I should be writing a personal statement for a doctoral program I’m applying to. I should be writing a one-page fluff essay talking about how much my dreams are important to me, how I’d be a good fit for the doctoral cohort, and how much I want to pursue an advanced degree.
During my freshman year, on weekends, I would take the subway from Morningside Heights, looping around 42nd Street and back up to the Upper East Side to work at a newspaper and magazine store owned by the Chois.
Everyone says food is the universal language of love. Somehow I missed it. My family and I immigrated to the US when I was 8 years old and since then, all I could remember was that our days were a blur.
I’ve marched in Brooklyn and know the boost of excitement when a car supportively honks its horn or people cheer from their windows. But I also wondered if my support was noteworthy because I’m a middle-aged Asian woman. Do I represent a community that has not shown their appreciation, love, support and camaraderie with the black community.
This morning I asked my mom if she wanted to go to the LA protests with me. I wasn’t sure what she was going to say or if I was dishonoring her by asking this question because of our family’s painful memories connected with the LA Uprising decades ago. In the ‘92 Uprising, we lost our family business, which led to bankruptcy and set off a series of devastating circumstances in our family’s history. But surprisingly, my mom responded, “Of course, we must go. I was going to ask you to go together.”
I have a lot of thoughts about participating in the protest yesterday. I also want to make it clear this is the perspective as an Asian American male.
The protest, was incredibly powerful and the amount of love and desire for change was impossible to not have reverberate through your entire body. From the speeches given by the organizers, to the actions of the fellow marchers. A nurse was walking through the crowd handing out gloves and hand wipes, others stood along the way giving out water. It was beautiful.
The process of creating a book, regardless of the target audience, is deeply involved and requires a plethora of patience and many hours of revisions.
My name is Brian Bomster-Jabs, and I am a Korean Adoptee. I was adopted when I was 5 months old and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. When I arrived, I had a brother waiting for me.
Each time I walk by a dry cleaners in the city and see an Asian couple behind the counter, my chest tightens. And here at my parent’s store on Long Island, where I intend to spend the rest of the day, I start to feel the pressure.
Probably each one of us said it at some point when we were small children. Some of us said it almost every night. Some begged and pleaded. We laughed and giggled and screamed when our pleadings were granted.