AAYP 2018 Youth Ambassadors Scholarship
Katherine Hui
Submission Title: “Fresh Off the Boat”
“My grandfather has calluses on his fingertips where his youth used to be, under nails bitten raw.” That is the first line of a poem I wrote for a social justice English assignment in junior year: a piece of creative writing which permeates this life-sized watercolor self-portrait and becomes crucial to both its composition and concept.
In this art piece, I depicted myself holding a scroll revealing the Chinese proverb “一帆风顺” (smooth sailing) while sitting in my bedroom, my personal space of creativity. Characterized by exaggerated textures that resemble rough waters, words and phrases related to Asian-American stereotypes are factors to the turbulence. The strong backlight illuminating the inspirational proverb emphasizes the hopes and motivations of immigrants to achieve the American Dream, yet the irony in this piece—and in society—lies in the constant struggle against myths and stereotypes like being the “model minority” that oppress our community.
After I listened to my parents’ and grandparents’ stories of immigrating to America and confronting language barriers, I weaved together my family’s immigrant threads into an artistic tapestry in the form of a poem. I translated several lines into Chinese to transcend language barriers, conveying the common theme in the poem from which the title of the poem was drawn from: “dry tongues.” In the last stanza, I tie together the loose ends with a personal bullying incident where I was victimized by damaging stereotypes in fourth grade, the first time I internally conflicted with my identity as an Asian-American. As a young artist and writer who is becoming more informed and active about contemporary issues, I hope to find new dimensions to one sided stories and change the Asian-American narrative in society with this piece. In the act of foraging missing connections through art and writing, I hope to reconcile with struggles—both internal and external—my family and I face daily.