some people also like adding pickled vegetables (achaar) and ghee. Due to its versatility, it doesn’t feel like you’re eating the same thing every day. Most people in Nepal probably eat the dish two to three times a day.

There is a saying: “bhaat nakai kana pet nai bhardaina”, or “you don’t feel full if you didn’t eat rice”. Instead of asking “Have you eaten anything?”, my grandmother always asks “Have you had rice?”. If I tell her that I ate something that wasn’t rice/dal bhat she offers me more food because she believes I haven’t eaten yet. In a way, rice is synonymous to a full meal.

Shreya Suresh

Nicholas Quek

Ethnically Chinese Singaporean

This dish does not belong to my ethnic group, but is so ubiquitous to Singapore that everyone knows it. It consists of a serving of the titular fragrant rice alongside a selection of side dishes, the most common ones being sambal chilli, peanuts, cucumber, deep fried anchovies, fried fish, fried or boiled eggs and fried chicken. No one in my family has actually tried making this dish, but all of us love it. We have regular arguments over which place serves the best Nasi Lemak in Singapore. Here is a recipe that should get you close to authentic Nasi Lemak, but almost every store that serves it in Singapore has their own take on it.

When I was younger, my parents would make this exclusively for special occasions, like church potlucks or parties. Now my dad will make congee in an Instant Pot for breakfast/ brunch because it’s so simple to make, and sometimes he will throw in chopped century egg or pork. Being home for breaks and waking up to the aroma of pídàn shòu ròu zhōu brings back memories of when I was a little kid and eagerly waited to try some before it was taken away for the masses to eat. I love this dish so much, mainly for the century egg, and can have so many servings without getting sick of it. My mom and dad are from different parts of China, but congee of some sort has always been a staple food in their provinces, whether of the sweet or salty variety.

Jessica Li

First Generation Chinese American

Edited by Kaylee Chow

Annie Xu Elena Furuhashi

Designed by Jay Zhang