Culture

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.

Before doing both his bachelor’s and master’s in opera performance at UBC, Luka Kawabata studied engineering at Queen’s University.

Just east of the Museum of Anthropology, a small slope off the sidewalk lining Northwest Marine Drive leads down to Trail 3 of Pacific Spirit Park.

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.

As an Asian living in a time plagued with anti-Asian hate, I find my emotions heightened.

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.

Do not mispronounce it. I do not want to correct you twice.

I can't see myself in the signal's static. I speak but I only hear your cadence. :// Bàba, how do you say this word in Chinese?

I wish I could tell myself these answers, but identity, no matter what it’s based on is always constructed and deconstructed. Built-up and destroyed.

I hardly knew some of the people there yet it was, in some comforting, familiar way, its own family meal.

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.

The grocery store can’t replace my parents’ cooking or my brother’s sarcasm or my family’s love, but I guess it’s good enough for now.

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.