Last summer, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the 2020 election season, the two of us wondered what our civic roles in our democracy had been and should be. At this time, we were also acutely aware that historically, Asian/Americans have had some of the lowest voter turnout rates of any demographic, and via the “model minority myth,” have been stereotyped as passive and apolitical.

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Within this national context, we asked ourselves: During this time of physical isolation, what can we do within and for our immediate community to initiate a conversation about what civic engagement means and looks like? As college students entering the world and as members of an emergent political force, how are we defining ourselves as civic participants? What can civic engagement look like for a community with such a complex history and shifting sense of identity? What does it mean to identify with the term Asian/American?

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With support from the Radcliffe Institute, we began a project called “A Conversation About Asian/American Civic Identities,” in which we spoke to thirty-two students at Harvard with roots in rural and urban regions of Bangladesh, China, India, Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

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Each person we spoke to disrupted our conceptions of Asian/American identity and civic engagement. Our peers taught us that Asian/American has many meanings. It can refer to an unavoidable and obvious aspect of our physical appearance. It may be inadequate in describing our full identities. It can be a term actively chosen to stand in solidarity with historical political movements. It can express a sense of community and heritage, or it can reflect a hybrid experience, of belonging to neither “Asian” nor “American.” We learned that civic engagement, too, can manifest in many ways. It can be the unpublicized everyday activities of our lives. It can be learning about our family histories, or seeking out ways to understand our communities. It can look like speaking up against racism, creating new spaces to express ourselves and our art, or participating in a protest.

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Our peers had deeply personal and compelling stories that resisted a single narrative, and we strove to find a platform where we could share their unique voices. As a magazine that strives to capture the Asian anglophone experience and expand what it means to be an Asian anglophone, The Wave was the perfect medium for our project, and we are honored to be a part of The Wave’s “Disrupt” issue.

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This collection is only a small fraction of the stories we heard. We hope that by carrying these fragments forward with us, we can continue to redefine and reimagine what it means to be an Asian/American civic participant in our communities today.

- Sofia and Allison

SPACES

Eric Cheng

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As an Asian pursuing the entertainment industry, I am constantly aware that it is traditionally not a space for people like me. I think about the history (and still standing existence) of white washing and yellow face in Hollywood. Similarly, at Harvard I didn’t always feel like I was a part of the “artist community.” I wasn’t part of the Signet or the Lampoon. The arts scene at Harvard felt like a space dominated by tradition… which makes sense since it was founded and run by white dudes for so long. This thought was always and is always in the back of my mind. And it extends beyond the arts.

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There were a lot of communities at Harvard where being an Asian American or a gay person is simply not what the group was founded on. I helped to start the Asian student arts project with my good friend Julia Riew because we were aware of the antiquatedness of following traditional structures in order to engage in our passions. It became a cool space and community that we really felt was new, a place for us to really come together without any barriers. We thought "if there’s an official organization, our vision will last”. We think it has, and I’m grateful for that.

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Black Cast and Teatro have both existed for quite some time. Ever since coming to Harvard, I wondered why something like that didn’t exist for Pan Asian people— an organized group dedicated to proliferating art and cultural expression. I remember hearing stories of people who attempted to start groups like ASAP but fell through the cracks. That’s where institutionalization and inclusion became important to us. We believed that an established organization that was for all kinds of artists— across discipline and experience level—would warrant longevity. And having a name to our group felt important in establishing something real, where incoming students could feel like, "Oh, this is something that I want to be a part of," as opposed to feeling like they have to be the one to initiate something for it to exist. So we went down the route of institutionalization, but in the name of inclusivity.

Nabib Ahmed

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A problem with the American classification system is that they bucket everyone who is from Asia as one monolith. Coming to college, I think I’ve met a more diverse group of people. Here, the Asian American story isn’t that one single model, and that has evolved the way I view myself.

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When I came to college, I joined various East Asian or Asian American oriented groups. And I think they were welcoming of me, but welcoming in a very foreign sort of way. I felt like they showed me around but I wasn’t really in. They would smile when they saw me, they would try to initiate conversation, but the people in the group would coordinate outside of the group and do their own social activities and I wasn’t part of that. Although I was part of the group as a whole, I was only welcome to the big group events, but then when it came to unofficial or informal things that happened more spontaneously, those things I wasn’t a part of. So I felt like I was never really a member.

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I got that similar sense with a lot of the [South Asian] affinity groups that I tried to be a part of. I always felt like an outsider. I’m too American to be considered part of South Asian or Asian American [groups] but not American enough to be one of the full-blown Americans, you know. So I’m always put in this weird spectrum where it’s very hard to find people who don’t identify culturally with any of the pre-defined sites within Asian American identity.

A/B

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A: They have halaal dinners Mondays and Thursdays, and freshman year I enjoyed going to them when I could because it was an opportunity to actually have meat for lunch, which I normally didn’t get to. And when I started sophomore year, I was very uncomfortable with the idea of the halaal dinners because of how much I changed in the summer. I was making an active effort not to run into anyone from the halaal dinner. I remember I ran into someone and I just felt so awkward because I was like oh my god this girl is gonna realize I stopped wearing a headscarf. I think most of the reasons that I feel uncomfortable with groups would be someone judging me based on previous knowledge of what I was like.

B: Thinking about your headscarf, it’s a huge personal decision. Some people do change their lifestyle completely. And that’s something against some of the views held by your friends. I think a lot of the stigma and a lot of the judgment comes from that. In the end it’s a personal decision that should not be judged upon by others.

A: Yeah. I’m just gonna live my life the way I see fit. The people who want to be friends with me will stay friends with me, you know.

SILENCES

Dash Chin

Even in Quincy, there’s always tension with the white members of our community, even though there are so many Asians. You see all the time white people who are just tired of these Asian restaurants, they’re like, “oh, why do we need more? We don’t need this.” And yeah, it’s frustrating. I think they see that Quincy is changing a lot. h Chin And like that frustrates them in their own way. So yeah, I can understand it to a degree.

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We have this Facebook community group called “Quincy is Everything,” and it’s run by these old white people, and I see racist posts all the time, about coronavirus, or Asian parents and people. And then also on a rare occasion, you’ll get called a ch*nk or whatever by some people walking by. Yeah, when it does happen, as time goes on, you learn how to confront it or whatever.

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Once, a family member responded to a post [in the Facebook group], and then they just got banned. But I think, in general, the instinct is for people to kind of let it go. And I even had that mindset too growing up because like, you don’t want to let these people get the better of you to a degree and, you know, it’s ultimately a waste of time to engage with people who don’t want to listen anyway. But I’d say as time went on, and I got into high school, if people were ever to say something, I would immediately say something back. Just because over time, you know, I live here too. So it’s like, why let it pass?

Chelsea Guo

A friend of mine who’s in both [TAPAS and Chinatown Afterschool], she said that she learned from TAPAS that it’s one thing to be an activist, with "outward-facing" activism, where you go to protests or do a sit-in, or make posters. There’s that form of activism, right.

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But she also said that it’s not enough to just do outward-facing activism. And that really resonated with me, because she was saying that she thinks that Chinatown Afterschool is, I don’t know if I would call it inward-facing activism, but for convenience sure, we’ll go with inward-facing activism. A very hands-on, on the ground, everyday type of activity, that makes a difference, but it’s slow. Little by little, day by day. That really resonated with me, because I never thought of that before. I never thought of my volunteering with these kids as activism. But after really thinking about it and hearing what she had to say, I think that she’s right. The fact that we are providing this safe space for these immigrant kids in this low-income neighborhood, to learn and to have fun, every single day. I do think it’s a form of Asian-American activism because we are helping the community. It’s just a lot slower. It’s a lot less flashy. But it’s definitely worthwhile, and I wish more people could see how valuable this kind of volunteering can be.

Chloe Noh

In my high school, there was also a subtle idea that Asians don’t engage. And I feel like that’s a stereotype that was pushed onto us. Our group was never approached by organizers of protests. We would have groups on Main Street, eating lunch together, and there’d be people with flyers being like, “Oh, we’re protesting next Monday, come.” They would look at us, and they would just walk away without even asking or gauging interest. I didn’t say anything, but I was like, okay, I guess we’re not supposed to be there? It was like Asians aren’t welcome, or like we’re excluded because they think we’re going to reject anyways, although that may not always be the case.

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My mom was a big protester in her college days. She tells me stories of like, they would throw tear gas and someone would say, run, and you would have to just run for your life down the street, or people in dorms would open their doors and just shove as many people as they could into a dorm room so that police couldn’t catch them. She understands why a protest needs to happen. Civic engagement wasn’t something that was looked down upon in my family.

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Especially in 2020 I felt really guilty because I was like, I need to go out and protest. I had to come to terms with the fact that no, I’m physically not able to. I have asthma and I have a physical disability. That’s not in my capabilities, and that’s okay. But I’m going to do the most that I can, whether that’s donating one week of what I earn in my job to a bail fund, and keeping the issue alive.

GENERATIONS

Grace Tian

Movies that feature Asian characters always give me a sense of pride. There was one called Saving Face. It was about a lesbian Chinese girl in this huge shame culture environment. Just seeing [shame culture] made me realize what I didn’t know was so ingrained in my life. Seeing that made me feel really understood and really proud even though it’s sad. Those aspects always make me feel like I have an identity. I finally understand how shame culture plays in my life. The dad [in the movie] says, “You’re such a disgrace for your family; you’re not part of the family.” My parents say the same thing when they’re mad at me; they’re like, “I’m going to give up being your parent,” as if they can do that. [The movie character] was upset, and then she said, “please don’t be hard on me.” And then the dad replied, “You’re so disgraceful. Of course I should be mad.” My dad has also said, “I should be mad; this is my duty. In order to be a good father, I need to be angry at you.” So, it was the whole, “we need to be shameful.” This is how life has been. It made me better understand shame.

Starr Rhee

I identify with the term Asian American because as somebody who is half-Asian, being able to find community in more of a pan-Asian space has been helpful to me. Once I went to college, I tapped into the political side of being Asian American. My whole life prior to that, I was almost political in spite of being Asian, because it was the stereotype that Asian women were quiet, submissive and not political. I felt like I was acting counter to that [stereotype], instead of being Asian [as] a part of my political identity.

I do consider myself a part of the Korean American community. Growing up, I went to a Korean church in Nashville. I did a research project in high school about Asian American political identity. I ended up surveying my whole church on their political opinions. It was very fascinating...One thing is, a lot of people at my church weren’t eligible to vote because they weren’t citizens. Also, the issues that they cared about were not the issues that people were talking about. And I found that they were very inconsistent with mainstream political parties. And I think nobody does outreach to Asian American communities. At least in Tennessee, they’re not a large portion of the population. So nobody is asking Asian people, What do you care about?

The generational divide, that will emerge, or that has already emerged, will continue to be really pressing. It’s an over-generalization, but there’s the immigrant generation, and they are trying to make ends meet; they might not really think of themselves as Americans. Then there’s my mom’s generation: they grew up here. Their goals were assimilation, and becoming a part of white America and mainstream America. I think more and more young Asian people are starting to understand the political nature of being Asian American, while a lot of older people are very pessimistic about their ability to create change. I feel like in the coming years, Asian Americans will vote more, they will be more of a voice, be more engaged, be more radical, and hopefully work in partnership and solidarity with other communities of color.

Julie Chung

I remember I wrote an entire history research paper about the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings, and the Black-Korean conflict here. And only after I had written this entire research paper did I find out that my dad spent time as a shopkeeper in South LA when all of these conflicts were happening. Even right now as I’m really trying to delve more into my Korean-American identity, I understand that there are parts of history that my parents––It was painful for them to talk about or they don’t see the same point as I do wanting to learn about these things. And I do think it’s maybe a privilege for me to be in a position to be like, I want to learn and I want to be able to know, whereas some people maybe are trying to forget. And I keep trying to read about things but then, I’m just cleaning out anchovy things with my mom in the kitchen, and then she just starts talking about the war. Why am I reading about them in the textbook first and then learning from my direct family members? Why do I have to learn about my identity this way? And maybe it’s just because I’ve been in school for a long time, but it just feels like a removed way to learn.

A

I hate the question, "Do you have any relatives here?" and I’m like, "No, it’s my family, and that’s it." History starts when we moved here. Things like Thanksgiving are always hard for me, because everyone’s with their families and my family’s just us. Plus, one of my friends also brought up the fact that like, "Oh, your history is not that complex, because your parents are both Pakistani, and before that, you’re just Indian." Questions like that have always made me question my history, and that’s why I feel like I’m more focused towards making a history here in the US. I’m waiting to have kids of my own so then I can tell them about our history in the US, as compared to our history back then. My parents would also have had a better life back in Pakistan. They both had master’s degrees and they probably would have had government positions. When they came here, in the struggle of finding a way to live, my dad ended up working for gas stations. Now they’re way better off, we actually have a gas station that we own, but because they were focusing so much time on just making ends meet, they didn’t have time to find jobs that were like within their degrees and fields. So I think that was a big part of us establishing a history here as compared to focusing on the past in Pakistan.