Link to Audio Clip: https://www.bravevoices.fieldscenter.princeton.edu/princetonians-fight-for-asian-american-studies

Zoom Interview on June 20, 2020

RW: Rebecca Weng (interviewee)

FM: Fumika Mizuno (interviewer)

FM:

Can you tell me about where you grew up?

RW:

Sure. I grew up in New York City. Both of my parents are immigrants, so my dad immigrated to New York when he was 14. After his mother passed away, my dad was here for school. He stayed in Taiwan for like two more years living with his grandparents. And I guess when he finished middle school, he started high school in the US. He came here not speaking English at all. Then he always talks about this as this big stroke of luck. But I do feel like his story is very inspirational to me from a hardworking perspective as cliche as it is, but he was just, I feel like he always tells me this story about how he was just sort of, well, first of all, when he came to the US, the teachers at school thought he couldn't really amount to anything because he couldn't speak English.

He was sitting outside of, I think, the college guidance counselors’ office or whatever. And he saw this flyer for a six year undergrad MD program. He always talks about it as like, at the time it was easier to get into, and it was like nearly free. So in his mind he was like, this is a fantastic deal. I get two degrees in six years. And like, it's a job, like this sounds great. So he just did it. I mean, because when he was in high school, he had to work three jobs and I feel like all of his hard work made my life so much easier. I've always been so grateful for that.

My mom immigrated here when she was 26 and she actually went to school for social work. She lived in New Jersey and then they met. My dad was like the first person my mom had ever dated. We've lived in the same apartment my entire life, which I think has been so grounding to have a place that has always been our home. They were just always so supportive of me as indecisive as I ever was. They let me quit stuff. When I was like, I don't want to study piano anymore. I'm over it.

Actually my high school is going through a lot of media stuff right now because of incidents that occurred that definitely affected really negatively the Black students that went to our school. I went to an all girls school in Manhattan and I mean, this is not the time to necessarily, I think, given everything that's going on to like, talk about what it was like being Asian American, but for the sake of this interview, I remember in seventh grade we had to put on the Mikado and I remember being, I don't know. Have you heard of the Gilbert and Sullivan play, The Mikado?

Basically it is a really racist parody of Japan and the characters' names are, I kid you not, like Peep-Bo, Pitti-Sing, it's horrible. And actually in the theater industry, in the last couple of years, there's been a big push to, you know, Gilbert and Sullivan has had a long history in the theater world, but they were kind of like, this play is really problematic. The costuming is really very racially targeted for lack of a better word. There's been a big push in that theater world to sort of ban either the production of the play or the musical, or really revamp it to remove the racial elements of it.

But my school put it on in seventh grade. I remember just being really uncomfortable, but being 12 and not having the vocabulary to explain why I was uncomfortable. Like we have these black wigs. It was like a large bun and then like a little bun on top. And then for makeup, we had like, we put on lipstick, but it was like just at the center, you know, it was just so stereotyped.

That was 2009. It was 2009 in New York. It was 2009 in New York. And my school's tradition was that every seventh grade has to put on this Gilbert and Sullivan. And you know, my school taught me a lot. They taught me to be a great writer. I'm still in touch with some of the teachers. I have wonderful mentors. I'm still in touch with so many close friends from there, but you know, every institution has problems and by my senior year, where my grade was supposed to watch the seventh grade put on Mikado, they had already taken it out of the rotation.

The thing that I remember looking back, especially because of all the conversations about race right now, is that our school never said why. They never told us why it was a problem that we had performed it or that they've made us perform it. And they didn't explain why they took it out of the rotation. We all knew, but we just never talked about it. We really should have talked about it.

I've been here for a while in New York, I guess. It's my parents who I love dearly and, I guess that's kind of my hometown down in New York, I guess.

FM:

How did you think about race and ethnicity before coming to Princeton?

RW:

By the time I was in high school, there were definitely some affinity groups. So I was a part of the Asian Awareness Club. There was like an anime club. There was, I think at the time there was Umoja, which was like the Black affinity group. I can't recall like a Latinx affinity group at the time, but our school was very predominantly white. I think it was overall a lack of acknowledgement about race or that race could change someone's experience in the institution rather. It was really interesting having that experience being in the Asian awareness club and realizing how superficial our presentation of our background and our heritage was.

I think it was every other year, we had a festival of cultures which was put on by the parents and the students and everything. It was a night where people would make food from their country and you got to experience that. It's a kindergarten through 12th grade school and so there are kids of varying ages. So for the younger kids, you can sort of dress up in traditional clothing or there was calligraphy or artwork that was being done. I generally only have positive experiences in terms of the festival of cultures, but it's been a very, very long time but I do think that that was, I think, a positive experience. But it was still very, it was like we weren't looking at the messy stuff. You know, it was like we were looking at the fun stuff that was digestible. And I think that there are arguments on both sides about whether when you're educating young kids or kids of a really wide age range, you know, do you talk about them about messy stuff?

And actually after I graduated Princeton, I served as a Fulbright ETA. So I was teaching English in South Korea, and I now work with middle school kids and I'm thinking about going into teaching. And so I do understand this desire to kind of protect kids from messy things. But I also think that it didn't necessarily give me the vocabulary that I needed to talk about these things or articulate how I was feeling or how other people were feeling. Because by the time I feel like I got to Princeton, I had to not only learn about my own identity, but I also had to learn about other people's identities while I was learning about my own, which is, I don't think necessarily a unique experience, but I think from a racial perspective, I could have been, I think, more prepared than I was.

FM:

How do you identify yourself? Asian American, or Chinese or Chinese American, or something else?

RW:

When I was really little, my mom always told me I was an ABC-- American born Chinese. I think to this day, my mom still identifies herself as being Chinese or Taiwanese rather than American or any sort of hyphenated, you know, but I think my dad is more American just because he came here when he was younger.

I think I'm definitely American in some sense. I think when I was younger, I did say Chinese American more often. And I kind of hesitate to say Taiwanese American. We visited Taiwan. We have family there. But I'm also, I think, trying to learn more about Taiwanese history. I read this book last year. It's historical fiction, by Shawna Yang Ryan called Green Island. And it talks about what was going on in Taiwan after martial rule was put in place when the nationalists party in China fled to Taiwan and I think that's been really interesting, and I visited Taiwan for the first time without my parents this past year. I feel like I was able to sort of explore that more.

I think when I was in college, I started identifying more as Asian American rather than specifically Chinese or Taiwanese American. But I still think it's pretty fluid and I'm not really sure where it'll go in the future. What about you?

FM:

I think I identify as Asian American, but definitely more Japanese when I’m at home. But it’s all so fluid and depends on who I’m with and where I am.

RW:

Yeah, I agree. I feel like for me, how I identify speaks a lot to where I'm looking for community so I think when I started becoming more involved in the Asian American Students Association and Asian American Studies committee, when I was at the height of that part of my life, I definitely identified as Asian American, because I felt like that's the group of people that I'm trying to bring more to light. That's the history that I'm trying to connect more with. And it has a lot less to do with my family's place of origin or whatever, where they immigrated from.

FM:

What was your transition to Princeton like?

RW:

Oh man. I was so nervous. My roommates from freshman year still joke about how much stuff I brought because I was so afraid. I was like, what if I just like trip and fall down the stairs? I clearly need this first aid kit, you know? Because I apparently just thought there was healthcare not there. I brought lots of books and I was like, we need this for the room. And I was like, ready for an apocalypse.

It was hard, which I know is a theme that runs through a lot of the accounts of the Brave Voices Project. It was really, really tough. I think I said, I felt very out of place. I mean, certainly as I was going through undergrad, I think the people, the university also started thinking more about that mental health at the time. My freshman year, that was my first time ever seeing a therapist. I felt really alone at times and I also just felt like, what am I doing here?

Growing up, I really loved math. When I was five, I would ask my parents for extra math homework, because if we were ever in a car going anywhere, I'd be like, Oh, just like, give me a math question. I want to do more math. I became relatively advanced for my school, which was a pretty small school and pretty humanities based. And I got to Princeton and I realized, Oh my God, In my number theory class, I distinctly remember, this is my first semester. There was this high school student because you know, some of the math classes, like high schoolers nearby, you know, they can come and take classes. And she was sitting in front of me and they would return the problem sets and she would get a perfect score. Every time I was sitting here with like a six out of 10 and I was like, Oh, Oh my God.

I spent so much time in office hours. My lecturer for that class, I remember had this very large stuffed penguin that he would bring into class and it would be in his office sometimes, I think kind of like a comforting thing, but also I just felt so weird and lost going to Fine Hall. I just felt very small, I think.

I think I felt kind of socially awkward, because I was going from a very, as everyone does, from a much smaller high school environment to all of these people, and everyone is so accomplished, and everyone's so smart, and everyone is just so incredible. It's so easy to lose sight of yourself and I think it felt a lot of times, especially when I was younger, at Princeton that you weren't allowed to be lost and like you weren't allowed to be figuring stuff out. Now that I'm older, obviously I realize that you have to go through those periods where you're lost and confused so that you can figure it out and reach the next thing that you're confused and lost about.

That was my transition freshman year. It was pretty rough, but I'm so grateful. I was very lucky that my roommates freshman year were really wonderful. We're still friends. I lived with one of my freshman year roommates all four years of college. She's still like my best friend. We still talk like every day. But it took time to get there. It took time to get close with people and sometimes it really doesn't feel like you have time at Princeton. It just feels like onto the next.

FM:

When did Princeton start feeling like home for you?

RW:

I feel like probably between my junior and senior year, which was good in the sense that by the time that I graduated, I felt like I was ready to leave. I felt like I had learned what I was supposed to learn for myself that I could go on to my next chapter, because there are just so many, I think not just academic transitions, but also social transitions at different points in Princeton.

I also think just once I started taking on more mentorship roles, it felt good. My dad's a psychiatrist and so I've had to reflect on a lot of things throughout my life by nature of his profession. But I think that was when I really was forced to, and had the time to step away from the most difficult time, I think at Princeton, which was my first year, that I had to sort of decompress from that and think about how far I'd come and these friends that I have.

I was never drawn to eating clubs or anything. I was really lucky that my roommates, two of my roommates sophomore year, they wanted to go independent as well. We ended up living in Brown our junior year and it was like one floor above or below the communal kitchen. One floor doesn't sound like that much, but when you're literally lugging like a pot, a pan, like all of your ingredients, knives, cutting boards to the communal kitchen, because nobody at Princeton, like none of the student body actually takes very good care of public spaces. Definitely a big issue that a lot of people I think take for granted, that these are public shared spaces, that also there are people who then have to clean up after you. People should just clean up after themselves. And oh man, that communal kitchen was such a mess. I remember in the freezer, I think what someone had done was they had ordered an entire pizza pie and individually put each slice of pizza into a separate Ziploc bag and then just put it all in the freezer. Actually, it probably was more than one pizza pie. It was probably like two or three. There were so many slices of pizza just individually in plastic bags, in the freezer. It was very gross.

I remember one morning I went to go make instant oatmeal. I was like, I'm just so excited for my instant apple cinnamon oatmeal. Well, look at me, a chef and I opened the microwave. There was already oatmeal on the bottom of the microwave, just everywhere. I was like, someone put oatmeal in this microwave to cook it in theory. They had to take whatever container was holding the oatmeal out and then just left. Like they didn't even think, oh, there's oatmeal all over this microwave. Maybe I should clean that up. But I think actually going independent and in some sense, not having to schedule my eating according to whatever dining hall plan and then having to actively make all these plans with friends that were in eating clubs or in co-ops, I think that that made me take a lot more ownership over my time and the way that I spent it.

That was also around the time when I was like, if this doesn't bring me joy, cut it out of my life, because as an upperclassmen, you're doing so many things. As a junior, doing independent work for the first time. I couldn't just be in these organizations or spending time with people when it wasn't necessarily something that I wanted to do. I think that forced me to really think about being a lot more, I think, decisive about how I use my time, but also a lot more purposeful in what I was doing and how I was investing my time.

By senior year, when we were living in Spelman, we were like, Oh my God, what an upgrade. Although there was a time when we were on the second floor and water from the third floor… It must've come through the roof, like dripped through the dorm on the third floor and then into our room. And I was like, this is not okay. It's apparently like an architectural marvel or whatever, but it's very interestingly shaped housing as you know. That's very odd. I don't know why.

FM:

How did you get involved with the Asian American Studies Committee?

RW:

I had met a friend at Princeton Preview actually, Nicholas Wu. He has a lot of friends and is very tied in with everything, but we met at Princeton Preview, like April before we started freshman year and we hit it off and we just stayed in touch over the summer.

We were both interested in joining AASA. I think he had a somewhat similar experience to me in going to a predominantly white high school. And so to have a place where you talked about being Asian American, or even just recognizing that that is a part of the experience. And also, I think we were both interested in this sort of activism, political angle. We both joined AASA together and I think during the first meeting they talked about, it was Andrew Hahm at the time who was the Asian American studies chair. Still a good friend. We heard him talk about it and we were like, we should go, like, let's just go to this meeting. And we would meet in Frist, generally pretty late at night.

I feel like we always met at like 10:00 PM at Frist or at 8:30. It was very quiet and we would meet in a classroom. You know how the Frist classrooms are frosted so you never know if you're actually going into the right room with the right people. It was like a once a week kind of meeting. I was so intimidated by all the upperclassmen there. I think a lot of that was like a personality thing at the time. I just wasn't a particularly confident 18 year old. But they just seemed so intense, but also so nice.

I think I didn't necessarily connect with the other side of AASA, which was much more social. And I just wasn't ready for that. I think as a college freshman, I wasn't ready to be in a room with like 50 people that I didn't know. Being in this space late at night in Frist with like eight other people was much more comforting to me and they were so nice about it. Like Evan Kratzer, who was two years above me, he was class of 2016 and Andrew, who's class of 2017. They were both so kind, I think, about teaching us about Asian American Studies and the history of Asian American Studies at Princeton, because they knew that we didn't know because they didn't know when they came into Princeton either.

This is not something that's on a high school curriculum in any way, shape or form. I felt like I definitely felt uncomfortable to be totally honest for a while, because I felt like I had to play so much catch up. But it also felt really good to be a part of a community and to feel like there was that sort of anchor point, I think, of my week. And obviously we, over the years, we all just became friends. It was really nice to be working on this goal with your friends. My freshman year was also the first year that Unfound, the Asian American studies journal, was being put out. And that was really exciting and hectic and crazy, but it was really cool to see that come together for the first time.

I think it's kind of crazy that all these things were happening in college because part of the great thing, I feel like, about being on a university campus is that there are so many people from different backgrounds. Everyone has a different perspective. There's a lot of energy to do things, but you also graduate in four years and it's really easy to lose momentum for things like that, activism and movements. And this sort of reeducation process that I went through and also had to help other students go through is something that has to happen every single year. It really takes a very active group that is willing to sort of pass the baton on to, I think, keep it going.

It's also hard because when new people come in and they have a different vision, and it might be different from what your vision was, of the movement and everything. So that was definitely something I think we all had to get used to, that we weren't always going to agree and that somebody might come in who's a lot more liberal or who's a lot more conservative than we are. And that doesn't mean that their voice isn't valid. It just means that we have different approaches and we're going to have to find some sort of compromise to move everything forward for the sake of this greater desire, which was really exciting when Asian American Studies actually had the ASA course listing on the registrar's website.

That was crazy, when I was a senior. I remember having a conversation with Professor Anne Cheng and Nick Wu, and I think there might've been one other person or two other people. We met at Nassau Sushi. And she was like, what would be really helpful if we were to have courses? And we were like, we need a course designation because it's the thing that all prospective students look at when you're a freshman. You're super eager. You're like, I'm going college. What's something I can do? I can look at the course website, and we were like, we need this because even if they don't click on it, they still see that it's there and that was the thought. That was the important thing. It's like, if it's not even on the list of courses then it's like, it doesn't exist to a prospective freshman because they're already overwhelmed, having 40 departments plus all the certificate programs. And so if we're not on that list, like that really reduces visibility. But I think there was also something kind of nice that at the time that I was there, it felt just like some friends that were trying to make a thing happen.

We got so much support from faculty, and alumni were always, really, I think, wanting to be a part of it too, which I think as an alumni now I get it. But there were always some alumni who would show up whenever we did like a speaker series or something, they would always be in the audience, you know, asking questions. They were still always just those eager students learning and asking questions and being a part of the community and repping the Princeton spirit, which I thought was really great to see, and I think I appreciate it a lot more now, two years out of Princeton.

FM:

What was it like working with the administration and meeting with them?

RW:

I think at times it was really frustrating. I want to believe, and I want to imagine that the administration was doing the best that they could. In a place like Princeton, the bureaucracy and how decisions are made just feels so black boxish. There were so many emails, like back and forth between us and administrators being like, can we just have a meeting? We want to talk about these things. We would go in with these questions. And of course it would take a couple of weeks to schedule a meeting that would be like a couple weeks off. I do think as a college student, that felt frustrating because we just were in no way in their shoes in any way. We were just kind of like, can't we just get like an hour.

They were always very, I think, kind and respectful and I think it just wasn't necessarily everyone's priority, which makes sense. Everyone has different priorities. I'm in no way faulting anybody in the administration for not prioritizing that. I think it was really amazing to have tenured faculty that were able to advise us and a lot of the sentiment that we did get from faculty was that it was really important that the student voices were heard.

A lot of what we did, it was speakers series, because we wanted to show if we invite an Asian Americanist to campus to speak, then X number of students are going to show up or, you know, we would partner with other student organizations that might touch upon, because I don't know what AASA’s makeup racially is like now, but certainly when I was there, it was very predominantly East Asian, if not entirely East Asian, or at least pale skinned Asians. And so we did some speaker series for, or we invited speakers that might speak about South Asian and South Asian American issues, or they might talk about something more pertaining to the Middle East or something, just a little bit more of a wider spread because we wanted to show that we're not just talking about East Asian Americans and their experiences.

We did a lot of tabling in Frist. We did a lot of, Hey, do you want to listen to us talk about Asian American Studies and how Princeton doesn't have it, but most of our peer institutions have it and have had it for decades, and please sign this petition, you know? I want to say 2015, we partnered with what I think at the time was called the Latino American Students Association, I could be totally butchering the names. There are a lot of acronyms floating around. We co-wrote a report basically calling for Latinx and Asian American Studies at the time. I think that that partnership was really important, not just so that we could hear from another sector of the campus population that was also moving towards a very similar goal, also about visibility.

At the time, the issue that I heard from a lot of students about the LatinoSstudies certificate, which did exist at the time, the issue is that there were so few courses offered. So many of the courses were very cross-listed with other departments, particularly Latin American Studies that they felt like, am I actually getting a certificate in Latino studies? It made it very difficult to actually get the certificate. And if you're making a certificate program, part of your justification for it and justification for offering more courses is, look at how many students are enrolling in these classes and look at how many students are getting the certificate. But if you make it really hard for students to take classes and from an administrative point, I understand academia is a really tough place to be in. And you can't just hire somebody. A hiring process for a professor takes like two years and that's for one professor. I learned a lot about bureaucracy while I was doing all of this and I'm still learning so much about it.

I feel like now I work in a very administrative role so I think it's been interesting. I am definitely not the most, I think, knowledgeable on any of this, but this is just kind of what I've been remembering about that time. It did feel like a lot of our questions or answers were kind of like, it's going to take a while. I think as a college student, that can be kind of frustrating because you're like, I only have four years here.

I feel very lucky that I was on campus when the course designation came out and when the certificate program started. But I also recognize how small my part in it actually was. There was just decades of activism that came beforehand and years and years of hard work behind the scenes by professors. And I'm sure there were tons and tons of meetings about it, that I was not qualified to be in and shouldn't have been in, that sort of moved us toward this goal. It was definitely interesting. And I do still really wish I could have been a fly on the wall in some of these meetings.

FM:

Do you remember how you felt when you found out the Asian American Studies was going to be a certificate?

RW:

I think what I remember is like, taking a Snapchat of the course registration and just circling it in red and being like, Oh my God, like this just happened. I feel like they definitely announced it, but I don't necessarily think I read the announcement and that's how I found out. I think I heard about it from a friend because we get so many emails to be totally honest. Sometimes I do really wonder about, and this is so true for my job too, if I put out an announcement, who's going to actually read it. I feel like I just need to tell a bunch of people and then they'll find out through word of mouth.

I do think word of mouth is actually much more powerful. And so I think that's also why I did my best when I was on campus to talk to people about Asian American Studies and just talk to my friends about it, ask them to come to our events, like, please just show up, be a body, invite your friends, please come. Because I think there's some namelessness about posting stuff online, that makes people less invested in what's actually happening. I do think that that is why social media is again, it certainly has its pitfalls, but I think was also more like a powerful medium in the sense that, you know, my friends might not have opened an email from the course registrar or the American Studies department that was sent to Matthey mail or whatever, but they're probably going to my Snapchat.

I remember seeing it for the first time and I feel like I was just kind of in shock that it actually happened. It felt a little anticlimactic in the same way that I actually think like submitting my senior thesis was, because it was like upload, send. It kind of felt like that. There are a lot of big things that happen and I feel like there's not necessarily pomp and circumstance about it.

FM:

How did being involved in AASA and the committee shape your Princeton experience?

RW:

I think that it was definitely something that was just such a cornerstone of my Princeton experience. There is no group that I stay in touch with at Princeton outside of the Asian American Studies committee. I stay in touch with a lot of individuals. I'll have individual chats with my roommates, or I was a peer academic advisor, so I still stay in touch with the RCA that I was tied with. I stay in touch with my neighbors from Spelman and people that I met since I was living in Brown and Brown co-op. But in terms of a group, like my Princeton group is the Asian American Studies committee.

Last year, we went on a trip together. I think it was two years after me that I think they dissolved the Asian American Studies committee. This was, I think, my junior or senior year that they dissolved Asian American Studies committee. And since myself, Nick, and two other people that were in the class of 2019, we were still at Princeton and we were sort of sharing it with the Asian American Studies committee alum that had graduated. I think we were kind of like, oh, but the work isn't done yet. I think we did have that moment. I think it is that last group, it's like from the class of 2019 to the class of 2016, like those years. We are still in touch.

Last year, that group of classes, I think it was eight people on our trip because it was two from 2016, two from 2017. Nick couldn't make it. So I was representing 2018 and then my friend Lloyd was repping 2019 and he brought his dog and we went on a trip together for a week and we cooked and we played board games. We are friends. And we talk about, you know, some of them have graduated law school. Now, some of us are thinking about grad school. Like they really are the only group that I stay in touch with. I look to them, I think, a lot for professional development advice or career things.

I wouldn't say we talked a lot about personal stuff because what brought us together was a cause, like it was a movement. We still, we talk a lot about political issues and we talk about obviously current events and what's going on. We share the occasional meme or funny video because we're people. But I think it was also interesting because a lot of them, I think some of them were drawn more to Woody Woo or politics or some STEM fields as well. I didn't actually really have any close friends that were my same major, since I was a sociology major, but I think that that was also kind of good because I think I got to hear about what they were working on and I think I really appreciated having friends in different fields.

I learned a lot about software engineering because by chance, like, you know, two of my, it was just like, by the time I was sort of locked in with my roommates and we knew we could live together, they were declaring computer science and I was like, I will be the lone social scientist. This is okay. I had a lot of CS friends. I did feel kind of like the odd duck that studied sociology since it's already kind of a small major. I do think that there is a stereotype on campus about it being quote unquote, an easy major, which I think was something I had to struggle with because I still think that sociology is really important. I still in my free time read ethnographies because I just think that they're interesting and I like reading and I'm a big nerd, but I think in some ways actually talking about Asian American Studies with them and realizing that, you know, I was the only one among my friends outside of the committee that was really involved in these things that I think it made me more comfortable being in a major where I didn't have friends because I was used to doing a thing that wasn't necessarily mainstream.

It was also great because there were some other AASA babies after me, like my littles and the other people that ended up majoring in sociology. And I was like, yes, I will talk to you about my department. It's a great major. I highly recommend it. You should take these courses. I think that was also kind of great. I audited Asian American History because when it was offered the first time, that was kind of like the peak of a lot of mental health difficulties that I had at Princeton. Actually looking back, I don't know if other people have expressed this sentiment, but I think I was kind of afraid that I would learn that I misunderstood my own identity. I don't know if that makes sense. I still learned a lot just by sitting in lecture.

It was my fifth class that semester. And it was spring semester. Bless engineering students that do five course semesters every other semester. But, Beth Lew-Williams is an amazing lecturer and I learned so much. I think I tried to do some more self studying, I guess, like I read of course Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia, which is amazing.

But actually the first, I think it was the first Asian American Studies class that I took -- and I guess it was actually designated under the course designation, which is pretty cool-- was South Asian American Literature and Film with Professor Sadaf Jaffer. I was actually very aware of my race in that class because I was the only East Asian person in the class, but so glad that I took that class. I actually still have a good friend. We had met each other before through mutual friends, but we became really close in that class and we still chat and catch up and stuff.

But I think myself and I think there was one other student who did not appear to be South Asian or South Asian American, and I hope that the class was as I think exciting for the other people that might be learning a history that they might not know about like their own history. But I think I do also wish that there were other people that looked like me that were in the class, just because I think it's really important to learn about other identities and both similarities and differences to really actually understand what's happening.

That's been something that I tried to do a lot after I graduated from Princeton. I never used to read for fun because as a sociology major, I had a lot of reading and a lot of it was theoretical and a lot of it was heavy and it was like, the last thing that I want to do is to read a book written by a professor. But that's kind of been the thing that I do now after I've graduated. I have a lot of Princeton friends on Goodreads and I'm so impressed by how much alum read.

I've been really trying to branch out and really make sure that the authors that I read come from backgrounds that aren't necessarily mine. I did that a lot last year, especially when I finally was had transitioned out of Princeton fully and was working as an English teacher. I read some ethnographies. I read Strangers in Their Own Land by, her name is escaping me, but it's an ethnography about members of the tea party and Louisiana. And I was like, I don't know what it's like to be a conservative white person. But it's really important for me to read as a young, liberal person of color in this current administration. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates was amazing.

This is just like a general book rec that I feel like I give to everybody. I took an intro to science fiction class my senior fall with Professor Bendixen. It was really a great class. I think that was the semester I read the most books for a class because we read a lot of books. I had read one science fiction book really before then. But my roommate was in it and one of my best friends was in it. But obviously, actually the science fiction space is a very white male space. If you're interested in science fiction or speculative fiction, the short story collection that I read that I started gifting everybody, it was called How Long ‘til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin. It's amazing because the characters, like there's like a queer person, an African American person that's like the protagonist of a story. I think that that's really powerful and important for other people to read about. I wish that I had done more of that when I was at Princeton, so that I could have had more conversations with people I think, and still have them now.

But as an adult, you're just less connected with everybody because everyone's got a job and people, maybe they're starting to have families or thinking about starting families, moving. There's so many more classes that I wish I had taken when I was at Princeton. I feel like that's probably a meme somewhere, but I remember looking at the course catalog after I graduated and being like, Oh my God, I'm so jealous of people that get to pick these classes. I mean, I loved taking classes in different departments and I feel like reading is my way of kind of doing that as an adult.

But I took a class in the philosophy department. I took a class in like the neuroscience department. I took a class in, like, I took several history classes, East Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, African American Studies. I loved it. I loved just being given that space to just ask questions and learn and write and everything. So I do think that the Asian American Studies committee helped shape that inquisitiveness of like, there's so much more to learn. And so much that came before me that I think as a member of the community, it's my responsibility to be informed about it.

I'm by no means perfect. I kind of wish I were more radical as an undergrad, but I was still quiet and afraid of being wrong, and about my own identity, but also about what was going on. But I think now as an adult, I think it served me really well and they are so important, I think to just feeling grounded and tied into Princeton still, even though I'm not involved in the Princeton Club of New York and I didn't get to go to reunions last year because I was in Korea teaching.

FM:

How do you think you have changed since graduating from Princeton?

RW:

I think I'm a lot more okay with uncertainty now, which I don't know how much that's saying because I think I was really bad at being okay with it before. I think in some ways, when you get into Princeton, it feels like I did it. Like I did the thing. I reached the goal. I think I had a really hard time figuring out where to devote my energy, especially after I was done learning at Princeton, when I couldn't study at Princeton anymore.

When I was doing my Fulbright year, which was a really, really rewarding experience, I'm still in touch with a lot of my students. I was actually planning on seeing them back in February this year, but I was unable to because of what was happening and when COVID sort of peaked in Korea. It was definitely different to not be in the chair as a student, but to be standing in front of the classroom. One, it helped me a lot with public speaking. I'm a much better public speaker now than I was in undergrad. But going back to the uncertainty thing, when I was in Korea I actually had a lot of physical health issues that I was in no way expecting. I feel like when you're 23, 22, you're like, oh yeah. Peak of health. I shouldn't need to worry about doctors and doctor visits.

I was on antibiotics for like three or four months and I struggled with a lot of things that I didn't think I would struggle with. But it also gave me a lot more independence. I think it was something that was building as I was a junior and a senior being independent, having to cook for myself, getting groceries, managing finances with my roommates.I think that was something that we were much more well equipped to do because we were independent versus in an eating club. But I loved being independent. It was so fun, like trying out recipes and it was a really great bonding experience for us.

When I went to Korea, I was like, I don't have a safety net. It's a fresh start all over again, but now I'm an adult. I'm not a kid anymore. In some ways I actually felt quite equipped for COVID because I spent about a year having to schedule phone calls with friends, like reaching out to people. The only way I can see my friends is virtually so it kind of equipped me for this.

I'm much more outgoing and I think I'm social than I was in college. I do think some of that was by nature of teaching and by nature of the Fulbright program. We were all spread out throughout all Korea. Even though we had six weeks of orientation, there was no guarantee that the person you really clicked with on orientation was going to be close to you. So you had to plan to go on weekend trips together or you had to schedule video calls or you had to reach out to the person that was physically closest to you, but maybe you didn't know a lot at the time.

And we were living with host families and we had co-teachers that we'd never met. We were dealing with language barriers. We were mentors in the classroom. We had a lot more responsibility than I did as a college student. I think it's overall been good. I think everyone probably goes through different growing pains, but I'm really grateful actually that I spent my first year out of college so far away because I think it allowed me to see myself outside of the Princeton lens. I met so many people that I think had goals that I just wasn't really exposed to at Princeton that made it more okay that I could say, I want to pursue teaching.

I'm working at a nonprofit now, which is not to say that Princeton students don't, but I definitely felt as a junior and a senior, that there were certain career paths that were given a lot more visibility, that were given a lot more support, that were much more, I think, advertised and advocated for. I felt, again, kind of like, am I choosing the thing that other people don't and if this is like the third, fourth time that I'm doing it, am I just missing the boat here? I'm just not getting the memo.

I learned I love working with kids. I really can't be at a computer all day. I need to talk to people, and I like working in administration. I like working with nonprofits. I like working in a small team. I don't actually think I need to live in New York City forever, even though I do feel like a lot of people when they graduate Princeton, that's the thing. You move to a big city. It's a lot of what I'm sure you're seeing now as a junior that people do that. Maybe some of it is that I was fortunate enough to grow up in New York City all my life that I don't necessarily need to live here. I think also having lived abroad, worked abroad as an adult, I'm like, I can totally do this in a place that's not New York and I can totally have a life that's meaningful and colorful, and I can meet all of these people.

It was really nice honestly, to meet people that I think were much more diverse from a geographical standpoint that I met at Princeton that wanted to be social workers and wanted to go into the public service and wanted to be teachers or wanted to open a bar or wanted to open a cafe. I don’t know. It just opened a whole new world of possibilities that I think, it's not that they weren't there when I was at Princeton, but it didn't feel like it was okay.

Then it feels like, if I don't do that, then I have to go into a top five PhD program or like a top five law school or like going to medical school. And I'm like, Oh my God, there's so many other jobs.

There’s a lot of people that are really cool . The friends that I have from Princeton are amazing. I am sure that you also stay in touch with a lot of your friends at Princeton. I'm really bummed I missed reunions, especially because my year, prerade got rained out so we didn't have a prerade, which I know that I shouldn't be complaining given what the class of 2020 is going through right now. I actually offered to, I have a friend in the class of 2020 and they didn't get their caps and gowns. And I was like, Chelsea, do you want me to mail you my cap and gown so your mom can get the photo?

I really recommend going somewhere where you meet people that didn't do the Ivy thing because I feel like there's just a lot more perspective out there that I didn't get exposed to at Princeton. And I'm sure a lot of other students struggle with this, where they feel like you have to make your education worth it, because you're like, I went to Princeton. It cost a ton of money. And it's really prestigious. So therefore, the next thing that I have to do has to be really prestigious. But I think there are just so many different ways to make a difference in the world, or even just in your local community.

Currently, I'm a program administrator for an educational nonprofit in New York. We offer free math tutoring for middle school students that are below grade level. My job is in no way glamorous. I spent a lot of time on Excel and scheduling Zoom calls and all these tiny logistical administrative things. And there's nothing about my Princeton education that necessarily prepared me for this. But it did help me with my writing. It helped me be able to talk to people that are in different industries and people that are far above me and also have different backgrounds than I do.

But I think for a long time I felt bad being content with that and being happy about that. I'm not saying this is where I want to be in 40 years. I hope that I change and I grow and I experience new things, but this is also totally okay. And I think when I was a junior or a senior, I didn't think that that would be okay. But I met all these people through Fulbright that are so passionate. There was someone in my cohort who is now an ESL teacher back in the States. She wants to write an ESL textbook because she just feels that the ones that exist don't really meet student needs. And I'm sure that there are a lot of merits to the existing textbooks that exist, but I don't know. I just thought that was really cool. That's what she wanted to do. And I think that that's okay. It's somehow more creative and just different, you know, like it's just different and it was good to experience that.

There was another Fullbrighter that was like, I want to open a cafe and a bar, but I want one in Japan and I want one in Korea and I just want to be able to fly back and forth and like, I don't know. I was just like, that's so wild. Do that, you know, I'll visit.

I feel like we spend a lot of our energy focusing on very measurable accolades, whether that's grades, awards, I don’t know, status symbols. And I mean, I learned so much in my seminar classes and lecture classes that go far and beyond the grade that I got. I'm still in touch and have relationships.

My freshmen seminar professor is still one of my closest mentors and it has nothing to do with what I did my junior and senior thesis on. It has nothing to do with what I'm planning on studying in the future. It was a freshmen seminar on the history of war. We read like the Song of Roland. We read the Tale of the Heike. We also read like Three Kingdoms and it was just so fun. I remember writing my final paper on the symbolism of trees. I really like literature and history and symbolism and all that. That was an amazing class and no one cares how I did in that class. But what I got out of that class was I had a really great time and I got to take a class with one of my best friends. I got coffee with that professor or lunch every single semester for the remainder of my Princeton time. When I visited Princeton back in January of this year, we got lunch again and we caught up on life and I heard about his son and I heard about his research.

I feel like sometimes Princeton de-emphasizes the importance of relationships, which is not to say that they don't form them. I think they do. I think that a lot of really powerful relationships are created and people are brought together because of how difficult Princeton is. You can't do Princeton alone. Like it's very, very hard. You need people to lean on and you need mentors and you also need to give back to the community and mentor other people.

But I kind of wish that they talked about that more because people always say, I feel like alumni are always like the best part of Princeton is the people, but it's like, so why aren't we talking about that more when we're actually at Princeton?

FM:

Why do you think ethnic studies is important in a university?

RW:

It felt like something that I wanted to learn about and I felt like it was, and that sounds so small, but it feels like something that we all had a right to learn about. I do think that it is very much coming from historically all of the work that's been done by Black activists, Black trans activists, about like, you know, tell these stories and because I think there's a lot of sugar coating and patriotism that's involved with what we learn, specifically in history classrooms. But there are all these voices, from other authors and other experiences that need to be told. Princeton is so small. And I don't know, maybe I should have been a history major. I did love sociology and I think it is still related about, how are we connected?

I think it's really important to give kids, especially when we're at this age, it's a very formative time. I feel like time and time again, we've seen the importance of representation. It is important for people to see media representations of themselves. I think it's also equally important to see that people care about your experience and one way, by no means the only way, one way for people to see that you're trying to show that your experience matters is to teach it to, to foster conversation about it.

When the sort of activism and push towards ethnic studies was happening in the seventies and the nineties and in the latter part of the 20th century, they were teaching each other. They organized seminars and students would figure it out on their own and then teach others. And that's great. And that's amazing. And that's, I still think it's very much part of the tradition of activism that you teach your peers and you teach people that come after you and you learn from the people that come before you.

But for it to be institutionalized and for it to be baked into the system, I think it is sending a very clear message to students that we see that you're a part of our community. And we want to hear from you and we respect your legacy and your history, that the legacy that we believe in is not just a white one. It's not just a white male one. I think specifically to Princeton, it's also really important for Princeton as an institution to have ethnic studies, to have indigenous studies, to have African American Studies, to have all these different ways and perspectives of looking at history and people and narratives, because historically Princeton has been one of the slowest to involve other people. We were the last Ivy to admit women. We were the last Ivy to have someone graduate, I think, that was a person of color.

I think that the people that come out of Princeton are amazing. Again, they’re some of my dearest friends. I would not be the person that I am today without what I received from Princeton. This is in no way, a point of ingratitude. I know the opportunities and the doors that Princeton has and will continue to open for me. But it is like them, showing up for us. And again, it was due to all of this hard work from all these people that came before us. I think it's also just respecting that members in your community who went to your school, who graduate from your school, who work at your school are asking you for this. And, you know, I can think of so many professors just off the top of my head that were part of this, that would talk with us at Cafe Viv and like, just talk to us and discuss what was happening and what their hopes for the program were.

I remember, you know, as I said, alumni reaching out to us. This really was an intergenerational, like huge community coming together. For it to actually be something that the university is putting resources into. They're saying we're going to actively be hiring people, teaching new students so this is something that they can learn about. I remember in 2015, when the Black Justice League protests were happening, I believe there was a counter petition that came out that argued that there should be a general education requirement for Princeton students to study something about like Western history and like European history. And we were all like, what do you mean? The whole history that I've learned every year for my entire existence up until now? You want to force me to learn about that again in college? Like, wow. You do not understand the point of what's happening.

Part of the BJL, one of the things that they wanted was a requirement. It was an academic requirement that people had to study, something in relation to, it might've been African American Studies or I think it might've been a little bit broader. But then to have somebody counter petition and ask for a requirement in like Western or European studies, I was like, Oh my God, you are the reason why this is happening. By the time that we're 18 and going to Princeton, if we've been educated in the United States, up until that point, that's the entire narrative that we've heard.

I guess by the time I was in college, at least there wasn't like a fully rosy picture about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492. It was a little bit more nuanced than that. I remember, you know, writing an essay in high school. We were all asked to write an essay like should Columbus day be a holiday. But there are still just so many communities and groups that are just, they don't have the visibility that they deserve right now.

Looking back, I wish I'd been able to take an indigenous studies class, or I also wish that I had had a general education requirement that was about diversity or learning about other perspectives because even though I actively chose that and I took multiple courses and as I said, I'm reading different perspectives. I don't have the time right now to write essays and I don't have a professor guiding me through the whole theoretical context of it and assigning readings. Now I have to vet the books myself, and kind of vet all these sources myself

To have a professor stand in front of a classroom, who's telling you like, these are the authors and these are people that you should know about, whether or not you agree or disagree with them. Obviously we are free agents. We're all smart people. We're able to analyze the situation and take the evidence and come up with whatever arguments and think about that. But I think it would have been good because I think it would have really shown that that was something that the university was committed to.

I can't remember. Do you guys have a diversity requirement now?

FM:

Yes, for the class of 2023 and beyond, I believe?

RW:

That's exciting. It took a long time. So obviously Asian American History. I know it always has pretty high enrollment. I think Professor Jaffer is still teaching her South Asian American Literature and Film class, but I'm not sure.

FM:

Yeah, there have also been a lot of literature and humanities focused Asian American Studies classes offered in the past few years.

RW:

That's so exciting. That's great though. I mean, again, I think the nice thing about literature is it is more accessible outside of a classroom setting and that you can buy the book and it doesn't cost like an arm and a leg, or you can borrow it from a library. Textbooks are expensive,

but that's so exciting and so encouraging that also the new or current Asian American Studies classes are looking more at intersectionality and race relations, and that we can have classes like Asian American History that are a little bit more dedicated and focused.

I think a huge part of Asian American studies, a huge part of Asian American identity and its existence has to do with other communities, especially the Black community and how the whole thing about racial triangulation and the model minority myth. Like all of it. I guess I do firmly believe this as a sociologist. It's all about the context and how we are in relation to other people and other groups. So that's so exciting and I really wish I could take these classes. Well, I mean, it's really exciting for you guys, and I'm really excited about this diversity requirement. I think I read an announcement about it. Did they announce it recently or was it a while ago?

FM:

Yeah, it was within the past couple of years. I remember reading about it in an announcement.

RW:

That's great. I'm really happy about that. I'm sure there are a lot of other alumni that would be really pleased to hear that that's something that's a part of Princeton. I don't really know that much about gen ed requirements at other universities, but it's just really good to hear that that's something that's going to be a part of the Princeton experience and I hope students take it seriously.

I think that's the other thing. That's the other thing that I think sometimes students don't take gen ed requirements seriously, but this is a very important one, especially with where the world is going now and, and has been going. It's always been important if you’re a member of a community or member of society.

I've just finished reading the book, How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, which I really appreciated her angle of it. There were actually some bad reviews about the book because they found the book's title misleading, because she thinks about, my interpretation, at least like what I got from the book was that doing nothing or checking out or stepping away is really just a stepping stone so that you can do activism. You can actually do something because we can never fully check out. You can't just opt out of being a person like you can't opt out of being affected by the things that are going around in the world. And you also can't opt out of affecting the things that happen in the world. Like you are part of it, no matter how overwhelming it can be sometimes.

I think I really appreciated that perspective and I had never really had it articulated in that way. She's an artist as well. It's a really good book and I highly recommend it. How to do nothing. Yeah, by Jenny Odell it's quite good. Actually one of my good friends who is pretty involved in activism and some of the push against police unions right now, I know she really enjoys the book. She's been much more involved even since Princeton with the student orgs about solitary confinement and that sort of performance art piece that they do every year and things like that. So, we're all works in progress. Princeton included. Hopefully it's a progress in the right direction.

FM:

Is there anything else you’d like to talk about that you feel like I didn’t ask?

RW:

I guess not really. I feel like I rambled a lot and I'm feeling slightly self conscious about that, but I've just been reflecting on a lot of these things lately and with friends, just because I've obviously spoken with the other members on the ASAM committee. I'm really glad that I was at Princeton when I was, and I'm glad that I've become, I think, a better ally and more informed and more proactive than I was when I was 18.

I think we're all on our own journey and I think I can certainly point to times in my past when I wish I had done more. But having the time to reflect and step back is something that I really appreciate.