#3: Emma

Emma tells her story of her Mexican American family. I had technical problems with the audio, so please excuse the quality.


Emma's strong American identity reminds me of the moment when, arguing with Indonesians in Bali, I realized for the first time that I was not only Chinese but unequivocally American. She is often read as white and doesn't feel wrongly distanced from Mexican society in California because she is American. She gracefully shares her conversational Spanish with patrons in her retail job and brushes off discriminatory remarks from coworkers. And yes, I hear irony in her references to black and white Americans as, simply, "Americans," in contrast to ethnic minorities like us. Perhaps we'd do better to question who is included or excluded every time this word it used.

Catholicism comes up again and I delight in the casual attitude Emma shows, as in telling the story of her grandmother who protested her leg-revealing summer outfit. Not having grown up under any religious pressure, I recoil when others even use explicitly religious language, let alone impose moral dogma, and perceive real harm as a result of her parents' self-identity of "living in sin" unwed culminating in a financially and emotionally messy separation. Yet Emma engages fully with her extended family, complete with Catholic holidays and rituals, an easy Catholicism that doesn't make the news but guides so many in religious America.

She finally details the difficulty of navigating institutions as immigrants. While her reflection is on academia in particular, I recall hearing my father asking my mother, when preparing to start his first US job, what "business casual" means. Before the internet, how could immigrants possibly know norms and standards like this? First-generation college and graduate school students lack any frame of reference for crucial details like requirements for application, advising conventions, and funding sources which differ between areas of study and schools. Ultimately this is an issue of class and social mobility.

I have to plug this episode of Hidden Brain where a study showing temporary improvement in creativity is shown for people who have dated someone from a country not their own, but not those with friends from other countries.

May we cultivate kinship with those in need by listening deeply.

#2: John Park

John Park* spoke with me about internalized racism among young Asian Americans in Orange County and his experience as a Catholic Korean American youth minister. Here's his story.


I broke out our dialogue below because there are subjects that may be difficult for sensitive listeners. Please air as appropriate. I find it particularly useful to note when my truth is so fixed as to feel solid; the security of solidified truth is false, a red flag marking where the heart is blocked.

First part:

There's a moment when I thought John misspoke by calling himself pro-choice, but later he asserted public law should not be an arm of religious rules. We certainly found common ground, but there were some points that remained murky to me.

One of the views I can't "un-see" is the constructed nature of gender and norms, especially how they are pegged to reproduction. We are millennia advanced beyond the valuation of human beings based on the gametes we produce and yet our bodies are daily made currency and debt for misogyny. John admits his insistence on the possibility of pregnancy (as well as a loving relationship) for permissible sex doesn't take this into consideration. When we try to protect something, we risk all. I think it's interesting that the risk the church chooses is on the side of harming ourselves through gender-based constraints, while I have chosen to risk harm on the side of exploring and finding out for myself. I obviously find the latter approach more consonant with the nature of science and learning. I admit that in the course of finding out for myself, I have harmed myself and others. I can assure you my effort to stop harming is, as a direct consequence, all the more fervent. Were I not allowed to find out for myself, I cannot say how sure my steps would be on this path.

I relate my experience of a deplorably common form of rape here. I was struck, in this exchange as well as in my interrogation of what John's church does to prevent sexual misconduct by its clergy and members, by John's mostly procedural response. The first times I heard my friends' stories of being sexually assaulted in college, I did not know what to think or how to respond; with more experience and the publicizing of #MeToo stories I am getting better at bringing forth my love for those harmed and immediate condemnation of sexually violent and exploitative behavior. Let's also share how we offer and want to be offered support for survivors.

Second part:


We both left the interview wanting to continue the conversation, and I hope to encourage you to engage sincerely with those in your life whose values and norms threaten our well-being. The fate of this democracy depends on it.

*This is not his real name.

#1: Jay

My first interview is with Jay*, a fellow graduate student in my environmental microbiology lab at California State University Fullerton. I met him on my visit as a prospective student last year, where he spoke candidly and enthusiastically about the lab and we connected over Indonesia. He begins by describing the circumstances of his family's escape from Jakarta in 1998 following fatal and sexually violent anti-Chinese riots. What I love about this story is how at once relatable it is -- I certainly watched many hours of Tom & Jerry cartoons -- and how horrific.



 I was keen on the story of Chinese cultural norms perceived by many, including my guest, as rude (5:15). My mother relates public shaming stories from her WeChat feed such Chinese bus riders piling onto public buses by elbowing each other aside -- it's telling that many Chinese nationals and expats feel shame about this norm while no such standard is applied to imperialist and exploitative norms perpetrated by white folks in media, business, and schools. If I got a dollar every time someone asked where I'm from...

The conversation turned away from culture clash and toward the political climate depleting research funding to favor unsustainable industries. Jay intends to enter research in environmental conservation, an area fraught by political unpredictability, Scott Pruitt having left his post the day before our conversation. The stereotype of Chinese American academics and professionals silences our impact, ongoing and potential, on society and markets, but leadership doesn't have to look like executive positions and elected office. It made me realize the rich intersectionality of first-generation immigrant survival mentality and governance, political subjects I want to explore more with future guests.

*Jay chose a pseudonym for this post.

Executive orders on the fate of immigrants

Twenty-eight years ago, a six-year-old was bundled onto a jet plane in Beijing and conducted by kind stewardesses to her parents in New York. It was 1990, bare months after thousands of student demonstrators were cut down and hosed off the city square for petitioning the Chinese government for democracy.

After President George HW Bush vetoed a Congressional bill to protect Chinese international students, pressure from Congress and the press led him to issue an executive order extending a hold on deportation of Chinese students, allowing students with expired or revoked passports to apply for temporary worker status, and extending work authorization to Chinese nationals here at the time of the massacre. This provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for my parents to stay here after completing their degrees, so they sent for me and eventually had my brother, a second child who would have been barred by Chinese law.

I'll never know the extent to which any of my family might have been persecuted for pro-democracy views. The topic is still actively suppressed in Beijing in a cyber arms race bottomlined by thuggish intimidation and imprisonment. I do know that it's far from the minds of most Americans, including Chinese and other Asian Americans, when considering the nation's immigration policy.

And why should it be foremost? We mustn't wait for atrocities to open our hearts to those in need: the influx of Jews and other refugees during WWII were primarily opposed by the American public at the time. How do we regard that hatred and alienation now, with our incomplete immigration system spiked with reluctant executive orders, loomed over by an activist Supreme Court?

Facing political polarization, I turn to the ultimate lesson of Mahayana Buddhism: we are interconnected. Over the next weeks, I will share interviews with other immigrants on this blog on subjects including racism and social conservatism. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and reach out to those whose views seem offensive and difficult. Our sense of separation is but a seductive delusion.

May all be safe and protected from inner and outer harm.