So Where Are We Really From?

We asked our listener community, “How did you learn where you come from?”

What came back was a wide range of personal stories about how tricky it can be to access our heritage. From kids going to culture camp, to adoptees making journeys to their birth countries, to Asian Americans of all ages realizing that they’re inevitably going to lose a piece of themselves — we explore how we fit in with what came before us and figure out what comes next.

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Resources and Recommended Reading

• Misha recommends that Self Evident listeners check out episode 2 of Tell Them, I Am, “Deana.”
• Read some of Ansley’s poetry, accompanied by her own visual artwork, on Culturestrike.
• If you’d like to participate in Henry’s Chinese geneaology workshop, e-mail Henry [dot] Tom [at] Cox [dot] net.
• Mark, one of the voices on today’s episode, has told the full story of his trip to find his birth record in Korea on this episode of the Escape from Plan A podcast.
• Check out Leading Youth Forward, Chicago Desi Youth Rising, NQAPIA, and APIENC to see examples of Asian American spaces for cultural and political education.
• To learn more about “Love Boat” and how it’s impacted Asian Americans, check out Valerie Soe’s documentary, Love Boat: Taiwan, which is touring film festivals across the country.

Shout Outs

Shout out to Yin Kong and Yin Mei of Think!Chinatown for inviting us to the workshop where we met Henry Tom.

Thanks to everyone from our listener community who shared their experiences with us in the making of this episode: Alice Chou, Davey Kim, Gabor Fu, Jenni Wong, Kathleen Burkinshaw, Lily Susman, Lori Wanko, Mark from Plan A, Mark Zastrow, Merk Nguyen, Michelle Chu, Rekha Radhakrishnan, Waverly Colville, and Win-Sie Tow.

And very special thanks to our advisors for this season of the show: Alex Laughlin, Anika Gupta, Blair Matsuura, Christina Choi, Davey Kim, and Ted Hsieh.

Credits

Produced by James Boo

Edited by Julia Shu and Cheryl Devall

Editorial support from Davey Kim

Production support by Jaye McAuliffe

Sound engineering by Timothy Lou Ly

Theme music by Dorian Love

Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound

Self Evident is a Studiotobe production. Season 1 is presented by the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), the Ford Foundation, and our listener community. Our show was incubated at the Made in New York Media Center by IFP.

About CAAM: CAAM (Center for Asian American Media) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible. CAAM does this by funding, producing, distributing, and exhibiting works in film, television, and digital media. For more information on CAAM, please visit www.caamedia.org. With support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, CAAM provides production funding to independent producers who make engaging Asian American works for public media.