How can stories and story-telling help us convey not just the factual truth of our memories but get us closer to the emotional truth of our past?

Raised in a conservative working-class household with traditional gender norms, I struggled to find my scholarly voice as a grad student. A key piece of advice in Year 1 helped me on that journey. But, in my exuberance to be a good student, did I in fact just trade in one set of rules for another?

What obstacles do women of color confront in leadership roles? For those leading DEI work within institutions, how do they maintain moral clarity and navigate political realities without losing themselves in the process?

As women of color, what are the challenges we confront when looking for academic and professional mentorship in a system defined by unequal power relations?

Representational diversity promises us that a diversity of images will spark a more diverse imagination and eventually lead to total system overhaul. But “diversity,” when it’s emptied of meaning and reduced to mere representation, can defeat the purpose of itself. 

Recent developments at Stuyvesant and elsewhere send me on a personal journey, asking: What does it mean to be “Asian American”? What is '“our” role in the broader coalition of people of color? And is such a coalition truly possible?