How Grace Lee Boggs inspires me to ‘reimagine everything’ — “The time has come for us to reimagine everything… It’s up to us to reimagine the alternatives and not just protest against them and expect them to do better.” — Grace Lee Boggs I first learned about Grace Lee Boggs as a junior in college. I was attending Seattle University…

I wrote ‘The Many Meanings of Meilan’ to explore the feeling of otherness when someone renames you without your consent — Confession: I have never liked my Chinese name. My father transliterated it from the Chinese 郁如 to Yu-Ju. But whenever anyone tries to say it, they always pronounce it “yoo-joo.” In actuality, it is pronounced closer to “yü-roo” (yù rú in Hanyu Pinyin), which also trips up people.

What is it like to be Asian American when you’re invisible within it? — I am a huge disappointment to my parents. There, I said it. But it’s not because I didn’t become a lawyer or a doctor, an accountant, a pharmacist, nurse — heck, not even a dental assistant — after university. And it’s not because I’ve dyed my hair every neon shade…

During the pandemic, people had to make decisions about who was worth risking spending time with. We rarely made the cut. — The day I realized we need to move out of our San Diego home, I ordered four new pieces of furniture. Not little decorative stools or night stands that you can stack on top of boxes, but four solid wood cabinets that would require two or three movers to carry…

Can a person look more, or less, Chinese? Apparently I can. — “You look so Chinese!” Has anyone ever said that to you? My mother occasionally said it to me, and the odd thing is, both she and my father were Chinese. So there’s nothing surprising about the fact that I look Chinese. But what about “so” Chinese? Can a person look…

‘Chinatown Pretty’ celebrates the street styles of seniors in San Francisco’s Chinatown — By Valerie Luu and Andria Lo Mrs. Tom was one of the first people we met during the Lunar New Year in 2014. Her layers of purple knitted sweaters popped out at us. She was in San Francisco’s Chinatown picking up citrus for the Lunar New Year, one of her…

How did bias affect the coverage of Andrew Yang’s campaign? — Anyone who wasn’t paying attention to New York City’s mayoral primary these past few months was missing the highest drama available at that moment in American politics. It had everything — scandal, intrigue — you name it. I related this to a friend of mine, who responded that a lot…

On this 4th of July, a reflection on losing the hyphen in my Asian American identity — It was the most underreported controversy that rocked the world of grammar in generations. In 2019, the Associated Press announced that hyphens will be dropped from identities of dual heritage. The other punctuation symbols in the audience gave a collective sigh of relief for surviving yet another annual edition. Meanwhile…

As people of color, the idea leaked into our lives even though we aren’t privy to the same advantages of being white — I’m mad at imposter syndrome for stealing time, energy, confidence, and a sense of self-efficacy from people of color. We don’t have time for that. We don’t need to make time for that. Recently I’ve seen a number of social media posts by friends of color and acquaintances of color…