Meeting Asian America,
Meeting Myself
Photos courtesy of Jamelah Jacob.
BY JAMELAH JACOB ‘21, APIA major Editor in Chief
A
s I enter my senior year next fall, I am preparing to tackle a creative honors thesis project in Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies, where my end product will take the form of a poetry collection written by me. If you told me freshman year that I would be pursuing poetry for my APIA major, I would simply laugh. But among the many different ways studying APIA has impacted me, what has been the most transformative is that it has allowed me to call myself a writer, and more specifically, a poet. It was in APIA where I learned how much I do not know and how much I want to seek that knowledge.
22 Art & Hatsuye
Where I have found so many of the answers I seek is in my poet’s voice, something that would never have been possible if not for my introduction to a repertoire of Asian American literature in my APIA classes. It is in APIA where I constantly and so fortunately realize the limits and reality of my learning: endless, beautiful, and ultimately mine. My name is Jamelah, I’m a Filipino American, a proud APIA major, and a poet.
