1. Dolphins 2023

I am a female North African immigrant. Or I should say, a white-passing North African immigrant.  In 2012, amidst the echoes of the Jasmine Revolution in my homeland, Tunisia, my family and I sought refuge in the lands of America. Leaving the only family we had ever known behind, with tears streaming down our cheeks and my doll clutched to my chest, we began our journey to the United States, with hope for a future where a proper education was within reach and safety was not a luxury. As fate would have it, we found our future home in the Bay Area, where streaks of gold and bronze of the predominant Asian community formed the background of my childhood. And frankly, I felt like I was a belonging subtle brush stroke amidst many on the canvas, this tapestry that had started to feel like home; my Desi friends and neighbors of the gold and bronze hues, my new family. It was in my formative years, however, as I neared my final years of elementary, that things began to shift. I started to not

          It wasn’t until pretty recently that I learned just how sheltered I really was. Maybe a month and a half ago, I flew to Pennsylvania for a summer camp at UPenn. There I would receive the largest culture shock of my life.      Except for the occasional vacation, I had never been in a large city, especially not without a parent hovering over me, constantly forcing me to smile for what felt like the fifth consecutive photo in 15 minutes, or reminding me that I have at least 50 more questions to go in my math workbook, or whatever the torture device of the vacation was.      Aside from the big city, even bigger city lights (the construction site next to my dorm window really liked shining industry-grade laser-beams straight into my room), and my temporary liberation, the greatest shock for me, wasn’t the occasional substance usage, or people my age dating, but the lack of Asians. (Graph by Wikipedia, Data from 2020 US Census)      In Fremont, Asians make up roughly two-thirds of

  Ever since I got into photography, I have been studying pictures to help learn about editing and just taking photos in general. One thing that I noticed is how pictures are a type of language in itself and each photo is unique with its own identity. The type of photography only slightly makes a picture different from others. Every picture has its own backstory and way of telling it. The story a picture can tell is its way of speaking, basically its own language, as seen in these two pictures I took.   Both pictures here have their own backstories on why or how I took them. The patience it took for the one on the left. I had to wait for the fish at the perfect moment. I was just sitting there for around 15 minutes just waiting for my fish to see the singular piece of food I put out and it worked out in my favor. The bigger picture may just seem like a lot of fish that are trying to eat the food I put out, but the more you pay attention to it the more you can see how some of the other

     Last weekend, I was getting ready for an Onam celebration, a festival that celebrates the good harvest of Kerala, India. I stood in front of the mirror making sure my half sari was draped perfectly as my mom clipped jasmine flowers to the back of my hair. As I looked at my reflection, I realized that I felt the most beautiful when representing my culture. This made me think about how just a couple years ago, the same moment would have brought me disgust.       Being born in India, I was exposed to its culture from birth. The spicy and flavorful food, the practice of eating with our hands, T.V shows like Chota Bheem , Indian music and more. There is so much to love about our beautiful culture but when I moved to America, I resented it. When we first came to the U.S, we moved to a city in California that had a majority of a white population. Slowly, I started making changes in my life in order to fit in with the crowd. I asked my mom to give me sandwiches instead of masala dosa, I s

In my preparations for the SAT, I came across a practice reading passage about illusory superiority. The passage explained that the term refers to the tendency of people to overestimate their skill in relation to others. Immediately, I began to question why so many people had this false sense of confidence.

  From my childhood, all I remember is going to my white best friend’s house and his grandma feeding me mac n cheese and McDonald’s, the true American dream. But that wasn’t all I was. I remember one day during 6th grade, I looked into the mirror and stared at my reflection; I was confused “Why did I look like that?” It is not like I grew up bullied or outcast for my race but I was so disconnected from my culture that I simply didn’t understand what made up the reflection in the mirror.  The only time I would celebrate my Chinese heritage was during Chinese New Year but as the years passed my family stopped celebrating it as fully as before. The festivities went from New Year’s dinner, making and eating dumplings together as a family while watching the Chinese New Year's spring festival to just eating dumplings my mom made by herself. Despite the lack of influence from my parents to teach me the ways of the Chinese, I never grew to hate my culture; although I was a little too indif

Recently, last Wednesday to be exact, I had my 2nd period Chinese class. We were partnering up to do an assignment, where one of us would have to go up to the board to read the words, and then the other would write down the characters. We would then switch. Right when the teacher explained what we were going to do, I knew I was going to get bullied for my horrid deficiency in Chinese writing skills. We had a total of about ~30 minutes? Immediately after being told "get to work" from the teacher, I volunteered to be the reader so I could potentially avoid the embarrassment of writing horribly. There were about 50 words on the board —  about 25 words each, where after we finished the 25 words we would then switch. The hardest part about reading the words, in my opinion, was going up to the board and coming back to report the words to your partner so they could write it. Anyways, I was reading kinda slowly because this was a review of some of the words from last year (which I fo

I found out that China had a national conversation about how foreigners made a better movie representing Chinese culture than they could just because of Kung Fu Panda . And as silly as it sounds, part of why I think Kung Fu Panda is so good is because the trilogy is really great at exploring the meaning of identity. Po goes through multiple character developments and each movie introduces a different aspect to the question: "Who am I?"  The first film showcases what makes you different makes you strong. Po is seen as useless. He's only ever served noodles in his dad's restaurant, and his dream of kung fu is treated like a joke. When Po is chosen as the Dragon Warrior, the Furious Five and Master Shifu expect Po to conform to their preconceptions. Since he sucks at fighting, they try to get him to quit, only to be countered by Po’s enthusiastic persistence and humor. https://kungfupanda.fandom.com/wiki/Oogway?file=PoOogwayDW.jpg Master Shifu asks why Po won't qui

                                                                                                        Identity and Learning Languages I consider language and identity to be interwined with each other because language is a large part of my identity. Being bilingual is a large part of my identity because it helps me experience two cultures at once. When I visit India, being able to speak Tamil helps me learn more about my friends and family, and it is much easier to learn more about my culture when I am able to speak my language fluently. Growing up being exposed to two cultures was an interesting experience, because I got to compare the similarities and differences between different cultures. While India is a diverse country and has more than twenty two languages, being able to speak one of these languages has made it easier for me to experience Indian culture and learn more about how it affects my own identity. For example, I am able to experience both the American and Indian film