My Asian American Literature course met for the last time this week. I wasn’t there, unfortunately, since I’ve been recovering from a concussion (a story for another time). The intimate setting of the class, centered around reading, one of my favorite things, created a community unlike any I’ve ever experienced in a classroom.
The first sign of the class’s unique strangeness (besides enforcing masks in 2024): I was assigned to interview all my classmates to compensate for the “getting to know each other” activity I’d missed by enrolling a week late.
Channeling my high school journalist self, I interviewed nine of my ten classmates over the course of two days. I met them all for the second time, in different settings, unmasked and informally.
Observing the intersections and juxtapositions between my classmates’ stories and with my own, I felt a gradually increasing sense of sonder. Due to the open-endedness of my assignment, each interaction elicited different reactions and connections from me. I’ve included some of them.
Here is a collage of my impressions. I’m grateful for my classmates’ time and vulnerability, both in this initial impression and through the semester.
Renee Choy, on the floor in front of Dwinelle 179, 11 a.m.
I sat down next to Renee in front of her next class. She paused her TV show, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, and talked to me in between bites of her lunch.
She told me that she grew up at her church. When she was five, she slept over at her grandmother’s on a Saturday night and went to church with her the next morning. She’s been going there ever since, and now volunteers there. I found it unusual that her parents weren’t religious, since a lot of my religious friends simply absorbed their parents’ beliefs and practices in childhood.
Church is where Renee can hangout with her best friends. “They taught me the meaning of kindness. They taught me that the past doesn’t define me,” she said. Since her friends are either older or younger than her, they often call each other 姐姐 or 妹妹. They also call each other besteas, since they like to get boba together.
Alex Paltzer, in Dwinelle 233, 11:45 a.m.
Minutes before our scheduled time, Alex invites me into an empty classroom he and a friend were studying in. I’m surprised to see Chinese characters written alongside Spanish words on the chalkboard. He tells me he likes to study them together, even though his Spanish is much more proficient than his Mandarin.
Alex begins by catching me up on everything from the first class that he thinks I should know: the indispensability of using your full name, the breaking of English to stay true to yourself, and the components of a strong cover letter. In a cover letter, he tells me, I need to envision my goal and to believe that I will get what I want. I’m reminded of the way I learned, as a kid, to “ask” my parents for things they were unlikely to allow, like sleeping over at a friend’s house or going to a middle school dance. Informing them of my plan instead of asking them for permission had a much higher success rate. Alex says to see myself as both the director and the actor of my story, and I smile because I used the same metaphor in therapy a few weeks ago.
Before Alex decided he wanted to be a musician, he wondered if he wanted to simultaneously be a doctor, lawyer, and engineer, like the intensely multi-talented alumni from his Taekwondo group. I connect with his experience of feeling torn between directions. He clasps his palms together over his head, and angles them to the right. He is a bamboo shoot, always growing. “You need to find your source of fire, and point in that direction.” Singing and music are his fire. He wants to create lyrics that electrify others. There’s often a single line from a song running through his head. “Electricity runs through my veins,” he says.
At the last moment, I ask him about his tattoo, 無爲, etched in crimson behind his left ear. He demonstrates his meditation pose, matching the peaceful smile beaming from Uncle Iroh on his shirt. He says he could just sit in the forest and become a rock. 無爲, the Taoist philosophy of no unnatural action, is a reminder to him that his stressors result from his actions, and his actions are his choice.
Catherine Jin, Zoom, 1 p.m.
Catherine and I are the two computer science majors in the class. We connect over a recent sense of disillusionment with working in software engineering after our summer internships. The blade that forced her into STEM is double-edged: she doesn’t love it, and she finds it difficult. ASAMST 172 is her first college course that doesn’t consist of 90% computer science majors.
She likes her classes the most this semester. Instead of obeying the peer-perpetuated gospel and enrolling in “must-takes” (machine learning, operating systems, and databases, if you weren’t curious) — often masochistically difficult or dreadfully boring — she’s genuinely interested in her courses. One of them is CS 270, a graduate-level course that extends from CS 170, the undergraduate algorithmic theory course I remember enjoying last fall.
She feels guilty when she’s not working on something computer science related. Especially during recruiting season, other activities can feel like a waste of time. She mentions she’s gone days without leaving her room, and I nod, understanding how isolating coding projects and online classes can be. Fortunately, going to Taekwondo class twice a week helps keep her accountable. When she has time, she likes to create video edits of her vacations to look back on and share with friends.
During the first class, she enjoyed connecting with Hannah. They are both seniors who haven’t figured it out yet. Both born in China, they share a desire to go back. Catherine has a sister seven years younger than her; Hannah’s brother is seven years her senior.
Margaret Fung, the grass outside the Campanile, 2 p.m.
“Good, how are you?” is my automatic response to Margaret’s greeting. She tells me that she is sleep deprived. I make a mental note to give a more honest answer the next time someone asks me the question that doesn’t always seek the truth.
Margaret and I bond over our high school experiences of being extremely shy and struggling to speak up. She tells me that, as a high schooler, she probably wouldn’t have been able to talk to me, and I’m inclined to believe the same. Since moving to Berkeley from Sacramento at 23, she’s grown a lot. She wants to seek more challenges and growth by going to graduate school far away.
We chat about psychology classes, and I make a note to take social psychology, one of her favorites. She volunteers for crisis hotlines, and sometimes leaves sessions feeling better and more energized than before. As she returns my questions, I find myself feeling naturally comfortable sharing my own story. She pauses to validate my feelings and encourage me, and I can’t help but feel that being a warm listener is a clear strength of hers.
Juan Chavez-Tinajero, calling from Sonoma, 2:30 p.m.
Juan asks me for my first date questions, but it’s not an arsenal I keep. “What’s your story?” I offer instead. “That’s a horrible question.” He apologizes for his tone, which he tells me is practiced from being a college consultant and a physical therapist. He tells me what people in the Bay Area find interesting about him: he’s an ex-pastor, a former drug trafficker of 12 years, and a refugee from gang wars.
He grew up in the Bay, and went to a private school that’s now called BASIS, a name I’m familiar with. Since he worked as a janitor and was still trafficking drugs at the time, he skipped four to five days of school a week. As the only Mexican student, he was bullied in a school with a predominantly Asian American student population. He hopes to reconcile with the ostracization he experienced in Asian American communities.
At 18, he opened a gym. His pastor title comes from running a homeless ministry in Fremont. He’s currently two years into his PhD program. Like with many of his experiences, I’m unfamiliar with ethnographic studies, but studying communities by living in them intrigues me. Among other Asian countries, he lives in Singapore for months each year. I’m taken aback by how he explains post nationalism to me with the image of Singapore “sucking Britain’s dick,” “prostituting itself,” and “milking Britain,” but it gets his point across, and I learn something new.
He researches the power of social media in creating new identities and living areas that would be impossible or too difficult otherwise. Long before the gay sex ban was repealed in Singapore, he tells me, there was already a flourishing online gay community. Juan says, in-person, people have the overwhelming power to tell you who you are. Online, you control the narrative.
Amy Wang, a table outside Hearst Field Annex B5, 3:30 p.m.
Talking to Amy felt familiar. It wasn’t a surprise afterwards, when we exchanged phone numbers, and our area codes were both 408. If there is such a thing as South Bay vernacular or energy, it was definitely there.
She tells me about the new comprehensive review imposed on students applying for a double major in computer science, a major that was recently moved out of L&S and into the new CDSS college. It’s the first time they’re implementing the review, so its difficulty and competitiveness is unknown and stressful. As a part of her portfolio, she’s an academic intern for CS 61B and a Computer Science Mentor (CSM) for CS 61C.
Her day had been spent in Cory Hall working on a problem set for CS 70. I reveal that I was a CSM mentor for that class a lifetime (two years) ago. She tells me she’s stuck on this one question:
Suppose that there are 2n+1 airports, where n is a positive integer. The distances between any two airports are all different. For each airport, exactly one airplane departs from it and is destined for the closest airport. Prove by induction that there is an airport which has no airplanes destined for it.
It’s strange that I remember this problem so clearly. My brain retains the muscle memory of the mental gymnastics involved in this class. Our conversation morphs into office hours, and I have some fun helping her through her thought process.
Emma To, Zoom, 5:10 p.m.
Like a duckling imprinting on a human, I felt a level of attachment to Emma from the first class, when she’d coaxed me outside the classroom, played the Betty Ong video on her phone, and explained its context. We were both seniors grappling with questions of fulfillment, a big question mark in our futures. In our conversation now, she organizes her thoughts in three consecutive categories: ASAMST 172, which she affectionately dubs “A-sam,” cultural identity, and personal aspirations.
She tells me about the Japanese American church in San Jose she used to go to. It’s almost as unique as her perspective as a simultaneous first and fourth generation Asian American. Both parents gave her traditional Asian and American values. She describes herself as a cautious person, someone who’s realizing that being grateful and having goals aren’t mutually exclusive.
We connected over feeling tired and cynical from the obsession with STEM and performance embedded in us by Bay Area high schools. We both know we want to bring our identity into our work. For her, she thinks that might be through public policy or public health. She’s not sure if she can serve the Asian immigrant community as a doctor if she’s someone who feels distant from the culture.
“For the plot” is the motto that motivates her and her roommate. To do things that further their character development. To move away from angling everything as a contribution to their academics and careers. It was by this motto that she showed up to the tennis team tryouts at the beginning of the semester, despite feeling outmatched by everyone else.
She yearns to leave the Bay Area and immerse herself in a slower pace of life. She tells me about a recent experience in Indiana, where her brother goes to school. At a gas station, the cars wait, three at a time, before inching forward into the empty spots. My jaw drops. In the Bay, a cacophony of blaring horns would start blasting as soon as the first spot opened up.
Anqi Lin, VLSB courtyard, the next day at 9:30 a.m.
Anqi’s cheerful energy streams in through the cold Friday morning. We chat about her role as the light-hearted youngest sibling, and her inclinations to take a gap year before going to med school.
Due to complications during her birth, she required treatment that the hospital in a small province in China wasn’t able to provide. Her dad’s middle school friend was able to help her get the treatment she needed. He inspired Anqi to be a doctor.
As a microbial biology major, she’s involved in two research projects. The first is on the regenerative ability of tomato plants. We muse on the sci-fi possibilities of applying a regenerability gene to humans through gene editing. Her second project is about the sun tracking abilities of sunflowers. I’m intrigued already, since sunflowers are my favorite flower. She tells me that the flowers track the sun from east to west throughout the day, and turn back east in the night. This fascinates me, their hope and trust and anticipation.
Madison Mar, Dwinelle benches, 3 p.m.
Madison told me she had one class today, a creative writing class, and she was a bit nervous about sharing her work. Though the class focuses on the genre of realistic fiction, she’s more excited about stories with fantastical elements, owing in part to her active imagination. Her favorite book, The Master and Margarita, is a work of Russian literature where the devil wreaks havoc on Soviet Moscow. I put it on my to-read list.
She’s from LA, and prefers SoCal to NorCal. Though her parents and grandparents speak English with her, she feels connected to Asian American culture through food. We discover we both love dim sum — in the morning, she adds — and she shares that her favorite dish is lo mai gai. It’s one of my favorites too. We connect over our love for desserts with Asian flavors: red bean, matcha, black sesame, taro, pandan. She says the matchadoodle flavor at Humphrey Slocombe is like eating a tree with cookies in it, and I laugh out loud. She promises to send me a recipe for gochujang cookies, and she delivers.
Niam Edralin, QnA
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet with Niam due to her busy schedule, but she sent me her QnA assignment. I was touched by the role she plays in her family as the peacemaker for her parents and the protector of her brother. I admired her commitment to returning her parents’ and ancestors’ sacrifices through a clinic in the Philippines and a house for her parents.
I liked the vividness with which she described the Philippines — I could almost smell the fish brought in from the ocean. I also appreciated the Tagalog word "kilig" she mentioned, that feeling of butterflies in your stomach. What makes an emotion important enough to name? What does a culture’s language say about its people? I hope to learn more about her cultural experience and her story.
Reading this felt like walking through a dreamscape - quiet, reflective, and richly textured. I love how your impressions blend the fleeting with the intimate, like memory caught mid-movement. Beautifully done!