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?

h e a t h e r n g u y e n 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 h i e n n g u y e n 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

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. 35

S e u n g j u n KOREA (HE/HIM) ( J MATHMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR; CHINESE CORRELATE o s h ) INTERESTS: Body Building, Percussion, Experimental Cooking, K Dramas, Music

K i m and Beat Making, Singing, Data Science, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence

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 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.

a l e x s u n

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.