On most mornings, while walking to campus, I come across a million smartphones carrying a million people. Bent heads and screensavers, a connectedly disconnected universe. A place where you would rather put on earphones than talk to the stranger nearby or fiddle with your phone gallery than create new memories. So, in this world of…
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On Saturday mornings, I would take an one hour train ride with my parents to Grand St, the heart of the Fujianese, a southern Chinese province, enclave in New York City’s Chinatown, where their restaurant, their second home, laid. Menus were taped against the door outside to give passerbys a preview of the dishes we…
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You, the woman who brought me into this world, and carried me in your love and fear, the one who did it all alone with no one by your hospital side, the daughter of parents who left you in poverty. You bring out the Privilege in me, the master…
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Growing up, I can’t remember a single book written by an Asian American in my school’s required readings. The lack of Asian representation in our K-12 education system is astounding, knowing that over 20 million Asians live in the U.S and thousands of books are written by Asian Americans. I would read books like Harry…
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Growing up in Belgium, my brother and I were the only two yellow-skinned, black-haired Asian kids at our overwhelmingly white Flemish primary school. During the first week, the timid and the shy among my classmates gaped at me from a distance, while the braver souls approached me with naïve curiosity, one urgent question burning in…
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Currently, the Broadway performance of “Miss Saigon” — a musical about yet another Asian woman abandoned by her white male lover — is going on tour across the United States. As if to set back the damage, East West Players’ “Vietgone,” a story about a pair of lovers who are “refugees fleeing the Vietnam War”,…
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