Check out some cultural traditions important to some members of the Pacific Ties staff, and how we manage to keep in touch with our roots at UCLA.

I still remember the first time that I saw Mo, or Mohini Banarjee, on Disney Channel’s Lemonade Mouth. This was the first time that I ever saw an Indian character on television who was not the socially awkward, nerdy sidekick of the white main characters. She was confident;…

“Dad, I want to be an actor. No son, it’s pronounced doctor!”. This phrase coupled with a picture of a stern-looking Asian man is a meme I’ve seen circulating the internet ever since I was in middle school. It’s definitely humorous and may even seem like an exaggeration…

Every morning when I wake up, my routine is the same: get out of bed, brush teeth, eat breakfast, open laptop, open CCLE, open Zoom, and sit in front of my computer screen until it’s time to go to sleep and start everything over again. Most days, I…

Panethnicity (n.): the grouping together of different ethnicities that are similar based on geographical origin, language, religion, etc. APIDA stands for Asian Pacific Islander Desi American. This umbrella term incorporates various ethnicities from East Asians and South Asians to Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders, making it a pan-ethnic…

Cultural assimilation (n.): the process in which individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society Cultural assimilation is a term that many immigrants from the APIDA community are all too familiar with. When I think of assimilation, the first thing…