Here’s a sampling of my reported work.
The state of California’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has led to some messy tradeoffs. In late January 2021, the state pivoted to an age-based distribution strategy. And in so doing, they pivoted away from folks with high-risk disabilities, who say that officials and neighbors have failed them time and again during this pandemic.
After I started following the #HighRiskCA hashtag, I reached out to folks on Twitter to see if anyone who’d been homebound by the virus would want to talk to me. Within an hour two, I’d heard back from Mimi Newman, who’s only been past her front gate three times since March 6th, 2020.
This is my very first reported feature, and I have to say: I’m really proud of it. You can also read the digital writeup here.
One thing about me, I’ll always go up for immigrant/first-generation writers. While at KUOW, this is a pair of interviews I got to conduct with two artists whose work lives in both images and words.
Jane Wong’s show at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum is built around a poem of hers called “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly.” We spoke about the poem, and the imagery that anchored it in the gallery space. A giant gold table filled with bowls that still spell hunger. A chandelier made of plastic bags in a nod to immigrant hoarding. A neon sign blaring the go-to greeting of her family: HAVE YOU EATEN YET?
We spoke about gluttony and hunger, and the silences that seep into the generational relationships of immigrants who arrive here to work for a better life. This is maybe my favorite thing I’ve hosted - it stayed in my head, but it lives in my heart. You can view a full transcript here.
Like me, artist Malaka Gharib grew up being asked, “What are you?” Unlike me, having grown up in a very diverse part of the country, she saw the question as one of respect and care for complex identities.
Gharib is Filipino-Egyptian-American. In her graphic memoir I Was Their American Dream, she explores what it meant to carry her parents’ hopes on her shoulders, alone, while never quite finding a place with others whose identities have fewer hyphens.
Her drawings are delightful and wry; my favorite page was a grid listing different behaviors and categorizing them as American, Filipino, or Egyptian. One of the only ones that checked all boxes was eating with your hands (thanks, pizza!) You can read the transcript of our conversation here.
This is the first thing I ever made that aired on the radio! In 2015 I was the TA and story doctor for a documentary project in the Mills College intermediate public radio course. (You can tell I had my hands on it because it is chock full of immigrants and feelings.) Called “Waking Up From the American Dream,” the stories told the stories of an Oakland becoming less diverse by the day.
I helped line up speakers, reviewed scripts, and facilitated introductions at Oakland International High School. And I made this piece, about an unaccompanied refugee minor named Nor Kathem. At 20, Kathem found himself at the intersection of the foster care system and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, rapidly running out of time.
“Being a refugee is a surprise,” he said reflectively. “You don't choose it. It's just a must. And there's no words that would describe being a refugee. And there's no feelings [that] would describe it.” You can read the full digital writeup here.