When I look back at the way I lobbed on a thick layer of eyeliner, I remember the YouTube tutorials of mostly white women with the eyes that I wanted, explaining to me just how easy it was to look as flawless as them.
On April 5, the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration (ACAM) department invited Jamie Liew and Lindsay Wong, two female Asian Canadian writers, to a reading and discussion at the UBC Arts Student Centre.
Being Asian, to me, means knowing at the end of the day that the whole community is there for each other, ready to face the good and the bad side by side.
You will watch and read content from cultural icons of my time. You will gain a balanced appreciation for the arts to complement your university application and become inspired by the wits of Ali Wong, David Chang and Awkwafina.
Behind my face mask, I felt tomato bits stuck in my mouth. But I couldn’t let anybody know they were there. I had to prove myself through the fluency of my English that I was from here just like everyone else. That I was not the other.
After being in Vancouver for so long, I find myself struggling to tell my mother about my day in Chinese, bogged down by English jargon and unable to explain my studies to my grandmother and giving up on reading Chinese altogether.
As the days passed, it became increasingly apparent that we as Asian-Canadians did not belong. I was sporting a Korean-inspired fringe at the time, which seemed to warrant additional attention such as textbook ‘are you from China?’ racial comments.