By Yuna Kha
The first interviewee is Amy. Amy (she/her) is a Chinese American and Immigrant activist who is currently working with the government in broadening access for communities of color.
To Amy, identifying as a child of immigrants was a struggle in her life.
“I just feel like there’s just so much distance between me and my dad and my mom,” Amy explains. “I struggled for so long with the idea that I have parents that don’t have a traditional view of love and that love for my parents means sacrifice.”
With her father working and living in China, Amy says that she questioned her parents being together. Her parents’ long distance relationship made it difficult for Amy to understand their form of love: sacrificing physical proximity for providing the family with money. Amy elaborates, “I do believe that my mom and my dad continually show love by having all these foundations.” Once she got older, she was able to understand more about how her parents showed love, even though she didn’t agree with those methods completely.
Growing up in the U.S., Amy has struggled to identify as Asian American because she spent her childhood in a white suburb. She describes being Asian American as a gray and lonely area. As a result, she didn’t have the tools to talk about her racial identity; she didn’t even know she was Asian American.
“I was always very silently angry about my identity,” she recalls. “Although I am in a stage where I am very proud of being Asian, I’m still trying to figure out the nuances of it.”
One of the things that pushed Amy to be proud of being Asian American was the grassroots organizing by other Asian Americans who were also children of immigrants. Despite the pandemic, Amy was very inspired by the organizing efforts surrounding racial injustice that stemmed from the murder of George Floyd. She saw the Asian community calling out anti-Blackness and having dialogue on how their immigration stories were connected with other marginalized groups of people. To Amy, this mindset allowed her to develop her own activism and passion to work with the government.
“As I go on to work for an elected official, I recognize how the government has failed communities,” says Amy. By connecting her experiences as a child of immigrants and with the immigrant grassroots organizing, Amy recognizes that the government can do more to give resources to communities. By working as a legislative assistant for an elected official, Amy can do her advocacy work to the best of her abilities and at the same time, understand that the role of government has failed and cannot do everything for all communities. She trusts that being engaged and joining together with the immigration organizing coalitions and activists, she can be guided by them and continue to learn with them.
From Amy, we learn that her experience as a child of immigrants shapes her understanding of what it means to be Asian American. Organizing around being a child of immigrants has allowed Amy to build more authentic relationships around critiquing government and giving resources to the communities that she is a part of.
Dear Reader, please take this time for a moment of pause, reflect, and hold space to allow yourself to just feel how you’re feeling. Think about what spoke to you, what we can learn, and next steps you will take after learning from Amy.