This is the legacy of colonization. It is the mass extinction of identities and languages that can no longer exist because someone else said they were bad.

This is the story of the birth and death of my name, which means that it is a story about transition, which means that it is necessarily a story about the border between two places and the force with which one rends it.

When it comes to Buddhism and cultural appropriation, I still sometimes worry that I’m making a big deal out of nothing, that I’m angry for no good reason.

When love is a matter of desperation, how do you even begin to know what it is you desire? It doesn’t matter what shape love takes. Or does it?

I don’t want to be caught parading around in last generation’s false sense of security. I’m kicking off Autostraddle’s first Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Heritage month by exploring the values my own South Asian and Japanese American parents and grandparents imparted to me, to learn to carry them forward.