[soft music playing]
[man 1] A lot of America
is never going to see me
as American.
[woman] We don't have
a universal language.
We don't have
a universal religion,
universal identity.
[man 2] I don't understand why
"Asian Pacific Islander"
is a thing.
[music ends]
Who are you?
How do you see yourself?
What is your identity?
Is it as an Asian American?
Is it as a Canadian?
Is it as an American?
And I'd like to say that there's
some sort of holistic thing
that is like none of it
or all of it.
I think so much of
my understanding of the world,
consciously and unconsciously,
absolutely has been
being an Asian woman
in a white society.
I think so much of...
the struggle
and the understanding
has been about probably
that identity first.
[solemn music playing]
The real battle
is a deeply interior one.
But I think you have to move
through those kind of
more visible battles
that someone is gonna ask you
to do another accent,
to look a certain way,
that, that, that,
and then you'll have to slay
the interior dragon.
So when I started
really understanding that,
that's basically where
you start caring less.
["Fame" plays]
Fame!
I'm gonna live forever
[Sandra Oh]
I was so profoundly affected
and influenced by
the television show Fame.
That seemed to be like,
"Oh, there's a place
where this thing
that these kids are doing
that I feel that I wanna do."
But the growth of me
actually then finding
the community of people
who have come
from a similar background
and who look the same
has been, I would say,
a slow one.
When there was a few of us,
it was so spread out.
It was the kind of thing
of like,
"Dan's in Hawaii...
Hawaii... Hawaii..."
Off doing his work over there.
John Cho was doing his work
over there... over there...
over there.
There could not be
more than one of us.
But it was...
feeling alone
because the system
makes it that way.
[solemn music resumes]
It's your perspective.
Every room you're in,
you can learn something,
even if it is a place
that doesn't want you.
In some ways, those rooms
are the best learning vehicles.
How do you exist
in a room that doesn't want you
or doesn't respect you?
It was a different time.
The fact that half of the cast
of Grey's Anatomy
weren't white,
that was a thing.
And it was almost like...
"Shh..." [chuckles]
"Let's just not talk about it.
Let's just do it and see
if we can get away with it.
Oh, my gosh. It's a hit."
That's that feeling that I know
what I think and hope
is an old feeling.
It's a feeling of where
I come from, which is just like,
"Let's just try and sneak it in,
let no one notice,
and we might have an existence."
Right? I really hope, and I see
and I still hope,
that that kind
of thinking has passed.
Now I'm only interested
in telling stories
where the characters
have that cultural dimension.
That's not just like,
"Hey, I'm just gonna walk around
eating kimchi and talking about,
you know, Korean filmmaking,"
I don't know, you know?
That's not the point, right?
But it is about then
opening that dimension
where it used to be closed. Why?
Because it was, at that time,
more palatable
in a very mainstream
white storytelling.
White actors cannot possibly
be asked,
"So what is it like to be
a white actor
at 20?
At 30?
At 40?
And at 50?"
They can't possibly be asked,
but I think they should be.
The thing
with the American name.
I didn't know you can pick one.
Nobody gave me the memo.
I didn't know that you could
change your name like that.
So many of my Asian friends,
Hmong friends especially,
did that.
I would have been like,
you know, Optimus Prime
or something like that,
would've been something cool.
I had to be stuck with Yia.
[soft music playing]
"Yia" in our native tongue
in Hmong literally means
iron skillet or wok.
Hmong kids thought it was funny
and would be like,
"Hey, where's the Yia?
Not that one, but that one."
My youngest brother's name
is Gong Hmong
which literally translates
to "blessing of God."
He gets "blessing of God,"
and I'm a pan.
I was born in a refugee camp
in northern Thailand
called Ban Vinai.
I came to the United States
when I was like four and a half.
I grew up in a small town
in central Wisconsin,
predominantly white.
And then there was like
the Vang family.
I did not want to be Hmong.
I lived two different lives
growing up.
The word "meekah" is
the Hmong word for "American."
I live my meekah life at school,
then I live my Hmong life
at home.
My biggest thing
was assimilating.
Even my father said to us,
"I want you to read books.
I want you to watch TV."
He didn't want us to have
that Hmong or Asian accent.
If I can talk like them,
if I can act like them,
if I know all the pop culture
references like them,
then they won't be able
to laugh at me.
They won't think I'm weird.
They won't think I'm different.
I wanted to make sure
that when I was at school,
my meekah friends,
my white friends,
my American friends,
knew that I'm American.
I'm one of you guys.
These were my friends,
and they would actually
take my face
and they would take my eyes
and they would open them
a little wider.
And they would even ask me,
"Can you see better now?
Can you see better now?"
And I just thought
that's what friends did,
and I would laugh,
and I'm like, "I think so."
Imagine being
an eight-year-old kid,
your mom gives you lunch
to take to school.
She worked really hard
to make sure that her boy
was taken care of.
[deep exhale] The only way that
she knew how was to cook.
And when you go to lunch,
you get these kids
who made fun of you and said
your food stank
and they didn't want you
near them.
You know what I did?
I threw my food away
so that I could just be friends.
So I can be cool.
And I would come home
and I would lie to her, saying,
"Oh, yep, I ate everything."
So that's like
eight-, nine-year-old Yia,
right?
And you fast forward,
like, 30 years
and feeling shame
for, like, that kid
who didn't know, you know?
[soft music playing]
If I could go back
and tell that kid,
what I would say is like,
"Dude, don't worry.
In like 20 years,
they're gonna try
to Asian-splain
everything back to you
about how great fish sauce is
and they discovered oyster sauce
or even, like,
'Oh, yeah, like, I have Siracha
in my house, ' you know."
You know, my white friends,
my meekah friends
who now will say,
"Oh, yeah, like, I ate
this thing and it had like,
you know, shrimp paste in it
and it was like really good."
And you're just like,
"Yeah, bro, we call that
a Tuesday at our house,"
you know.
Growing up, if there was
a big celebration or parties
in the backyard,
all the dudes
all had a cutting board
and they had
a big cleaver knife.
So you just hand-chop everything
and then you would stuff
and make sausages inside
with the aunties and the moms
and the grandmas,
and they would help make
the rice or the noodles,
or they're wrapping,
frying stuff.
All the boys hung out
by the grill area.
And my dad had the tong
and he handed the tong
over to me.
You train your whole life
for this, for this moment,
to be able to be like
the meat flipper by the grill.
And I remember coming in,
I was like, "Mom, Mom!"
Like, "I smell like Dad."
I had like...
like that wood burnt, you know,
kind of fire smell on me
and I thought I was so cool.
My American friends,
my white friends,
I didn't talk to them
about that.
I ran away from this calling.
My dad had a really,
really bad accident.
This is my hero,
you gotta realize.
This guy fought a w*r
and he survived.
He got us to this country.
And I thought to myself,
"Man, if Dad dies,
everything about him,
his legacy goes with him."
And that day changed the way
I thought about Hmong food
and I thought about
what it means to be Hmong.
For me, I feel that my part
is to remember the story
in the food that we eat.
There's something about it
that rejuvenates my soul
when I eat it.
There's something about
Hmong mustard green
braised with pork neck bones
and that beautiful
collision of spice,
that bite from the mustard green
and the fattiness from the pork,
and the moment that you touch it
with your lips.
And if you are a Hmong kid,
you know that taste.
You know,
there's something beautiful
about the fresh Hmong cucumber
that I get to bite into.
And every time I do
and it bursts in my mouth,
I'm taken back
to being a ten-year-old boy
sitting by my grandma.
She's slicing that cucumber
for me, fresh from the garden.
And when I realize
that that's who I am
and that's a part of me,
I wanna share that with people.
[soft music continues]
You look at the sacrifices
of the ones
that come before you,
and then you take that
and then you keep
moving forward with that.
One day, you have to sacrifice
for the next generation
so that it can grow.
That's what it means
to be Hmong.
I ran so far
that it was like a circle.
I ran back to it.
And that's what I love
about being Hmong.
And that's why if anybody
wants to talk to me about it,
let's do it. Let's go.
[music fades]
[upbeat music plays]
I think if you talk to
my parents, they would say that
I talked back a lot
and that I was really
a bossy child.
In Vietnamese,
the greatest compliment
that you could give a daughter
is "hiu tao,"
which is to be obedient.
I have never been hiu tao.
I really reject the idea that
the AAPI community is quiet.
It's such a stereotype
and it plays along
with the model minority myth.
There are plenty of activists
that are Asian American
throughout history.
They just don't get
the history books
talking about them.
My grandma was a freedom fighter
against the French in Vietnam.
You know, I come from this line
of people who talk back.
My name is Amanda Nguyen.
I never thought that I'd be made
to suffer a greater injustice
than what I went through
on the day that I was r*ped.
I studied astrophysics
at Harvard,
and during my last semester,
I was r*ped.
I remember
walking out of the hospital
after my r*pe kit procedure
was done,
having never more
fully understood
the definition of lonely
than at that moment.
I was handed a taxi voucher
to go back to the dorm room
where I was r*ped.
It was only after my ordeal
that I discovered firsthand
the ways in which r*pe survivors
are continually revictimized.
When I found out
that my r*pe kit
could be destroyed
at six months,
even though the statute
of limitations is 15 years,
I felt like I was betrayed
by America's
criminal justice system.
I realized I had a choice:
accept the injustice
or take change
into my own hands.
And so, I decided
to rewrite the law.
The law that I wrote is called
the Sexual as*ault Survivor
Bill of Rights.
Part of it
is to save a r*pe kit.
Another right is the right
to your patient medical record.
Another right is the right
to your own police report.
Before they were enshrined,
they were being denied
to survivors
all across the United States.
When we passed the federal law,
I remember going to the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial.
I just screamed
as loud as I could,
and I just felt like
a curse broke.
For me, that was my justice.
That's what justice felt like.
[soft ambient music plays]
My love of space started
even before I was born.
My family were boat refugees
from Vietnam,
and they used
celestial navigation
to find their way to freedom.
My mother left with
three other family members,
her younger sister, Number 11,
her brother, Number 3,
and the son of Number 2.
And as they were swimming
and they got to the boat,
there were these machine g*ns,
and the Viet Cong
had spotted them.
My mom turned to Number 3
and said,
"We got to go. It's do or die."
They made it
to international waters.
And then because it was a storm,
the boat was sinking.
A big boat came
and rescued them.
They threw over a rope.
A literal lifeline.
She tells me that you just put
one hand in front of the next.
One foot in front of the next.
When people ask me
how I decided to take on
the United States government
or the United Nations,
I think about how she had
to evade these guards,
machine g*ns,
climb a rope in a storm,
and I have to just send
an email to a senator.
When I spoke up about my r*pe,
it was highly stigmatic.
Friends, loved ones said,
"Hey, I don't think
you should do this,"
including, of course,
other people
who share my identity
as young Asian women.
And I understand
where that comes from.
So I don't fault anyone
for feeling like
the cost-benefit analysis
of their survival
depends on their silence.
I want people to know that
the most powerful tool
that we have is our voice.
I've never regretted it.
[music ends]
[DJ Rekha] I have
three best days of my life.
The first best day
is the day I met my partner.
Aww... sappy, sappy, true.
The second-best day
is SummerStage.
The best day of my musical life.
The third best day is when
I got parking in my garage
after 14 years.
That's some New York sh*t.
[upbeat music plays]
What do I identify as?
It depends where I am
and who's asking,
'cause identity is shifting.
I definitely identify as a DJ,
as an artist, as a curator.
I think identity's like...
a slippery slope as I...
as I partake in this project.
My parents had what I call
an outlaw love marriage
in the late '60s in India.
They were partition babies,
so they were born
in what's now Pakistan.
And then moved to England
and then we moved to the States
right before my fifth birthday.
What did my parents
want me to be?
I know one thing.
When I started deejaying,
they didn't want me to do that.
[laughs]
They definitely didn't want me
to do that sh*t. No.
[upbeat party music plays]
My mom went to England.
There was this one song
that was really big.
So she brought a cassette
back for me,
Malkit Singh, Up Front,
was the album.
There's another song there
that I really like.
One of the lines is,
"We're not gonna dance
to the white man's disco,"
which is, you know, poetic.
[Bhangra music playing]
My idea for my 16th birthday is
I wanted to do a Bhangra party
and I wanted everyone to wear
Indian clothes.
I was the opposite
of, like, self-hating.
I was like the other side.
And that was literally
in our basement.
When I started deejaying,
I was very involved
in community activism
more than anything.
I was part of a group
that was originally formed
around the wave of violence
that happened in Jersey City
in the late '80s
perpetrated by a group
claiming themselves
to be the "Dotbusters."
We started raising money
by throwing parties.
Those things were inextricably
linked for me,
creating space,
holding community,
and deejaying.
[Bhangra music resumes]
The association of Bhangra music
when I was starting
deejaying was,
it is lower class people
who are working class,
who are cab drivers,
who are not professionals.
They listen to that music.
They're from Punjab.
I wanted to create a space
that I was like,
"No, we're gonna go all in.
We're gonna play like,
the real sh*t."
[Bhangra music continues]
The idea around
Basement Bhangra was like,
"I wanna play this music.
I love hip-hop.
Let's just play it."
It took a minute, but it caught.
People really got it.
By the summer
of the second year,
the line was down the block.
Seven o'clock doors
and then the dance lesson,
the Basement Bhangra
dance lesson.
Don't do like...
cobra moves when you're dancing
like there's a snake charmer
happening. Not cool.
At midnight, it's like, crazy.
It's wall to wall.
At the end, I just want as many
people to dance as possible.
That's what I'm going for.
I think so much about
the music projects
of Basement Bhangra
and how they could only
have happened in New York.
It became even more important
after 9/11,
especially a lot of Sikh men,
bearded, turbaned.
Post-9/11, a lot of bad sh*t was
happening to our communities.
We did an event 9/20,
nine days after 9/11,
which we were like,
"Should we do it?
Should we not?"
Of course,
the club owner was like,
"'Raker, ' you just
got to do it." [laughs]
And that's when I learned
the lesson of
you always do the party.
The party must go on.
That's when it really clicked
that this was not just a party,
it was a space.
I like working with
up-and-coming artists,
learning from them
and them learning from me.
And there's just like a lot more
South Asians making music.
And it's exciting.
Some of it's sh*t, and some
of it has a lot of possibility.
When we walk through a door,
it is our responsibility
to bring other people
through that door.
Like, I think it's great
that South Asians are
getting successful in certain
kinds of visible ways,
but it's like,
what space are we taking up?
We can't just be excited
'cause, like, somebody's
in office or something.
And that blanket excitement
around power,
it's shitty, you know.
And they need to be critical
of that.
We have to speak up for
oppression against all people.
[jazz music playing]
[Connie Chung]
When I first started working
in television news,
I looked around me and all I saw
were white men.
They were my bosses,
they were my colleagues,
my competitors,
the people I interviewed.
All white men.
Anytime I walked
into a newsroom,
I was a lone wolf.
I decided that I, too,
would be a white male.
I literally took on
all of their behavior,
bravado, decided I was entitled,
and I had a potty mouth.
I had oh, such a potty mouth.
And it was so unbecoming
because here I was,
a little lotus blossom
with these foul words
coming out of my mouth.
Anytime they'd throw
something at me
that was either r*cist
or sexist,
I'd throw it right back at them
in a r*cist, sexist way.
My boss said,
"Tell them why I hired you,"
and I said, "Because you like
the way I do your shirts."
And he thought
that was the funniest thing
he had ever heard in his life,
and he kept,
"Tell 'em, tell 'em."
He kept making me repeat it.
And I thought to myself,
"Why the heck did I say that?
Am I nuts?"
And, uh, that was just my M.O.
It was my way of dealing with
the sexist pigs and r*cist pigs.
Sorry.
[soft piano music playing]
My parents were born in China,
and I have four older sisters
all born in China,
but I'm the only one born
in the United States.
And I was another girl.
[chuckles]
I was born and raised
in Washington, D.C.
When I was born,
my father called
from the hospital and said,
"It's another girl.
You find a name for her."
My sisters looked through
movie magazines.
So they said, "We're gonna flip
and that will be the name."
And they went flip,
and it was an actress named
Constance Moore.
So I became Constance,
but everybody called me Connie.
When my mother came
to the United States,
she couldn't read
or write English
and she couldn't read
or write Chinese.
I basically, at the age
of eight or nine,
taught her how to read.
I used my Golden Books,
all my little kid books,
and I helped her learn
her signature
so that she could get
her citizenship.
But it was really, really hard
for her.
My four older sisters
were bossy screaming meemies.
All they did was yap, yap, yap.
And I was like this quiet,
timid, shy person
who never opened my mouth.
My family was shocked that
I went into television news.
My sisters literally said,
"Our little Connie.
Imagine that, she's talking
to millions of people.
Who would have thought
that our little Connie..."
And I would go, "Uh, please."
The tragedy for my parents
was that they had no boys.
In Chinese tradition,
you have to have boys
because boys carry on
the family name.
My father actually gave me
the mission.
He wrote to me in a letter
and said,
"Maybe you can carry on
the family name."
Subconsciously,
that's what I did.
One day, I got a call
from a journalist, Connie Wang,
and she told me
that she was named after me.
And I said, "What?
Are you kidding?"
Her parents asked her,
"What name would you like
to be called?
Because you're now
in the United States."
And she was only like
three or four
or something like that.
She saw me on television.
She said, "Either Connie
or Elmo."
She discovered that there was
this whole generation
of Asian girls
who were named Connie.
Connie Wang decided
that she would write a piece
for the opinion section
of The New York Times
and it would be all about
the Connies
that she discovered.
And the photo editor found
a photographer
whose name was Connie Aramaki,
and she gathered
all of these Connies,
and my tears just came down.
Every time I think about it,
I start to cry.
It's an incredible legacy
that I never knew existed.
Having all these Connies
named after me
is out of this world.
Swimming has been
part of my life
for as long as I can remember.
I don't remember
a time in my life
when I wasn't in the water.
[light acoustic music playing]
Because I didn't present myself
often in a very girly manner,
in the girls' bathroom
or the girls' locker room,
I would be bullied
for my appearance.
"You're not really a girl" or
"You're like a disguised boy."
And so I would change
in the car into my swimsuit.
Entering the women's locker room
with my shirt off
and my swimsuit exposed
was sort of my ticket
into the bathroom
without being bullied
for not being "girl enough."
When I was thinking about
gender identity and thinking,
"Gosh, maybe I'm not this woman
that everybody says that I am,
maybe I'm a man,"
I thought, "Oh my God,
what am I gonna do about sports?
What am I gonna do
about swimming?
How am I gonna keep
being myself as an athlete
while trying to be myself
as a trans person?"
I had still committed to swim
for Harvard's swim team
and the women's swim team
specifically
when I was done with treatment.
Coming out to my women's coach,
her response being a lot of,
"I don't know,
but we're gonna figure it out."
And over the course
of that year,
I actually was offered a spot
on the men's team
because the men's coach said,
"Well, if you identify as a man,
swim for me."
I was lucky to be met with this
kind of support from my coaches
that allowed me to step
into my full self
as a transgender man
on the men's team.
In my process of coming out
as trans,
I got sick of telling everybody
one at a time.
So I made this big Facebook post
where I said,
"Hey, everybody,
I'm transgender.
Here's some information
about what this means.
I'm gonna be swimming
for the men's team."
So I told everybody this online.
I actually have
three Korean grandparents.
My halmeoni, halabeoji,
so my grandmother
and grandfather,
my mom's parents.
I also have a great aunt,
my keun-imo.
Halmeoni actually has
a Facebook.
So before I hit "post,"
I blocked her on Facebook.
She has a couple of friends
that are mutual with me.
So I said, "Hey, please
don't tell Halmeoni yet.
I'm going to tell her,
but I need to get there."
So then I spent about a month
writing her a letter.
"Halmeoni, Halabeoji, Keun-imo,
I'm telling you this
because I love you.
Because I respect you deeply
and because I want you
in my life."
My mother and I
were very afraid.
Maybe we'd never actually
set foot in this house again.
And maybe she doesn't only
disown me,
but she also disowns my mother.
So we sat down
at the kitchen table.
I read them the letter,
I ended with "I love you,"
and then I waited.
My grandfather
was the first to react,
and he started with this, like,
slow old man clap.
[chuckles] And he goes, "So...
you come out of closet now."
I was stunned he had the phrase
"coming out of the closet."
And he said,
"Oh, congratulations."
My mom and I were absolutely
gobsmacked,
don't know what to say.
Keun-imo, she gives me
a squeeze on the hand
and she got up to make tea.
Her love had been communicated.
Halmeoni, again,
the person
I'm the most worried about,
she's staring at me,
she's got this really stern look
on her face, and she goes,
"I knew that.
You can be a boy, a brother,"
she says.
"You can be a man.
But daughters take care
of their parents.
It is still your responsibility,
Schuyler,
to take care of your parents."
Of course I agreed.
I even have those words,
"bumo-hyodo,"
"take care of your parents"
tattooed in my grandmother's
handwriting
beneath my mastectomy scar
next to my heart.
It's my tribute to her
and all the strong womanhood
that I come from.
My halmeoni,
she is North Korean.
She walked from Pyongyang
to Seoul to escape
right before the Korea
was split into two Koreas.
She walked when she was
13 years old with her mother
over the oceans
to raise my mother.
And so there's this deep value
that I carry
and that tattoo
is part of that symbol.
So when I was growing up,
I was frequently told a variety
of very inappropriate comments
about my appearance.
"Mixed-race babies
are the most beautiful."
"Oh, you're so exotic."
"Asian and white girls
are the sexiest."
This was from adults around me,
from peers.
It was from teachers.
Very fetishizing comments
about my appearance
that wove in racism, misogyny.
And then I transitioned.
And now I'm read in the world
as an Asian man.
It's a very different
experience.
Now I feel that I just, like,
don't exist.
I'm frequently told
I am not man enough.
A lot of people see
East Asian men as feminine
or submissive or weak.
They also see trans men
in the same way.
My manhood is mine.
And if you don't see it
or if you think
it is X, Y, and Z, that's okay.
You can think whatever you want
about my manhood,
but I know who I am.
My racial identity
and my trans identity
have really forced me to find
that grounding on my own.
Now I see it
as a bit of a superpower.
[music ends]
[soft, bright music playing]
[Kumail Nanjiani] To me, the
most nervous I am in my life is
when someone comes up
to me and says, "Hey,
I loved you in..."
And that pause between "in"
and whatever they say
is the most nervous
I've ever been.
Harold & Kumar, I get that.
That's like ten years
before I started doing comedy.
And it happens
to all those other guys too.
You know, it happens to Hasan.
It happens to Aziz.
It happens to Kal.
It happens to Hari.
It just happens to all of us.
And I always say the same line
when someone says,
"Hey, I loved you
in Big Bang Theory,"
I'm like,
"No, that's the other one."
[laughs]
Yeah.
It has led
to some awkward situations.
Yeah...
[scattered applause]
Hey, what's up, guys?
I started doing stand-up
right after 9/11.
I just got an Xbox.
Whenever I got on stage,
I would feel that tension
from the audience.
They're like,
"Is he gonna mention it?
Is he gonna mention it?"
And I tried to not address it.
It just wasn't working.
I had to address it.
I would get on stage
and if I was doing
like a bar or something,
you know, suddenly,
everyone's like a little tense,
looking at me.
And I would go,
"Hey, I'm from Pakistan.
We're the good guys."
That's what I would say.
"Where's Osama?"
I got that one a few times.
After the first two
or three times it happened,
I was like, "Okay, these
are not isolated incidents.
This is gonna keep happening,
so I need to come up
with comeback lines
that I can just memorize."
People would call me "t*rror1st"
on stage,
and I'd be like,
"If I really am a t*rror1st,
do you wanna, like,
pick a fight with me?"
"Where's Osama?"
I'd be like, "I don't know.
I haven't seen him
at the meetings
in a long time."
Someone says something to you,
you say something back,
and then suddenly,
the audience explodes.
They love it. They love you.
I found out one of the levels
in the new Call of Duty
- is called "Karachi."
- [audience whoops]
Which is where
I f*cking grew up.
- [audience laughs]
- That's weird for me.
They're like, "Your hometown
is now a b*ttlefield."
- [audience laughs]
- "How many points can you get?"
For me, the negotiation
of my identity
is still an ongoing project.
I still don't know.
You know, if you asked
how I identify myself,
I say Pakistani.
Wikipedia says
Pakistani American.
I don't really know
what that means.
So I don't feel fully Pakistani
because it's not my home
anymore.
And I don't feel American
because...
your membership in a group
is based on the other members
seeing you as a member
of that group.
And I understand
that a lot of America
is never going to see me
as American.
And so I don't feel American.
[soft, pensive music playing]
You have to come up
with something
that's completely unique to you.
When I was a little kid,
I loved movies and TV.
Movies, TV, video games.
There was a long stretch
in my life
where I watched a movie
every single day.
Star Wars and Star Trek
and Gremlins and Ghostbusters
and Indiana Jones
and all that stuff.
But I also watched a lot
of Bollywood movies
and that sort of, uh,
depiction of the sort of
strong, silent man
who doesn't ever get sad
or feel fear,
like that's a big part
of Bollywood movies, you know.
And so I really grew up
sort of idolizing those things,
you know, being the stoic man
who takes care of his family
and takes care of the bad guys
and all that stuff.
And now realizing that,
honestly,
that conception of manhood
for me was very damaging.
You can't be sad
and you can't be scared,
and that angry is the only
manly emotion there is.
Now, when I go on stage,
I wanna talk about how...
understanding how I'm feeling
and being able to express that
is strength, you know.
Like, anger is not
necessarily strength.
Saying "I'm scared of this"
is also strength.
Now when I do stand-up,
I wanna be someone
who looks like me
talking about that stuff,
you know.
That even though I am successful
and I'm very fortunate,
but I-I still have
these things inside me
that scare me.
[Madelyn Yu] So I came to the
United States in the late '70s
and I went straight
to Kansas City.
When I was flying
from the Philippines,
the lady seated next to me said,
"You are my first Asian,"
and she said it
in such a derogatory way.
So I retorted back and probably
not respectfully, I said,
"You're my first stupid."
It was quiet
all the way to Kansas City.
[soft, bright music playing]
In the '70s and in the '80s,
there was a huge
nursing shortage.
Many administrators
from all over the United States
would go to the Philippines
and recruit in Manila
all the nurses
that they could get.
What I would earn in 12 months
as a head nurse
of the medical ICU
at the Philippine Heart Center,
I would already earn here
in the U.S. just for one month.
And my story is no different
from any other Filipino nurse
who would come here
to look, as they say,
"for greener pastures,"
for a better opportunity
for their families.
When I came
to the United States,
I was 25.
I was leaving my husband behind
and my first-born baby.
He was only a few months old
when I left.
[soft dramatic music plays]
I would send half of my salary
back home every month.
I was so homesick.
I was very, very lonely.
There's a music back home
called "Manila, Manila."
["Manila" by Hotdog plays]
Somebody played it during
one of the Christmas parties
and I broke out crying
like crazy.
My husband and the four children
joined me in the U.S.
and we settled in New Jersey.
And I retired in 2019
after serving as a nurse
for 46 years.
We were planning to start
my husband's retirement
in November 2020,
and we were going to travel
the world.
Breaking news about
the spreading coronavirus.
At least 19 deaths
are now reported in the U.S.
- There are now...
- [Madelyn] In March 2020,
after watching TV,
my husband dozed off
as he usually does.
And then we FaceTime
with our children
because we couldn't
gather anymore,
and they were like,
"Mom, he doesn't look good."
And that was the start
of my nightmare.
He was admitted to the hospital
where I worked.
A few more days to that,
my family called 911
again for me.
I had COVID too.
Who would take care
of my husband
when he comes home?
I'm the nurse.
I will take care of him,
so I have to live.
It was Holy Week
and I do believe
in the power of prayers.
I felt lifted up on Good Friday.
On Sunday, Easter Sunday,
I saw a rainbow
in front of my hospital window
and I said to myself,
"I'm gonna live."
My husband was going
into his third week
intubated in the ICU.
And the doctors would update me
that this medication
was being put up,
this ventilator setting
was being done,
and I understood them all.
Remember,
I'm a critical care nurse.
And when they told me that
a certain medication was added,
my heart fell.
I was able to hold his hand
for the last three hours
of his life.
I had the priest bless him.
We prayed the rosary.
The children FaceTimed him.
And I whispered in his ears,
"It's okay to go, Daddy.
It's okay."
[somber music plays]
So how do you move on?
I pray for him every day.
I visit him every week,
bring him flowers.
And now I'm a happy
grandma of six.
I go home to the Philippines
to visit relatives,
do the medical mission.
And I always say in Tagalog,
"Ang hindi marunong
sa pinanggalingan
ay hindi makarating
sa paroroonan."
"If you do not look back
at where you came from,
you can never reach
your destination."
We have only one life to live.
Make a difference.
If you grow up poor, you're just
more motivated to not be poor.
When it snowed
and we had snow days,
I would get my friends
and be like, "We're shoveling."
We had a lawn mowing business.
I learned some magic
and started doing magic shows.
All I have to do
is shake it up a little...
blow it out,
and they're all tied together.
I had racked up
hundreds of dollars
in library fines.
So I offered the library
to do magic shows,
and I said, "All I want
is you to wipe my fines."
[laughs] And they did that.
"Horrendous Haroon"
was what they called me.
[gentle acoustic music plays]
On the day of my birth,
the Russians invaded
Afghanistan.
I was there for three years.
My father was arrested
for supporting
some of the resistance.
When he got out of prison
six months later,
we decided
we gotta get out of there.
The Mokhtarzadas
were actually quite well-off.
The currency inflated
and so the Afghani
wasn't worth anything.
It was a full wipeout.
When we came to America,
we moved into
my mother's parents'
two-bedroom apartment
in Maryland.
A family of six at the time,
plus my grandparents.
I don't quite know how we fit.
We were packed in there.
We really couldn't afford
kind of anything.
I definitely remember
being on free lunch.
They would separate the kids
before lunchtime.
They would call you over
and check you off on a list.
When I moved to reduced lunch,
I was like,
"Ooh, we are arriving."
[laughs] You know?
I grew up with an awareness
that my people
were going through
extreme struggles.
My mother really drilled into us
that we were very fortunate
and you have to do
what you can possibly do
because there's a million people
who would trade places with you.
That definitely had a lot to do
with my ambition.
When I was in high school,
I had interned
for a marketing firm.
They had me learn
how to build websites.
They were selling 'em
for thousands of dollars
to these companies.
And so I realized
every company
and maybe every person
is gonna need a website.
What if we build something
that builds their websites?
And that's where the idea
of Freewebs came from.
Having brothers who can code
is a very valuable thing.
I sort of roped them in
and said,
"Guys, let's build this."
We started Webs
right when I was a senior
at the University of Maryland.
We had to have
physical machines,
the servers
that everything ran on.
It moved from dorm
to apartment to a closet.
One day, everything goes down.
Every single thing goes down.
Hundred thousand websites
are sitting on this server
and it won't boot.
We couldn't get that to boot,
that's the end of the company.
Finally, we call Dell
and Dell says, "Hey,
sometimes there can be dust
that causes this problem.
Try opening it up,
pulling out the cable,
blowing into it like a Nintendo
cartridge or something,
and then reseeding it
and then turning it back on."
We open it up, we pull out
the cable, we blow...
blow into it, put it back,
turn it on,
and the whole thing
came back up.
Right there was a fork
in the universe.
One path would have been
very, very different.
Our entire future
hung in the balance,
suspended on a piece of dust.
So my parents,
they didn't quite understand
the level of success
that we were starting to have
until we told them
how much we sold the company for
ten years after we started it.
We sold the company
for almost 120 million dollars.
Me and my brothers
were sitting around a computer
and we were just refreshing
on our bank account.
Suddenly, a lot more zeros
popped up.
That was when
it really felt real.
Wow, my family is taken care of.
For our next start-up,
I had realized
that this is
a really annoying problem
that you cannot find
what subscriptions
you're paying for.
And Truebill was born.
In the tech world,
there's a thing called
a unicorn.
And a unicorn is a north
of one billion-dollar thing.
We sold that company
for almost 1.3 billion.
Wow, what am I gonna do
with this
that will make me worthy
of it coming my way?
I have now accomplished enough
in my life,
I'm gonna speak my mind
and I'm gonna create space
for the Muslim community
to have a voice.
That's why I'm investing
in independent journalism.
And that's why
I've been trying to get
emergency malnutrition
packets to Gaza.
And that's why I help fund
and support
a school in Afghanistan
for orphans.
And I try to call out
people on Twitter
when I feel like
they're not being honest
or they're spreading
misinformation.
If I, after having all of this
success in this country,
if I cannot speak these things,
who is going to do it?
Who can?
[Tammy Duckworth]
I remember being in the Army
as a young officer
going through flight school.
The Army put up a picture
of what the ideal Army officer
would look like,
and it was a square-jawed,
chiseled man,
blond with a buzzcut.
And I was like,
I'm never gonna look like that.
[gentle, pensive music plays]
I was literally mid-mission
when I was wounded
and taken out of Iraq.
I remember being hit
and I remember just desperately
trying to land the helicopter.
I mean, my legs were blown off.
My arm was essentially severed.
I wasn't doing anything
other than coming to
and trying to fly
and passing out
and coming to and trying to fly.
Confusion, pain,
despair 'cause I thought
that I was responsible
and that I'd failed as a pilot,
I'd failed as a soldier,
I'd failed as an officer.
And later on,
it was explained to me that,
"No, you were still trying
to take care of your men."
And I've been fine ever since.
As long as I did my job
as a soldier.
When I first ran for Senate,
and I talked about
being a daughter
of the American Revolution,
my opponent very derisively
in the debate
looked at me and said,
"Oh, yeah, I'm sure your parents
came all the way from Thailand
to fight with
George Washington,"
as if like there is
no possibility.
And I had to correct him.
I was like, "Actually,
my ancestors did fight
for George Washington."
I am half Caucasian,
half East Asian.
My mother is actually
ethnically Chinese,
but born and raised in Thailand.
So she identifies as Thai.
It was a twist of fate.
My parents met
because of the Vietnam w*r.
My dad was in Asia
because of the Vietnam w*r.
He fell in love with my mom.
But he married my mom, unlike
so many of the other Thai women.
And to this day,
I still get letters
from biracial
Thai American kids my age,
"Can you help me find my dad?
His name was Bob
and he was a sergeant
in the Army."
And it just breaks my heart.
Growing up post-Vietnam
in Southeast Asia
as a biracial Amerasian child
was not a positive thing.
Had my dad not married my mom
and stayed,
I would have had no future.
And my mother
would have had no future
'cause everybody knew that
I was a child of a soldier.
Well, the other kids would say,
"Oh, you're big and clumsy,"
'cause I was a lot taller
than other kids.
"Oh, you and your dad
smell like cheese."
I think when I started feeling
good about being biracial
was when I moved to Hawaii.
In Thailand, the term for me
was " Luk khrung."
Luk is child. Khrung is half.
So you're "half a child."
But in Hawaii you're a hapa,
which means also half,
but it just means mixed.
But it's a positive term.
That's really the first place
where I sort of grew
into my identity.
I was in middle school
when my dad lost his job
and our family
descended into poverty.
My mom and I told my dad,
"Let's go to the States."
My mom couldn't come 'cause
she didn't have a Green Card yet
and she did not have a visa
and we couldn't afford
for her to come anyway.
When I got on that plane
leaving Thailand for Hawaii,
she told me,
"You have to take over."
I had to be mom.
But we were struggling.
We had nothing.
I finally had a big fight
with my dad and said,
"You are not in charge anymore
because you cannot provide.
I'm gonna go get a job."
I marched down to Waikiki Beach
and got a job
handing out flyers to tourists.
That was the first real income
our family had.
I sold roses.
I scammed tourists... [laughs]
...playing volleyball
on the beach.
I would be pretending
to be just a local girl
and partner with a local dude
who would tell the tourists,
"Listen, I'll play you
and I'll get that girl
to play with me."
And I'd be like, "Who, me?
Really? I get to play?"
It's kind of like our version of
White Men Can't Jump the movie.
[laughs] Five bucks a game
usually is what we played for.
I was really good.
I never worked harder in my life
than when I was poor.
I was exhausted
every single day.
My dad was exhausted.
And if we could just help
by a little bit,
just give people
a little breathing room.
Those are the policies
that I support today.
I don't think of myself
as an overachiever.
I just fell into things
and I was just trying
to survive.
I wanted to be
a helicopter pilot
for the rest of my life.
Getting into politics
was something I fell into
because I was mad
that we weren't taking care
of veterans.
I wasn't trying to achieve
anything.
And I failed,
the first time around. I lost.
So I find myself here
where people talk about me
as a high achiever,
and I really see myself
as someone who was just
trying to survive
and do the next thing.
It's probably very Asian.
[laughs]
[soft guitar music playing]
[Bowen Yang] There was a Chinese
Bible camp that we went to
in the Rockies, in a lodge.
The kids ended up
being all these very funny,
cool, horny Christian teens
who played the guitar
and hooked up with each other.
I was never one of them.
My currency in those situations
was to just be funny.
And one of the skits,
I was called upon
to play Austin Powers
and do an Austin Powers
impression.
I think I said the words,
"Yeah, baby,"
and then everyone in the room
exploding in laughter.
I was like, "Oh, I wanna do that
for the rest of my life."
I would run to the basement,
watch SNL and MADtv,
and all these sketch shows.
I was obsessed.
I made that my whole identity.
Being on the improv troupe
in high school,
going downtown to the Bovine
Metropolis Theater in Denver
to like, do shows
with like 33-year-old men
who had drinking problems,
as a 15-year-old.
Like, I was building my life
around this.
I was very like meekly,
bashfully
saying that to people,
especially to my parents.
I was trying to make that
a palatable dream to them.
In no world would it have
made sense for me
to be like in showbiz
when they were like,
"We sacrificed everything.
Why would you wanna do
short form improv?"
One day I was me, Cristina Yang,
and then suddenly I was...
[inhales]
...lying for him
and jeopardizing my career
and, uh, agreeing to be married
and wearing a ring
and being a bride.
I loved Sandra Oh
on Grey's Anatomy so much
that I said,
"I guess I'll go to NYU
to study chemistry
and be pre-med
because I wanna be like her.
I wanna be like Cristina Yang."
I stayed on the pre-med track
all the way through,
and it was about what
a media portrayal
was indicating,
what my parents felt safe
in me doing.
I remember taking my MCAthe second time
and voided my score
in the middle of the test.
I called my parents
and I was like,
"I can't do this.
I don't know what I'm gonna do.
I'll figure it out.
But this is what I need to do."
The audition
for Saturday Night Live
kind of spanned a couple years.
My manager at the time was like,
"It's SNL tape season."
You get to submit a tape
of five minute characters
and impressions that you do.
I didn't have too many Asian
public figures to work off of.
I did... a Ken Jeong impression,
a SoulCycle instructor,
a Michiko Kakutani impression.
It ended up being me
screaming at the top of my lungs
about how Jeffrey Eugenides
was a hack or whatever.
It was just me having fun with
all of these different authors
and literary figures.
I kind of miraculously took
the liberated path on that.
I was like, "I'm gonna do this
as an exercise
to do whatever I want.
This will never be seen.
I will never be considered.
Let me just have fun with this
for me."
I booked the pilot
Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens
the same summer that I sent in
the tape to SNL.
We shot in a Chinese restaurant.
It was a dinner scene
and we were eating like
wood ears
and duck and fried rice.
And it was me, B.D. Wong,
Awkwafina, Lori Tan Chinn.
Like three different
micro generations
of Asian actors.
Something really enlightening
happened.
Being on a set
with other Asian people
and not having
to explain myself,
like not having to justify
my existence there,
not having to be like peripheral
or ornamental.
Like, we get each other.
And I think I took that sort of
comfort and confidence
into my last audition for SNL.
In between takes
of Nora from Queens,
I gave my phone to a PA,
I was like,
"If a 212 number calls,
please call cut
because I have to take it."
It rang.
They offered me the job
to be on cast for SNL.
It's poetic to me that it was
on the set of Nora,
that I was with Awkwafina,
that I was with a bunch
of other Asian people
that this thing in my life
changed
and everything else did
in its wake.
Yeah.
[soft piano music playing]
[Manny Crisostomo]
I got this internship
with the Pacific Daily News.
There's a new executive editor.
I said, "I'm excited.
I'm ready to spend
three, four months
honing my skills
as a reporter."
Then he looked at me and goes,
"Well, I looked
at all your writings
and I don't think you're
good enough to be a reporter."
"Oh my God, I love journalism.
I wanna stay in the business."
And he goes, "Well,
do you have experience
as a photographer?"
I said, "Yeah,
I was a yearbook photographer."
I got my tax refund
and my mom bought me a camera
at the naval base
and I started taking
photography.
I was a photo lab assistant.
Every once in a while,
the editors would come back
to the photo department.
I was the only one there
and they said,
"Hey, somebody is bringing in
these weird mutant
vegetables and fruits.
Can you go photograph them?"
And I would photograph
somebody holding
their conjoined
twin cantaloupes,
cucumbers that are oversized,
and their pumpkins
that are deformed.
The mutant vegetable
and fruit beat
was my early project.
I left Guam to study photography
and work on the mainland.
I was in my late twenties.
There were a couple
of reporters that spent a year
working on the Michigan
juvenile justice system
and some of its failings.
I was the lead photographer
in that project
from the Detroit Free Press.
And then I was, like, thinking,
you know,
I wanna do something
on high school.
I wanna spend a year
at a high school.
I picked this high school.
It was in a part
of southwest Detroit
that a lot of the auto plants
have closed,
so there's unemployment.
I was in classrooms.
I photographed the jocks,
I photographed the dropouts,
I photographed pregnant teens.
I remember going to the prom
and I just felt like
this doting father.
They were my kids
and they're all dressed up
and they're all like,
beautiful and stuff,
and I was like, super proud.
We ran the story and, um,
I got nominated
for the Pulitzer Prize.
I remember I called up my mom,
"Hey, Mom, I'm up for this thing
called the Pulitzer Prize,
and it's a really,
really big deal.
I'm probably not gonna win.
But I just wanna let you know
that, you know,
I'm a finalist and stuff."
And she goes, "Don't worry, son.
I'm gonna go to St. Jude church,
and I'm gonna light a candle
for you."
You know, a few days later,
I win the prize.
People say, "How do you get
a Pulitzer Prize?"
I said, "Just make sure your mom
goes to St. Jude church in Guam
and lights a candle for you."
I just won the Pulitzer Prize.
I was sort of the top
of the game,
and I was just, like,
really, really homesick.
The indigenous people of Guam
are called Chamorus.
We have a word
in Chamoru language,
and it's called mahalung.
Mahalung is this longing,
this homesick.
It's wanting to smell the air
of your island.
I was talking
to a friend of mine about it,
and she goes, "The only way
to mitigate the longing
is get a sense of belonging."
And I sort of make it
a mission to...
belong.
To find other Chamorus,
to tell their stories.
I'm one of 250,000 Chamorus
on this planet.
I'm on a mission
and I'm passionate about
photographing each
and every one of them.
We survived.
We survived colonial powers
from the Spanish to the U.S.,
invading powers like Japan.
We are resilient.
I just wanna document that.
[bright, gentle music plays]
[music ends]
[soft, groovy music playing]
[Nergis Mavalvala]
I was a squash player.
I was in graduate school at MIT.
There was no women's
squash team,
so I had to play
on the men's team.
And it actually gave me
a fair amount of secret pleasure
when I would get on a court
with a man
who would take one look at me,
at the time, I was a small,
you know,
scrappy young thing,
and say, "Oh, I got this."
And they had no idea
what squash I could play.
I would get great pleasure
from winning that game
more than any other game.
There's a piece of me
that-that thrives
on that kind of
being the underdog.
In Pakistani society,
there is this desire
for every family
to have a boy child.
And my mother would say,
when nosy people would ask,
"Well, don't you want
to have a son?"
And she would say things like,
"Why do I need a son?
I have Nergis."
[bell rings]
I grew up in Pakistan.
It's a very interesting milieu
for me.
I grew up in this
Zoroastrian family.
I went to a Catholic school
in an extremely Islamic country
as a rabid atheist myself
from childhood.
So, it was this constant
juxtaposition of things.
[horn honks]
The messaging
from our parents was,
"There's no future for you here.
You have to go overseas.
We have no money
to send you overseas.
The only way you can do it
is through scholarship.
So the rest is in your hands,
children."
That was the dream.
That was something that changed
the direction of my life
like nothing else has ever done.
For a while, I thought I would
be a doctor, a medical doctor.
This is, of course, you know,
classic Asian family.
There are only a few things
you are allowed to be.
You could be a doctor.
You could be an engineer.
You could be a lawyer.
I read too slowly
to be a lawyer.
I couldn't bear
dissecting animals,
so that put the whole
medicine thing out of the way.
So engineering was left.
But then when I got to college,
I learned there is this identity
of being a researcher,
of asking questions
to which no one has the answer,
and you could be the one
that could find it.
You could be a scientist and
you could be part of discovery.
In 2015, we were able to,
for the very first time,
directly observe
gravitational waves
from the collision
of two black holes.
These had been a prediction
of Einstein's
theory of general relativity
a hundred years earlier,
and we had just seen one.
So the theory was correct.
We have thought of space
as empty and pristine,
and it's none of those things.
It's filled with popcorns
and ripples and tears.
But the part of it
that I'm interested in
is the wavy part.
When you have two objects
like black holes
and they orbit each other
and collide,
they give off these waves,
and we, far, far away
from where
those collisions happen,
should be able to see
those waves.
And why should we care to see
those waves?
Because those waves
bring us information
about those black holes.
Why should we care about
those black holes?
Because those black holes
are the building blocks
of our universe.
And so, if we want to understand
how the universe
is put together,
we have to understand
black holes.
If we wanna understand
black holes,
we've gotta measure
their gravity
because they don't
give off light.
And that's what my work
has been about.
Being a minority
has touched my life
in many, many different ways.
And the most significant way
is a total comfort
with being a maverick,
being an outsider
in the mainstream.
Whether it is being comfortable
being a q*eer person
when it was really pretty hard
to be a q*eer person,
to working on
a physics experiment
that everybody thought
was sure to fail
and that you're foolish to try.
To be other is okay.
Just by being a scientist
and being a South Asian,
a Pakistani American,
and being a q*eer person,
and being able to say
all those things,
and yet have success in science
has meant other people
can imagine that
for themselves as well.
[music ends]
[solemn music playing]
[Kathy Masaoka]
In conversations,
whenever Japanese Americans
get together,
we often ask each other,
"What camp was your family in?"
But in my family,
the family never-never
talked about it.
And I didn't know enough to ask.
So, like, when Pearl Harbor
was mentioned in high school,
I just felt very much like
everybody was looking at me,
very embarrassed,
but not understanding why.
We didn't really know
who we were.
I think all of us were going
through that identity issue
of like, trying to be American.
And American
didn't mean person of color.
It meant being white.
I would see other Japanese
Americans group together
and I'd feel like,
"I don't wanna be with them."
Going to Japan was part
of that search, thinking that,
"Well, if I don't fit in here,
maybe I fit in there,"
and-and finding
very shockingly and sadly
that I'm not.
Not and never will be Japanese.
I felt that there was no future.
[soft music plays]
But somehow, I did get back.
I found Asian American studies.
["We Are The Children" plays]
We are the children
of the migrant worker
We are the offspring
of the concentration camp
Sons and daughters
of the railroad builder
Who leave their stamp
on America
[Kathy] The Vietnam w*r
was showing us
how people saw us
as the example
of looking like the enemy.
So, again, we were the enemy.
Not really being seen
as fully American.
It was the first time I liked
being Japanese American,
being around Japanese Americans.
But we didn't march
just as Japanese Americans.
It was as Asian Americans.
Brothers and sisters
all around the world
[song ends]
We didn't know anything.
We had no skills.
We just saw a need.
And we just, you know, said,
"Okay, we have to organize
something."
[light pensive music playing]
We took our ideas a lot from
the Black Panthers, actually.
Idea of serving the people.
Starting programs
that were needed,
like the welfare rights group,
parents' group,
health fairs and clinics.
After a while,
we started thinking about
how all of this connected
to the camps
and our experience
as Japanese Americans.
The demand for reparations
became louder.
Even if we didn't win,
we had to fight.
We didn't feel an apology
by itself was enough.
We demanded
monetary reparations.
And our group demanded
that there be hearings,
not just in Washington, D.C.,
where you hear
scholars and legislators speak,
but you hear the people speak.
In 48 hours,
we were told to pack up
and leave.
[woman]
I did not want my children
to feel the burden of shame
and feeling of rejection
by their fellow Americans.
[Yayoi Arakawa Ono]
This inhumane, cruel treatment
and happening took place
in the good ol' United States
and not in Gestapo Germany.
Hard to believe, isn't it?
That was a total eye-opener.
It was the first time
that I heard
people speak about the camp.
People that looked like
my mother.
She didn't get to tell
her story,
and I wanted her family story
to be told.
My mother's family was removed
from their farm in California,
taken to Gila River
concentration camp in Arizona.
And I think that as I learn
more and more constantly,
I realized what it really meant.
How the first generation
came here
and overcame all of the laws
and injustices.
Not being able to be citizens.
Not being able to marry.
Not being able to own land.
Not being able to vote.
All of that
and they still stayed
and then they were put
in the camps,
and lost all of it. It's like...
h-how do you even continue
after that?
And so, um, my mother,
her future was, you know,
really sort of changed
drastically by the camps.
So she had a lot of anger,
still a lot of pride,
but at the same time,
it had been, you know,
squashed down by the camps.
I mean, I don't think I really
appreciated or understood
the depth of the loss.
[light applause]
The legislation
that I am about to sign
provides for
a restitution payment
to each of the 60,000 survivors.
Here we admit a wrong.
What happened to us happened
to many different people.
Being incarcerated,
being, you know,
removed from your land,
it's not unusual in this country
or in the world.
The legacy of fighting
for reparations
is connection and solidarity.
You know, 'cause change
will take a long time.
We're building something new
from the bottom
and that's actually
gonna sustain us, I think,
in the long run.
I may not be here, you know,
to see what actually
comes out of it,
but we are dealing
with trying to...
and, you know, I think
it sounds very idealistic,
but change the world,
change the systems,
change the systems
that are not serving us.
[music ends]
[Cliff Kapono] I ended up
winning this science fair
when I was 16.
There is this virus
that was running rampant
on the north shore of O'ahu
in the shrimp farms.
So I created this experiment,
essentially a COVID test
for shrimp virus.
The judges were like,
"Who did this for you?"
And I'm like, "No one. I just...
did it at school."
And they were like,
"Wow. Qualified."
You get a free trip
to the international,
and sometimes
it's in Puerto Rico, Germany.
I'm like, "I'm going on a trip!"
I was like, "Where's it at?"
They're like, "Oh, Arizona."
And I'm like,
"Where's Arizona?" [chuckles]
It was so dry and so hot.
My internal compass was like,
something's not right.
I need to figure out
where Hawaii is right now.
We're walking with chaperones
to this convention center,
and I just book it, like
beeline out of the crowd,
and I start running.
The chaperones were like,
"We got a runner."
So I'm sprinting blocks down,
and I get out past the cities,
and then I get to a clearing,
and I look all around
and I just see mountains, 360,
and the sun is high.
And then my nose
started bleeding.
And then I'm just like
ready to faint.
I'm just like, "I'm dying!
I need to get back to Hawaii!"
[gentle music plays]
I knew then, I can't go far.
Growing up, I remember
having to go to school,
kind of hating it.
Being indoors,
I'm like, "This sucks."
As soon as the bell rang,
my dad was there,
pick us up,
straight to the beach.
That was kind of, I felt,
when learning really started.
My dad would kind of send us
out on the beach and say,
"Okay, go grab different
seaweed on the shore."
And then he'd come back
and he'd tell us,
"A Hawaiian name of seaweed
also has a Latin name.
This is science."
Same with surfing.
We'd do a bit
of seaweed science,
then we'd grab the boards
and we'd go out and we'd surf.
Understanding where
the current goes.
Where is the wind?
How is the sand moving?
What's the swell?
What's the tide?
There is so much information
around play.
That kind of gave me
this weird value on science.
Science was like this
magic power
to communicate to the world.
There is this weird opportunity
that just presented itself
to go get a PhD in California,
in chemistry.
Leave the only thing
I have ever known
and start something
that I don't know
what it's like or what
it's about, but it's different.
The first racism for being
a Hawaiian person I felt
was coming to California.
I was getting into conflict
with other surfers around
where I should be surfing,
who I'm surfing around,
and there's all these rules
that I didn't know existed.
This surfer
was getting close to me
and he ended up, like,
pushing me.
He said, "Go home
to wherever you come from."
And I was so upset.
I was like, "Dude,
I wanna go home." [scoffs]
"Dude, I don't wanna be here.
I don't have to explain
myself to you."
I told him. I was like,
"I'm from this ocean.
Where are you from?
Do any of you know
where you're from?"
I feel I came to get this PhD
as like a responsibility
on my shoulder.
"The Hawaiian with the PhD,
you're gonna help us."
It's like,
it's all this pressure
to be, like, somebody.
I just wanna be in the ocean.
So I integrated
some of the technology
we were developing in the lab
into a science project
to try to see,
are there molecular signatures
in the ocean that we can detect
that are shared among surfers
across the world,
a last ditch effort
to stay in school.
A writer ended up reaching out
to me and I did an interview
and next thing you know
I'm getting a call
from The New York Times
at its front page
of the science section.
Interviews and calls
from like, NBC
to like, NPR and Nat Geo.
Like, nerd celebrity
of, like, institution.
Like I'm rolling
in, like, fancy nerd land.
That was so important for me
because getting that global
recognition value,
I knew that those stories
that they were validating
weren't mine
and they were my people's.
That gave me the confidence
to return home.
My home allows me to be me.
[soft pensive music playing]
[gentle, poignant music plays]
[music ends]
[bright, harmonic music playing]
[music fades]
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A List, The: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas (2025)
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