Being the American abroad
When I first got to campus in summer 2018, my backpack was covered in political pins. Just three months later, when I boarded my flight to London to study abroad, my backpack was bare.
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Dumplings full of culture
The Half of It
The childhood memories associated with food always remind me of the significance of my Chinese heritage that is erased because I’m mixed. Even when the world may not perceive me as Chinese, these memories of cooking with family and friends affirm my connection to China.
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Chinese enough
The Half of It
I realized, walking through the streets of old Guangzhou, that China is my home. There’s no one way to “look” Chinese or be Chinese, and that any way I feel is true to me should be sufficient for everybody else.
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Not your exotic trophy
The Half of It
But I am not a doll for anyone to parade around and brag about. I am not a dish spiced mildly enough to round out a white man’s palate without challenging his Eurocentric views.
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My mixed family is not the solution to your racial divides
The Half of It
I felt like only I could understand exactly what was going on in both languages. So I bore double the burden and experienced double the emotional pain. I was the only thing keeping my parents together, the only person who could get them to communicate.
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‘A new form of censorship’: Protect your local newspapers or they’ll disappear
NATIONAL ISSUES: Local papers are closing their doors across the country, and residents have the power to stop this epidemic
Last month, the East Bay Express laid off its entire editorial staff — except for one editor.
Unfortunately, this represents a national trends in which local newspapers in the United States are collapsing at an alarming rate, leaving many communities without essential news coverage.
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Model Minority
Cal in Color
Seared into my memory is the first time I fought with my friends. We were in ninth-grade world history when my friend offhandedly joked, “Yeah, but Rona’s Asian and has a big house, so she wouldn’t get what we’re going through.” “Excuse me?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
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Learning my ABCDs
Cal in Color
For most people, ABCD is the beginning of the English alphabet. But for American-Born, Confused Desis like me, it’s an acronym, an insult, a joke and an identity, all wrapped up in four letters. Calling me an ABCD invalidates my experience of being Desi, or a person of South Asian
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Places and pasts
Between America and Me
“ If I were an animal I’d be a capybara!” A what? My American friends are back at it. They’re talking about their favorite type of tree, that time they saw it in that one national park, and how much they “need their nature”. I guess I like nature. But
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Here and away
Between America and Me
I’m a sucker for self-help routines. Over the years, I have compiled a rulebook of life advice ranging from “hacks” I borrowed from Silicon Valley gurus to virtues I learned from my grandparents. Sometimes these hacks entail waking up at 3 a.m. for an oddly specific meditation regimen or taking
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