2 minute read
Why I Majored
Meeting Asian America, Meeting Myself
Photos courtesy of Jamelah Jacob.
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BY JAMELAH JACOB ‘21, APIA major Editor in Chief
As 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. 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.
meeting my Asian America
I. In the third grade, yellow has never looked brighter. This elementary school canvas too generous for shine, but still cruel enough to remind me of dullness. I hold a boy’s hand for the first time; my fingers, in his, stick out like autumn trees in cruel winter. I learn that my curious, colorful body just ventured into ocean I did not yet understand. I do not yet understand, but that year I learned.
II. Or was it in 1968? When she and you and they and he crossed lines like bridges? San Francisco skyline so bright I won’t forget it. Can’t. In the city’s calm, a choir erupts. The border is thinned to thread, snaps at the sound of your voice. Voices shout for freedom, basking in the fog we created. The question burns blood, fiery fuel for the fight to belong here - I still dream of 1968, let every image play through the night. In the morning it lives on - coffee stains of revolution on the tips of my tired, callused fingers, still wary of who they touch.
