Becoming
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Soon Wiley, author of When We Fell Apart, to learn more about his debut novel, his journey there, and the complexities around his biracial identity. What was your path to becoming the writer you are today? Probably like a lot of writers, I was a reader first. […]
The Blemishes of Internalized Colorism
One of our YIP interns, Wendy, looks back at the internalized colorism she was forced to swallow and how it contaminated the way she perceived her own sense of beauty throughout her entire childhood. At my core lies impulsivity and a satisfaction with riding the flow of the universe. Living under a Filipino roof has […]
Ethnic Studies and Identity Crisis
Jewel, a YIP intern, reflects on her own experiences in education, the need for ethnic studies, and how interpersonal and institutional interactions have influenced her academic life. Invisibility was an unavoidable part of school life for me. I grew up in a majority Filipino elementary school and was devastated when I was told I was […]
My Journey with Journals
“Dear Journal, Today was a wild day. Tomorrow, I hope, will be a great day a school.” Those were the first few sentences I wrote in the first journal of many to come, 20 years ago. There was no context given to who I was just yet, the state of the world, or anything of […]
Decolonizing the Tea Trade: The Story of Uproot Teas
I’ve always loved tea. From a young age, I started drinking tea way more than anyone else in my family. Having grown up in a cozy, predominantly Asian-immigrant suburb of Los Angeles, I was lucky to never have to experience the “lunchbox” moment at school. While at an academically rigorous high school, I filled my […]
A Piece of My Puzzle, A Love for My Heart
My life, as everyone’s life, is like a puzzle, full of wonder, challenges, beauty, and a work in progress. Growing up in a transracial family from the age of 3 months in a predominately white town, I became accustomed to not looking like my parents and people being naïve enough to think my sister, who […]
T-2
By: Karen Zheng The current COVID-19 pandemic and my family’s situation in it has inspired me to write this piece. Ever since the pandemic began in China, my family was already very cautious and nervous around the virus, collecting masks and information on testing. When it came here, my parents and I got laid off […]