Justice & Culture Dorcas Cheng-Tozun Justice & Culture Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

Not All Social Justice Advocates March

Over the years, trying to emulate my peers and my social justice heroes—Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Óscar Romero, and others—led me to burnout again and again. Each episode of burnout was worse than the last, until I found myself in bed, debilitatingly depressed, unable to work and barely able to function, for almost a year. I finally began to understand that I was following the way of other people more than the way of the cross. 

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Series Sherene Joseph Series Sherene Joseph

When Code Switching is Not Enough

I was a stranger in the country, which had been home for so many years. People had moved on, and I was no longer a little child. My friends were no longer there, and my parents had a new routine as empty nesters. I had become more South Indian than they wanted me to be, and they found my new habits different. I had learned to move adeptly between two cultures, but I was neither here nor there. 

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Series Michael Stalcup Series Michael Stalcup

Loving

Dad, a white man born in Kansas—
grew up in a time when plenty
folks who looked like them
were not allowed to wed,

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Series Naomi K. Lu Series Naomi K. Lu

To Bless My Chinese Self

I felt that I existed as a series of masks, appearing as others wanted me to, but without any sense of who I actually was. I waded through a depressive fog, wondering if there was any hope to feel at peace in the body that felt so foreign to me. 

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Series Jilan McQuilkin Series Jilan McQuilkin

I am both

I couldn’t see myself as both
not because I did not want to
but because society told me I couldn’t be
both

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Series Julie Yeeun Kim Series Julie Yeeun Kim

Psalm 17: A Prayer for Asian Americans

Over time, the soft yet profound distinctions between being Koreans in America and being Koreanamericans settled into our lives. Ye Eun yielded to Julie as I underwent a nearly complete transformation and became a cultural stranger to my ancestors. Yet to this day, no prayer moves me more than ones uttered in my mother tongue.

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Series Abigail Vilar Series Abigail Vilar

Where I’m From

I’m from “Did you eat yet?” and “Practice your piano,”
From “Don’t get to dark or you’ll smell like the sun”

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