Homecoming

In Homecoming’s Season 2 finale, Arun Saigal, the Cofounder and CEO of Thunkable, a Y Combinator-backed startup that allows anyone to build their own mobile apps without any coding experience, joins me on the podcast! Previously, he’s held a variety of leading roles at tech companies including Quizlet (where he built and launched the first version of the Quizlet Android app), Khan Academy, Aspiring Minds, and Google. He was also named to Forbes 30 under 30 in consumer technology. And if that isn’t cool enough, Arun conducts orchestras like the San Francisco Civic Symphony, plays viola and mridangam (a South Indian classical drum), and beatboxes in several San Francisco-based music groups.

In this episode, Arun talks about his upbringing in Boston, his time at Phillips Academy and MIT, Thunkable and how it got started, the future of the no-code movement, his music, and important lessons about starting a company and staying optimistic that he’d want to pass on to the listeners.

Also listen to the very end of the episode for my brief Season 2 recap!

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In part 2 of my conversation with Sydney Ji (go listen to part 1 from last week if you haven’t yet!), hear them talk about their orientation to and from whiteness and their Asian identity, invisible disabilities, intersectionality, and the work they hope to do in the future.

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In part 1 of my conversation with Sydney Ji, UC Berkeley ‘17 and an international customer service assistant at the Berkeley International Office, listen to them talk about their experiences grappling with their racial identity and class privilege as they were growing up in Cupertino, CA and transitioning to UC Berkeley.

*CW: Sydney talks about their mental health during their time growing up in a pretty toxic environment and discusses suicide.

Next week, in part 2, Sydney will talk more about their time at Berkeley, invisible disabilities, their work at the international students’ office, and more!

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In this episode, Yale University senior Mariko Rooks joins me on the podcast! Mariko is majoring in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and is a dual Master of Public Health candidate at the Yale School of Public Health in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is involved with a number of organizations like USA Water Polo, the Japanese American Citizens League, and Changing Womxn. Today, she talks about her Black, Japanese American, and Asian American identities; her research and thesis work in public health; her work in all of the organizations that I mentioned above; and...BTS??? Mariko also reads one of her amazing poems at the end of the episode!

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Today, Miss Washington Teen USA 2020 Marianne Bautista joins me on the podcast! Marianne talks about her experiences as an Asian American/Filipina American in the pageant world, what she’s been up to during her reign as Miss Washington Teen USA, racial + body type + class diversity within pageantry, what she thinks the future holds for pageants, and so much more!

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This Saturday, I welcome K.J. Roelke, a fellow member of the Springfield, Missouri community and cohost of the Korean adoptee podcast “The Janchi Show”! K.J. talks about his identity as a Korean adoptee, Asian American, and disabled person; his journey of learning about what being Korean American and Asian American means to him; how his faith and racial identity intersect; and, of course, his podcast! K.J. and I also bond over being Asian Americans in the majority-white Springfield, Missouri. (P.S. One of the funniest moments from the episode is at 32:14...hear K.J. make the most artistic metaphor of all time.)

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Thailand has a long history of political unrest and protest, but a new wave began in February 2020 after a popular opposition political party was ordered to dissolve. The growing pro-democracy movement has been calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a military chief who seized power in a 2014 coup and was later appointed after controversial elections in 2019. Protestors are calling for amendments to the constitution, a new election, curbs on the monarchy and the king’s powers, and an end to the harassment of activists and state/monarchy critics. So throughout 2020, hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered on the streets and college campuses all over Bangkok, hundreds have been arrested, and dozens have been injured from things like water cannons and tear gas that the police have used.

In today’s episode, Anna Naiyapatana, a senior at Georgetown University from Bangkok, Thailand, talks about reconciling with her American and Thai identities, the history of the pro-democracy movement and the 2020 protests, her social media/news group เฟมินิสต์หน่อย (@feministnhoi), conversations about feminism and gender equality happening within the movement, and her unique perspectives as a Thai student studying in the U.S..

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In this Saturday’s episode, I interview David Moriya and Emi Lea Kamemoto, the co-founders of the organization Strong Asian Lead, a grassroots media and entertainment company that provides educational and career resources to creatives of the Asian diaspora and is redefining how the entertainment industry tells Asian American stories. David is a fifth-generation Japanese American activist, photographer, screenwriter, and historian, and Emi is a mixed race, first-generation Japanese and American activist, community organizer, and DEI strategist. The two of them share their journeys of better understanding their Japanese and Asian American identities, how they got started in media, the kind of community they’re building through Strong Asian Lead, and other issues that have to do with diversity and Asian voices in Hollywood.

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John Hoang, a sophomore at Earlham College originally from New Mexico, is this week’s guest on Homecoming! He shares his story of how and why he is so interested in politics, why he’s so adamant about getting young people out there involved in political action and civic engagement, and how his LGBTQ identity inspires him and motivates him to do so, as well.

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Because the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us, and there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding vaccine distribution, I wanted to bring an expert—someone who has been directly involved in national and global efforts to combat COVID-19—onto the podcast. That is why, in this episode, I am joined by Dr. Saad Omer, the Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, a professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, and the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. He has served on several advisory panels including the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee and the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Group for Healthcare Worker Vaccination. And more recently, he has been a critical member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicines’ Committee on equitable allocation of vaccine for the novel coronavirus and the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) Working Group on COVID-19 Vaccines, both of which have assisted the CDC and the NIH in devising their COVID-19 vaccine allocation system.

Dr. Omer will be answering some questions about COVID-19 in the U.S. and around the world, how he and others devised “equitable” vaccine allocation systems, the new strain of the virus, and how all of us will be impacted by the pandemic years down the road.

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The South Asian Youth Initiative (also known as SAYI) is an annual conference organized by South Asian student leaders from different colleges in the U.S. with the purpose of creating community amongst young South Asians and South Asian Americans while also serving as a forum for activism, discussion, and solidarity. This week, Saket Malhotra (Yale ‘23) and Maya Shah (Yale ‘23), the co-directors of SAYI, come onto the podcast to talk about their experiences with SAYI, their plans for SAYI 2021 (which will take place April 10th and 11th), their upcoming Caste 101 and Beyond the Gender Binary workshops, and how they’re trying to tackle and have discussions about different issues within the South Asian community.

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Thanks for tuning into the second part of the affirmative action series! This week, I am joined on the podcast by Eden Senay and Nina Todd, the co-presidents of the Black Student Alliance at Yale, and Kevin Quach and Michelle Liang, the previous co-moderators of the Asian American Student Alliance at Yale! Together, we have a conversation about how our perceptions of affirmative action have changed throughout time, misconceptions about affirmative action, the Yale DOJ lawsuit, media coverage of affirmative action and how it takes away attention from other necessary work, our ideal college admissions and education systems, discussions we’ve had about affirmative action in our own spaces, and more.

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I also wanted to briefly say something about the violence and domestic terrorism that took place at the Capitol this past week. For the past couple of days, I’ve felt such overwhelming anger and sadness that I haven’t really been able to say anything eloquent out loud or on social media. But I wanted to be transparent on this platform—in every way possible, the Homecoming Podcast absolutely condemns this behavior and these white supremacist ideologies. Those people aren’t patriots, they weren’t just “protestors.” The fact that there were Asians and Asian Americans there, too, and some of the Capitol police and security officers were willingly taking selfies with the rioters, and the police seemed to offer little resistance...I’m just so disappointed and disheartened, and I have so many questions. For now, please, everyone, check in with friends and family members in Washington D.C. and others living in places where riots occurred. I hope you all are taking time to sit and process things, reflect, learn from new things popping up on social media and the news, and take care of yourselves. I’m still sitting here trying to process things, but if you need support or someone to talk to, you can definitely reach out to me.

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WELCOME TO SEASON 2 OF HOMECOMING!!! The Season 2 opener kicks off an informative two-part series on affirmative action, an extremely relevant topic in the U.S. and the Asian American community. Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard will likely go to the Supreme Court, and decades of precedent for affirmative action policies are at stake. But what is affirmative action? And what has been the role of Asian Americans in affirmative action policies in college admissions?

In part 1 of the series, Janelle Wong, a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and an expert in political attitudes and their relationships with race and religion, joins me to talk about the origins and misconceptions of affirmative action, SFFA v. Harvard, the Yale DOJ lawsuit, and the role of Asian Americans in these cases and policies.

Next week, in part 2, a few student leaders and I will debrief and have a conversation about affirmative action, education equity, and how we’ve navigated (conversations about) college admissions in our own circles.

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Season 2 of Homecoming starts THIS SATURDAY, January 2nd! In the trailer, here what Homecoming is all about and some of the featured topics of the season. GET EXCITED, and see you all soon!!!

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In this episode (which I hope will be the start of a new off-season series of life updates, in which I bring friends of mine onto the podcast to have casual and fun conversations about anything and everything), Sam, my good friend from high school and a current sophomore at McGill University, and I catch up for the first time since our graduation! We talk about our first years in college, philosophy, how we’re dealing with current events, classes we’re taking, parenting, and reading for fun again during quarantine.

Disclaimer: I talk about this in the beginning of the episode, but Sam does not identify as a person of Asian descent. In the new off-season life updates series, I will not be limiting my guests to only those who identify as Asian. Listen to the episode to hear more :)

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Happy November! In this off-season episode, Linda Hower Bates, a parent of two residing in Rhode Island, joins me on the podcast to talk about growing up biracial, how she’s navigated conversations about race and racism with her parents and now her kids, how she’s stayed recharged during the pandemic, and why voting is important to her!

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It’s the official Season 1 finale episode! Thank you all for your support, listens, and comments/kind words throughout this entire time. 22 episodes and 27 guests—it’s been an incredible season! I’m so excited to come back in January with Season 2 (I’ve already started planning for it and listen to the recap to hear some topic ideas and goals I have moving forward). Homecoming will still be active on social media during the off-season, so reach out if you have any questions or comments. Please also click on the Homecoming Linktree below if you are interested in being a guest or suggesting a topic for us to cover!

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My last guest for this season is Simi Shah, Harvard ‘19, from the media platform Trailblazers! Simi has experience working in both the finance and media industries, so listen to hear more about her time as a South Asian woman with Girls Who Invest and her particular firm post-grad, what it was like to make that leap from finance to media earlier this year, how media fulfills her entrepreneurial spirit, and the amazing platform, Trailblazers, dedicated to trailblazing by and for South Asians, that she recently created!

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This week, Alysha Siddiqi and Kiran Masroor, both sophomores at Yale University and the President and Vice President, respectively, of the organization Yalies for Pakistan join me on the podcast! They talk about what it was like growing up Pakistani American in their respective hometowns, the really exciting events Yalies for Pakistan has coming up, and how they’re planning on running the organization remotely.

Yalies for Pakistan is an organization at Yale dedicated to bringing Pakistan to campus through cultural celebration, social justice and advocacy, and educational initiatives. Check out their fundraisers and social media below.

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In this second episode with Polynesian filmmaker and visual storyteller Conrad Lihilihi (see the episode two weeks ago to listen to part 1), Conrad goes in-depth into the creative process of making his new docuseries about the Hawaiian language and the 1896 Hawaiian language ban (see link below to watch). He also talks about whitewashing in Hollywood, his favorite Hawaiian tradition, and advice he’d give budding filmmakers and creatives.

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This week, poet and playwright Dena Igusti comes onto Homecoming to share what is what like growing up in Queens, New York as a queer, non-binary Indonesian Muslim and their experience with female genital mutilation (FGM) and the trauma it resulted in. Dena also just released their new poetry book, “Cut Woman” (see link below to buy it!), so she also talks about what inspired different poems from the anthology, the creative process of creating “Cut Woman,” and their statement about Indonesia at the very end of the book.

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You all have probably noticed that every week, I begin every episode of Homecoming with saying that this podcast features AAPI folx, but to be frank, you probably have also noticed that I haven’t had any Pacific Islander guests on the podcast yet, even though they are supposed to represent half of the phrase and the group of people that I’m trying to uplift. I really wanted to call myself out on that and apologize for that. To be quite honest, I’ve been pretty wary of the term AAPI for a while now, because I admit that I didn’t fully know or understand the history behind that term. I’ve also often found that organizations that tend to state that they’re all for supporting or featuring AAPI’s tend to be only or majority for Asian Americans rather than Pacific Islanders. Reading Conrad Lihilihi’s article “Dear Asian Americans: Stop Erasing Pacific Islanders,” was a big turning point for me in terms of how I saw the term “AAPI.” So I decided to reach out to Conrad to see if he’d be interested in being a guest on Homecoming, and I found out that he’s also an extremely talented filmmaker, director, photographer, and visual storyteller.

In this episode (part 1 of my full conversation with him), Conrad shares his background growing up in Hawai’i, his college journey and how he ultimately decided that he wanted to pursue film, some of his current projects (see links below), as well as his article and the pros and cons of the term “Asian American Pacific Islander” (or “AAPI”). In part 2 (to release in two weeks), Conrad will be talking about his new docuseries “Language of a Nation” (linked below), so get ready for that!

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Some of you may have read in the news or on social media about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, a country located on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. The civil/proxy war that’s been occurring for years in Yemen has prevented shipments of food and other basic resources from being accessible and affordable to Yemeni citizens. This has contributed to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, which, according to UNICEF, is the largest in the world, with more than 24 million people, which is around 80% of the population, in need of humanitarian assistance, including more than 12 million children. Over 2 million Yemeni children are malnourished and a Yemeni child dies a preventable death every 10 minutes. And now, the coronavirus outbreak has really compounded the entire situation—health services, already strained, are even more so, millions of children are now unable to access education, and tens of thousands more children could develop life-threatening acute malnutrition over the next few months.

Summer Nasser, the CEO of the humanitarian INGO Yemen Aid and a speaker and analyst on Yemeni affairs, joins me on the podcast to spread awareness about Yemen’s situation. Summer talks about her background as a Yemeni American, the factors that have contributed to the humanitarian crisis, the work that Yemen Aid does, how COVID-19 has impacted Yemen, the flaws of the international community and organizations like the UN, and what everyday people can do to support Yemenis who are going through and have been impacted by the humanitarian crisis.

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In Episode 16, Dan Nguyen, who works at Phở 501, his family-owned Vietnamese restaurant in East Hartford, Connecticut joins me on the podcast to share how the Phở 501 people know and love today came to be, the ways in which his story and the story of Phở 501 intertwine, how Phở 501 has been impacted by COVID-19, and advice for aspiring immigrant restaurant owners.

So many restaurants and small businesses have been forced to close, either temporarily or permanently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, many Asian-owned restaurants, and specifically Chinese restaurants, have taken an especially hard blow. Please support your local restaurants and local Asian restaurants consistently, but especially during this time—there are a lot of hardworking people behind the counters and in the kitchens who are dedicated to making sure we can all still get delicious food.

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In this episode, Richard Leong, a board member of the nonprofit organization Act to Change and a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, comes onto the podcast to share his experiences growing up as an Asian American and how they led him to prioritize education and social justice work, his involvement with Act to Change, and his new Asian American identity coaching service. We also have a candid conversation about a gender divide when it comes to anti-racism work, Asian/American solidarity, why people are so averse to change, the pros and cons of social media activism, and more. 

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This week, Avik Sarkar, a rising sophomore at Yale University, joins me to share their experiences as a South Asian queer person, how South Asian LGTBQ history has shaped how queerness is viewed within the South Asian diaspora, LGBTQ advocacy they’re a part of, and how people can be better allies to LGBTQ people and those who are questioning their sexualities. We also talk about inspirational queer trailblazers like James Baldwin and Marsha P. Johnson, our society’s need to put labels on everything and everyone, LGBTQ and QTPOC representation in the media, and radical queer politics.

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This episode is the last installment in our three-part CAMD Scholar series! Every year, the Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) Office at Phillips Academy, a boarding high school in Andover, Massachusetts, holds the CAMD Scholars Program. The program is an opportunity for selected Phillips Academy students to pursue independent summer research projects related to diversity and multiculturalism. Students write a research paper in the summer, as well as make a presentation to the Andover community during the subsequent school year.

In part 3 of the CAMD Scholar Series, Karen Sun, a 2019-2020 CAMD Scholar, comes onto Homecoming to share her research project, titled “A Devil’s Advocate to God’s Advocates: Religious Language in American Presidential Campaigns.” In this episode, Karen talks about the “American God,” why Protestantism and Americanism have historically been equated, why many presidential candidates who are a part of minority groups feel the need to use religious language, the forms of religious language that Donald Trump and Joe Biden use in their campaign speeches, and much more.

Thank you to Ralph Lam for helping to edit this episode!

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This episode is the second in our three-part CAMD Scholar series! Every year, the Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) Office at Phillips Academy, a boarding high school in Andover, Massachusetts, holds the CAMD Scholars Program. The program is an opportunity for selected Phillips Academy students to pursue independent summer research projects related to diversity and multiculturalism. Students write a research paper in the summer, as well as make a presentation to the Andover community during the subsequent school year.

In part 2 of the CAMD Scholar Series, Tenzin Sharlung, a 2019-2020 CAMD Scholar, comes onto Homecoming to share her research project, titled “Children of Refugees: Reclamation and the Courage to Tell Our Stories.” In this episode, Tenzin talks about her Tibetan identity, her experiences navigating a PWI, the importance of storytelling within Southeast Asian refugee communities, and how we can better support refugees and underrepresented minorities.

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This episode kicks off our three-part CAMD Scholar series! Every year, the Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) Office at Phillips Academy, a boarding high school in Andover, Massachusetts, holds the CAMD Scholars Program. The program is an opportunity for selected Phillips Academy students to pursue independent summer research projects related to diversity and multiculturalism. Students write a research paper in the summer, as well as make a presentation to the Andover community during the subsequent school year.

In part 1 of the CAMD Scholar Series, Natalie Shen, a 2019-2020 CAMD Scholar, comes onto Homecoming to talk about her research project, titled “The Effects of (Mis)Representation in American Mainstream Visual Media on Asian American Youth.” In this episode, Natalie shares important parts of her research—including Claire Jean Kim’s racial triangulation theory, the formation of "the Orient,” and the history of racism in the American cartoon industry—analyzes the roles of Asian American characters like Baljeet from Phineas and Ferb, and discusses diversity and whitewashing in Hollywood.

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Right now, many people are beginning to or continuing to have necessary conversations about race and racism, and doing so can certainly be very emotionally draining, especially when you’re talking to parents or other family members who have drastically different views from yours. In addition, our mental and emotional health are two things that typically fall to the bottom of the priority list in our day-to-day lives, and mental health can be a very taboo topic for people out there to discuss. For me, after having various conversations about race, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can be more empathetic and understanding towards my family members who have experienced racial trauma, how to approach uncomfortable conversations about race with family members, and how to balance my mental health and the emotional labor required to pursue and obtain social justice.

Joining me to discuss all of these topics is Dr. Eunice Yuen, a psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center and an emotional wellness support consultant at the Yale Asian American Cultural Center. Together in this episode, we talk about xenophobia during COVID-19, how to approach conversations about race and racism with family members who have experienced racial trauma, how to remain optimistic and hopeful while pursuing social justice, and more.

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At the end of May, Yale student Eileen Huang wrote and published “A Letter from a Yale Student to the Chinese American Community," which calls on Chinese Americans to reflect on their shared history with other minorities, protest against White supremacy, and engage in difficult conversations with other AAPI and non-Black folx on anti-Blackness in their own communities. Her letter has already gotten over 15,000 shares on the original publishing platform, Chinese American, and has gone viral and been read over 100,000 times on WeChat, the Chinese messaging and social media app. This week, Eileen comes onto the podcast to talk about her letter, its reactions and reverberations in various Asian/American communities, and how she’s planning on taking her sentiments and activism from one viral letter to a full-blown long-term project.

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This episode comes a day after Juneteenth (June 19), a holiday that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. and celebrates Black American/African American freedom and achievement. However, it’s also a reminder that we have a long way to go in seeking racial justice—we must acknowledge the ways that modern-day slavery presents itself and the contemporary oppression that Black people face. What is needed is sustained celebration and support—Black lives matter, not just today, but always—but many people out there may not know how exactly to go about doing that. So I asked my friends Emily Ndiokho, Amiri Tulloch, Michael Codrington, and Jungwoo Park to join me to have a conversation about Black and Asian solidarity. In part 2 of this conversation, we talk about performative social media activism, whether corporations and educational institutions can be anti-racist, what Asian/Americans and other non-Black people can do to be better allies of the Black community, and more. 

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The murder of George Floyd and the mass protests that have been happening all over the country have pushed many Asian/Americans and other non-Black people to begin having difficult conversations about the biases, racism, and anti-Blackness that exist within themselves and their own communities. Although this is great to see, what is needed is sustained support—Black lives matter, not just today, but always—but many people out there may not know how exactly to go about doing that. So I asked my friends Emily Ndiokho, Amiri Tulloch, Michael Codrington, and Jungwoo Park to join me to have a conversation about Black and Asian solidarity. In part I of this conversation, we talk about the common narratives in the histories of both of our races, how race inherently dehumanizes, obstacles that stand in the way of solidarity, and more.

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Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. Countless others. Black lives matter today and every day.

In this episode, I introduce myself and talk about the major events in my life that have shaped me to be the person I am today and how those events have led me to make a life commitment to social justice. I also elaborate on what concrete things I’m currently doing to try to be a better friend and ally of the Black community and other people of color. Lastly, I answer the questions you sent me about what I’ve been up to in quarantine, how identifying as Asian American is empowering, and how being a “bad Asian” (i.e. someone who’s radical and not complacent with the system) is important to me.

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Joliana Yee and Sheraz Iqbal are the Director and Assistant Director of Yale University’s Asian American Cultural Center. This week, I bring the two of them on the podcast to talk about who they are, how they got started working at the AACC, diversity at Yale, how we should approach difficult conversations about race, and much more.

In 2014, Narendra Modi became the 14th Prime Minister of India. Modi, his political party (the Bharatiya Janata Party, aka BJP), and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) all subscribe to a fascist political ideology called Hindutva. Three Yale students come onto Homecoming and discuss Hindutva, Modi’s regime, and Students Against Hindutva Ideology (SAHI), an inter-university, inter-faith organization they founded that educates people about and challenges fascism and extreme Hindu nationalism.

LJ Flores and Jasmine Rios join us to share what it was like to grow up Filipino in their respective hometowns, the differences between Filipino and Filipino American experiences, reflections on their race/identity while navigating predominantly white spaces, and the Filipino community at Yale.

In this episode, we interview Kelly Long and Biman Xie about the overt racism and violence towards Asian Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how the coronavirus has affected them, their communities, and social/political systems.

Welcome to Homecoming, a podcast that features the diverse stories and experiences of AAPI folx. Join us for our first episode, in which we talk about what Homecoming is, who we are, and why we created a podcast like this! We also briefly discuss how COVID-19 has impacted us and other Asians out there.