By Angelina Chiang I stumbled across Avery Bishop during my senior year of high school, and after reading about her interests and accomplishments, she quickly became a role model due to our similar interests. Averie Bishop grew up in a rural neighborhood in Texas, where she struggled to fit in with her classmates and feel represented by the leaders of her community. Despite these obstacles, Bishop’s drive allowed her to excel academically. After high school, she went on to attend Southern Methodist University, where she graduated with a 4.0, and then studied and graduated from the SMU Dedman ..read more

  By Angelina Chiang In the recent study conducted in 2023 by PEW Research about ongoing racism towards Asians and Asian Americans, there was clear and evident data that show how discriminatory attitudes and behaviors are still ongoing, despite many efforts to promote inclusivity and increase awareness on this matter. Discrimination against many Asian Americans can take on multiple forms–they are not confined to individual incidents. Discrimination against Asian Americans in the United States has been long-standing throughout history. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the denial ..read more

Directed by Kentaro Takemura, the main character of Japanese teen romance movie Our Secret Diary, high schooler Nozomi Kuroda (Hiyori Sakurada), is your classic Japanese shy girl next door who also adorably happens to be a bit of a closet metal head. Following all the cliches of Japanese teen love stories, this one starts off with Nozomi receiving a love confession note in her desk from a popular boy in school, Jun Setoyama (Fumiya Takahashi), and being both timid and prudent, she agrees to correspond with him to get to know him better as friends before considering going out with him. As they ..read more

By Angelina Chiang Amanda Nguyen is a well-known figure in the field of sexual assault advocacy. As the CEO and founder of Rise, a non-profit organization that focuses on supporting survivors and changing laws to protect their rights, she dedicates her life to protecting millions of girls and women around the world.  Nguyen herself is a survivor of rape and claims the most difficult part of what happened was not the rape itself, but how she was treated by the justice system after. She found that the justice system was not protecting individuals and carrying out justice but rather retraum ..read more

The Pew Research Center recently published a report, Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation, and to no surprise to me, Asians Americans overwhelmingly skew more Democratic than Republican. As the report states: “The balance of partisan association among Asian voters has changed little over the last few years.” There have been more recent reports than Asian Americans are becoming more independent or even a little bit Republican, but not a major shift that one can see. In the nineties, many Asian Americans were Republicans or Independents. What is interesting to see is i ..read more

1) Pre-med student 2) business owner 3) college gymnast trying to make it into the Olympics – Leanne Wong is all three! I first learned about her story from this ESPN article. She is an elite level gymnast, having achieved the “gym slam,” which is a perfect score in all four major artistic gymnastic events at least once her in career. In addition, she is a pre-med student athlete at the University of Florida who simultaneously runs a business selling Gymnastics oriented bows, leotards, and T-Shirts! Wong has the goal of making the US Olympics Team, which will be tough this year. The level of ..read more

A few years ago, I asked “Has Filipino Food Arrived?” and mentioned that ube is starting to appear in many places. In the shopping areas, grocery, and restaurants that I frequent, ube is already very well established. One could argue that my sampling is biased by the fact that I live in an Asian ethnoburb, but when I heard a DJ on the radio talking about going to Ube Fest this coming Sunday, I definitely think ube has arrived – or better yet, become “ube-quitous!” It is present in more places than just Asian venues. Sure, there is an Ube Cheesecake from Uncle Tetsu and an Ube Ice Cream at Somi ..read more

‘Tis the hanami (flower viewing) season in Japan again, and I thought I’d share one of my favorite sakura stroll experiences in Japan. While the famous spots are often in popular tourist destinations like Tokyo and Kyoto, one thing I realized the first time I experienced spring in Japan is there is quite literally sakura trees everywhere. You’ll especially see this riding trains with views of cities and countryside zipping by, sudden spots of gorgeous streams of glistening water or peacefully paved paths lined with trees exploding in pink and white, large patches of flowers on the hills flowi ..read more

(photo credit: Katie Chin/USC Athletics) It seemed strange yet very cool to see an Asian American woman basketball player in a NCAA Division 1  game televised on national television.  It was not just any game – USC guard Kayla Padilla was playing in a NCAA tournament sweet 16 game! I found about her when my brother forwarded me an ESPN article on how an Ivy League rule gave Kayla and two other former Ivy league players a chance to play on a team in a top level conference. If her name sounds familiar, we have written about her in this article on Gonzaga basketball players Kayleigh a ..read more

Morris Chang, a Taiwanese-American businessman and electrical engineer, was born in Ningbo, China, on July 10, 1931. He is best known for starting the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a key player in the semiconductor industry worldwide. Chang’s family had to relocate frequently throughout China and to British Hong Kong due to the upheaval caused by World War II and the Chinese Civil War. Chang was convinced to follow a different career route by his father, a finance official and bank manager, despite his initial wish to become a novelist or journalist. Chang relocated to th ..read more