PopSugar feature: APIA EXPERIENCES
“I have never felt so connected to the wider AAPI community than I do now. I grew up in white-dominated cities like Portland, OR — which is actually the whitest major city in the United States — and didn't realize until recently how silenced I felt by phenomena like the model minority myth. When 'AAPI' as a label is supposed to encapsulate dozens of different ethnicities and cultures, it was hard for me to decipher what it actually meant to be Asian American.
In the last few months, from my own academic studies and unlearning/learning, I feel really excited about my new understanding of what it means to be AAPI. As I learned from the work of author and professor Daryl Maeda, the Asian American movement was built upon 'commitments of interracial and transnational solidarities' — and I feel that so strongly, especially in this moment of witnessing our cultural reckoning with the need for racial justice."