[Dear reader, The author herself has been writing journals for many years, and thought that in typical fashion, an entry would suit just fine for this purpose, too. Most journal entries are not meant for literate eyes, not ones that do not belong to the author, anyway. Yet, she finds herself most empathetic, most open, when she writes for a recipient: ] There is something intimate about a journal. It is a confession box in written form. Much more incriminating, if found. But I do not find my own writing to be in bad taste. If anything is alluded to in a negative manner, it is only negative in the way that all things in nature feed back into itself. A self-regulation, if you will. The pages and the script are only a way to decompose my own thoughts, to understand the world around me a little better. Writing is a lot like digestion. Or a funeral. Or any metaphor for how human processing is taking something into the body and minimizing the grief of it all. For a time, I was hesitant to keep a tangible record of myself. Being seen sucks. No better way to put it. Starting at age 17, I began to tear through notebooks to accommodate the loss of a dear friend. This entry is about her in a way, but mostly everything I write is about her in a way. I was inarticulate. I was desolate. I was confused. I suffered from sleepless nights and depression. How could I be seventeen to her sixteen, yet I am 18, 19, 20 and she is still sixteen? The timing too, was monumental. We were supposed to go to college together. Be girls together. It feels, still, that I have been orbiting a different gravity since then. The world slows down for no one. That is the only true constant out there. My coping method was turning to academics and the creative, to stream some visible part of myself that was not closed within the confines of an A5 composition. I liked the validation that school gave me. I liked even more, when I could make my hands pick up a pen to write poetry. By turning something ugly into art. Flowers grow from rot. I could make myself learn to see those words on the page and claim them. I grew to write not as a way to smear tears on paper, but as a way to accept that I have a right to exist and learn and thrive. Everything I write is for her. It is for me. I write so that we can be together, in some form in the universe, as a feedback of knowledge that I can help those around me process the hard, unspoken things about the world too. I got to realize, early on, how inevitable some things are. And in the course of, learn about how we honor our friends and family through the accumulation of bittersweet memories and perpetuation of starting anew. On this page and in the stacks of journals on my desk, there is gratitude. There is love. I leave you with a quote and it goes roughly like this: “On this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. There is no one out there untouched by the loss.” Until next time, M.L.

English is my second language. Ashamedly, I must admit I am not 100% fluent in Mandarin Chinese, my first. My writing is far from mastery level, and my speaking is only just better. My daily exposure to the language is around my parents, who are not proficient in English. They have had to suffer through the Chinglish my brother and I utilize over the dinner table. And very often I hear, “别说英文, 我听不懂” Stop speaking English, I don’t understand. Sadly, he and I do not listen very often. To trade secrets, he and I use English like code. I can weave tales like a storyteller in the Queen’s English, but struggle like a fish out of water in my choppy mother tongue. “这是什么意思?” What does this mean? I am often asked. I have had my fair share of translating documents and conversations for my father, who understands the least of the American dialect. It is a very valuable talent, I must say, to circumvent technical terms I do not know the words of in Mandarin and only know the pronunciation of in English. Like this, I have found sanctuary in the English language for being my safety net. My love for it is apparent through my collection of all the English books in my room. The more I read, the more I grasp. There are no characters and brush stroke order to remember in English, nor complicated tones that sound nearly identical. However, avoidance can only get me so far. As aging often does to a person, I am maturing. I already have a foundation for Mandarin, why not utilize it? I intend to pursue fluency in Chinese which my family has built a foundation for. Coupled with my understanding of English, I can help other people as I have done in my household. 我可以帮你 I can help you. As I have found sanctuary in the English language, why not provide that for others too? Through reading, translating, and hobbies of my own exploration, I found that my desired career path is a hybrid of its own. I want to be surrounded by books, the security they provide to me in their stories. I want to provide support for other Asian families that may not have the means or connections to fully navigate a world that does not speak their language. From there, I intend to become a paralegal. This career compromises my love for words: research, documents, and books, with my pride as a Chinese-American.

I had always thought I was too young to be able to advocate for social justice. What is my voice among thousands of others? I am but a mere 17-year-old Asian-American girl that aspires to work for a publishing company. But this past year of quarantine, the pandemic that swept the globe wasn't an only illness but a sickness from within people. I have seen more violence this passing year than I ever have in my life. It is violence that belongs in history books. It is violence that I shall grab by the snout and admonish in the face of the age of media. That is what I hope to accomplish. I hope to make sure that social justice for Asians, the new wave of it in our current generation, do not get swept away as that of my Californian railroad-building ancestors. My parents work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. My mom enters a building at 10 a.m sharp and does not leave until the shop is closed at eight. She drives herself to work every day and has to walk at least a few hundred feet into her building. As I write this essay, a 94-year-old Asian woman was stabbed in San Francisco in broad daylight just last week. Violence against Asians in America goes beyond outrage. I am afraid for my family. I am afraid for my friends' families. My brother and I both have to call her if we go in public to ensure our safety. There is something to be said about the lack of media coverage and trials held for those accountable for the casual brutality shown against Asians. I scroll the pages of popular social media platforms and I only see meager posts about protests and action for these crimes. It is a buildup of hate I am most afraid of. On the news, I've seen gruesome images of the barbarity for weeks on end. It does not end with a single shooting, or a single stabbing, or a single beating. I hope to use social media, the weapon that it can be, to sharpen the lens on those of influence that haven't spoken about these recent events. I will tag celebrities, politicians, officials in protest photos. I will leave the names of the criminals and victims in the comments of the news. I will scatter evidence of the ignorance of the authorities in the feed of politicians. I will post about Gofundme pages and credible sources for the latest coverage. I am a product of my generation and I will use the resources of the internet to aid me.

Heavy is the head of the immigrant child. Expectation has never been so great as it has been on Asian girls. Being the second born is like stepping into puddles that one does not know how deep it goes. My big brother is academically inclined. He excels at logical thinking and science, and he plans to become a pharmacist. I, the girl, am the artist of the family. If I was to do art, my mother warned, I had to be critically acclaimed. She would overlook the small pitfall of my creative mind if I could make it a lucrative business. My mother, as all 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. working parents are, has only wanted the best for me. I know that in every cut-up and peeled apple and quiet expectation of a perfect report card, that she sees the rice fields nǎinai and yéye used to work on. "Do better," she says. "Better than me," she doesn’t say. Up until high school, I was the only Asian American in a sea of native South Carolinians. My peers would admire my tenacious study habits. They would watch for my reaction when tests were passed out to gauge whether the test was a bust or not. If I nodded once, I made 100. If a frown marred my face, the whole class was doomed. If my classmates needed help, they would come to me. If I didn't readily give out homework answers, I was stuck up. If I help the football star with differential equations, I’m a lifesaver. This is my life, full of dualities. It sounds pretentious to suggest that I had to prove to myself that I was more than the starving artist my parents saw and the teacher's pet that my classmates claimed I was. But there was never Switzerland for me. No neutral ground between being the model daughter and the perfect student. Looking back, I was undoubtedly spoiled. We were a working family. Mom owned a small restaurant in town; she was the manager, my dad was the cook, my brother was the cashier. On weekends, I did homework and watched tv in the room reserved for parties. If she had even a penny to spare, it went to my color pencils and oil paints. If she did not need me to count change or fold napkins, I spent my time in art lessons at the local studio. I had not known we paid for those lessons in free meals at our restaurant until years later. That is the sacrifice of an immigrant parent. I had been once ashamed to be tied to the only Chinese restaurant in town. “Is that your mom that works at Jin’s Buffet?” A popular kid would ask. “No,” I’d answer, “She’s just a relative.” At thirteen, I had not known the impact of that lie. But it haunts me every day. What did I see in my sweat-drenched, hardworking mother that I was so ashamed of being associated with? It is the unearned pride of a daughter that knows that her parents would do whatever it takes to propel their child to greatness. My mother would barely flinch at a $52.99 Prismacolor set but refused to replace her hole-ridden rubber shoes. I remember crying to her in my freshman year of high school - back from school and straight to the restaurant because I was old enough to help out at the family business - about the 88 I got in Biology. My brother had never made below a 95 in that class. She settled her hard, brown eyes on me and told me to do better, study harder. I had to go to the bathroom to compose myself, seeing in the mirror a face that looked like hers, painted in disappointment. That night, I only now recall with meaning, she had sat by my bed and told me about her childhood. We come from a family of rural, Chinese farmers. She had to give up pursuing school in order to support her family of five siblings. “I want you to be the best in whatever you do because I never got the chance to be.” As an Asian-American woman, I am the product of my family’s steel backbone and the drive from my American upbringing. I wonder if every immigrant child goes through the blind-but-now-I-see phase, of realizing that love comes in all expressions and forms and that failure is the first step in the dark. When I look back, yes I can see, the firm teachings and lectures were not void of affection. I can see my dad, waiting in 100°F weather to pick me up from school, willing to ask for me in broken English even when he was insecure to speak in a language he did not know. I can taste sweet mandarins my mom peeled for me, delivered to my room late at night because she knew I had an exam the next day. I am not inferior to my brother simply because I am a woman. Every parent hopes that the next generation will be greater than the one before.