This poem is an exercise in claiming my place in history—as a member of a community but also as an individual. It explores some thoughts I frequently have about my Asian-American identity and living in New York.
Asian American
Intimate
Beloved
This piece was an exploration of different relationships; friendship, familial, romantic, and self. I hope to make other women want to take a reflective look inside themselves and the way they interact with others. Honesty is the best way to take your place within your own history.
Green Tea. Hot. Mint With Honey.
My piece, “Green Tea. Hot. Mint With Honey” is a reflective personal narrative about a specific vulnerable period of time in my young life.
the art of self love
This poem follows a girl who, similar to any other teenage girl, has a hard time in her own skin. As she gets older she learns how to navigate being a young adult and finds herself— she overwhelms a callous world with light.
Tiny Worlds
Oftentimes, it’s easy to lose ourselves in the bustle of society. Easy to fall into the online world and never resurface. In this collection of poems, the beauty of nature is explored in a personal way, with the hope that you will find a new reason to stop and appreciate the world around us. These poems reflect on what can be seen, and describe the complexity of nature that I hope you find to ring true. These poems are dedicated to the sky, the flowers, the trees, and the ocean, who need our protection now more than ever.
Anatomy 125
This erasure poem is a visual representation of my own writing process. You can see the crossing out of words as well as the words I had to write back in. Sharing any kind of writing is an innately intimate experience, but this specifically feels personal for the way that it displays my mistakes as well as the final project.
Sunrise
In the newest iteration of “Sunrise,” I explore an acoustic arrangement featuring myself on keyboard and vocals.
Lordecast
My podcast, Lordecast, discusses the topic of Lorde’s music and how it has affected my perspective and views throughout my life. This podcast is a joint conversation with my mentor about the way music has a profound way of shaping people, no matter how old or different they may seem to be. Lorde has always been one of my favorite artists, so it felt natural to do a piece about her.
The Wild Inside
My project is a compilation of several of my poems narrated alongside many photographs from my nature collection. I find that there are endless possibilities when depicting the natural world and its challenges: stories, music, light and shade, color, and poetry, to name a few.
The Perfect American
The Perfect American tells the stories of immigrants detained by ICE. Every episode is centered around a different detainee. Each with a different story, a different perspective, and a different relationship with America. In this country, where not everyone qualifies as American, these people deserve a chance to be heard. A chance to prove themselves, to show who they are outside of what the media spews about them. These are the Perfect Americans, the people who strive to be a part of a nation that doesn’t want them.
All Of My Maybes
The sun rising, the birds chirping, the light morning breeze and the sweet smell of spring in the air—the narrator of my short story looks out at the melancholic scene playing out before her. All she can think about as she watches the sky is how her life could be if she wasn’t afraid of adventure. All of us have struggled with venturing out into the unknown. Like the narrator, most of us find ourselves sitting down and contemplating what life could be like. It’s fictional, but she’s still me. That’s why this represents my best work.
My Week in School
This podcast goes into the life of one of many high school students. Each high school student has their own activities, and this just focuses on one student. This represents my best work since it’s relatable to most of the other Girls Write Now mentees. We’re all high school students and deal with so much during the school year, and sometimes we just need to hear someone else going through a similar thing to feel better about a bad or good day.
Changed Lives
My podcast is about immigration and how it affects families. This episode sheds light on the difficult lives immigrants lead. My life as an immigrant inspired me to share this.
This represents my best work in the program because this is a topic that I can relate to. I don’t know what it’s like to be separated from one’s family, but I can imagine how challenging it would be.
Miss Rona & Me
In quarantine, my mind can’t help but gravitate back toward life outside: when I was undeniably happy. I pick out these little moments, and then I remember everything going on inside my head then. What I was feeling, and exactly why I was really happy. In this instance, I remembered a walk I took after school one day, past Trinity Church on a crowded street. This collision between a colonial past and the skyscrapers towering above me was exciting, so I wrote a little something about that feeling. Then I spoke, giving new life to these words.
bloom in
“bloom in” is a very serious piece, which is different from how I usually write and act. But it represents me. I took the piece and thought about all the videos and photos I had of myself, my family and my friends, and it was like two sides of me. The me that is figuring out who I am and questioning it all, and the me that shows my face every day.