When I interviewed my mother for a class assignment, she told me that in Korea, she stood on the ground. I imagined her body morphed into the thick chestnut trees planted near her grandmother’s countryside home. In America, my mother added, I float. A Hmong girl with sepsis. Her parents, refugees from Laos, fleeing from…
Nǐ hǎo. Konnichiwa. Kamusta. Something as simple as saying “hello” can be the first step in communicating a sentence with someone. Furthermore, it can be a way for people to form relationships or to start building a community. Many politicians are utilizing the power of language in order to achieve those things, and more recently…
“Sticky floor” is a term used as a discriminatory pattern of employment that restricts certain groups of people from rising through the different job ranks, keeping them in low-level positions. This term “sticky floor” is an extension of the term “bamboo ceiling” , also a phrase implemented onto the APIDA community that excludes them from…
Project HOPE refers to the Higher Opportunity Program for Education (HOPE), a student organization at UCLA that works to alleviate educational inequities. They serve the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian (SEA) communities in the greater LA and Orange County areas by bridging educational obstacles for students and providing access to higher education. Project HOPE’s “holistic empowerment”…
Dear Asian Youth is a nonprofit literary magazine that works to uplift APIDA youth across the nation. This week, Pacific Ties interviewed second-year labor studies major Maisha Kalam, one of the Chapter Leads of Dear Asian Youth at UCLA, to gain a different perspective on the organization. 1: Why did you join DAY? Kalam: I…
My screen time has been through the roof lately. I know exactly what is to blame: TikTok. An app I once swore to never get is now the main source of my social media addiction. I try to justify my attachment to it by arguing that I am using it to further my music career…