00:00I'm a Korean American.
00:01I'm Bengali American.
00:02Chinese American.
00:03Filipino American.
00:05Chinese American.
00:06I'm a 1.5 generation American, a third culture kid, and an Asian American.
00:10I'm proud to be Asian American because this is the only face I have, so I might as well
00:15be proud.
00:16As an Asian American, I struggled with everything and everyone and myself.
00:21When I was younger, my mom would always like pack me Filipino food for lunch at school and
00:27I never wanted to eat it in front of everyone because I just didn't want to go through having
00:31to explain it to people.
00:32People would ask like, oh, how come Asians always stick together?
00:36Growing up, I would be embarrassed if it was like a whole bunch of Asians like outside the
00:40library and I'm like, oh my God, how Asian of us.
00:41I think for me there's always been this sort of struggle of being too white or too Asian,
00:47not white enough or not Asian enough.
00:49A lot of the conflict came from both sides.
00:51My peers, people in my community, my parents' accents or foreign food.
00:55I have come to appreciate and understand how where I've been determines where I'm going
01:00to go.
01:00People definitely don't ever think about people from Bangladesh as being Asian.
01:04They don't even think about people from Bangladesh.
01:06Who really am I outside of these categories that people know?
01:09I don't wear a hijab.
01:10I used to, but it's my choice.
01:12I'm covered inside internally.
01:13I don't need that statement outside to show you that I'm a Muslim.
01:16When it comes to AAPI folks, there's such a diversity of where we come from and who we
01:21are and our family histories and ties.
01:23There are over 40 countries in Asia and every family and every person is unique and different.
01:29People are always telling me that I don't look like the stereotypical Bengali because
01:32I don't look like a Bollywood actress.
01:34And I know that.
01:35I look like me.
01:36All Asians don't look the same.
01:37That micro-aggression stuff from even strangers.
01:41Like, mi hao?
01:42Where are you from?
01:44Why don't you just say hi to me like you would with anyone else?
01:46Dating guys with, like, the goal is to, like, date every Asian girl.
01:52Don't fetishize Asian girls because we're not all the same.
01:55Girl, are you from the North or the South?
01:56And, like, I know that that's, like, a legitimate, maybe, curiosity, but, like, if I am here, then
02:03I'm probably not from the North.
02:04It's, like, people, they're like, oh, we give you a platform for Asian Americans.
02:07And yet, all it is is these sort of lunchbox stories of saying, you know, all I had growing
02:12up was people not understanding me.
02:13The white kids didn't get me.
02:15They didn't think I was white.
02:16And I think that is a larger question of who do we want to accept us and us accepting ourselves
02:20first.
02:21I started to really appreciate and value my Filipino heritage when I started hearing from
02:27my parents and my family how they uprooted their entire lives to build something new.
02:33Gave me a whole different perspective.
02:35I'm proud of being Chinese because of the sacrifices my parents made and their resilience
02:41to push our culture forward.
02:43Asian American, no hyphen, was created for us, by us, to claim our stories and our time.
02:50There are so many different and diverse cultures to learn about and be excited about that we
02:55shouldn't narrow our viewpoint to just one or two cultures in Asia.
03:00I am happy to be in America and I want Asian Americans to be able to be a part of
03:08all spheres
03:09of life and industry and highlight those voices that just don't often get included in the conversation.
03:15We really are just like a whole rainbow of beautiful cultures.
03:19People from the Asian and Pacific diaspora are not a monolith.
03:23We're all so different and we have so many different stories to tell.
03:26As immigrants, as children of immigrants, being ourselves is worthy and that we don't need
03:31some kind of levels of success predetermined by somebody else to determine who we are and
03:37who we get to be.
03:37I think that the most beautiful part about being human is that we're all different.
03:43I really don't know, I don't know what to do.
