HUNTER COLLEGE > WHITE HOUSE > #DARTMOUTH // no. 3 // The activists at Dartmouth get pushback from this Greek life dominated ivy campus. Terms like "Social Justice Warriors" and "political correct" are used as put down their work. These are the students organizing Pan-Asian Pacific American activities during heritage month and the ones pushing for #AsianAmericanStudies. By inviting me to their campus, it is one of the few spaces carved out JUST FOR THEM. I made fun of the white students in the audience and joked not to worry about them because they'll be just fine when they walk back out into the larger college campus. This is the truth. Our worries are different. And we need space to share notes and uplift each other. The Asian American student group had put up a long chain of self portraits like the one, strung up in the atrium of Collis, one of the student centers. I noticed the title was LOVING #MyAsianAmericanStory (inspired by fellow champ Jason Fong's Internet campaign). It's of each student looking in the mirror with a defiant statement about their identity written on the mirror. Seeing this made me a little sad. The undercurrent to this display is that as Asian Pacific Americans we need to affirmatively see ourselves in a LOVING way. That this is a pushing back to the many UNLOVING messages that we hear and that we tell ourselves.

I want a world where this type of defiant act of self-love is no longer necessary for our happiness and survival. The students at Dartmouth laughed hard and long at my show. Then some of us got really good gelato. A solid evening spent.