By Shelly Chen, 8 Asians
During my 2nd year of college, an organization called API Equality-LA came to my school to conduct a training. They were advocates of LGBT rights in Asian and Pacific Islander communities, and I remember being simultaneously intrigued and terrified; excited that such an organization existed, but afraid of anything that might expose my queer identity.
Shelly Chen
Fast forward a few years. I was going through what some might call a quarter life crisis – I was a senior, I had dropped the career path I’d been on for years, and I had no idea what I was going to do after graduation. After much reevaluating, I concluded that: 1. Being queer and Asian American were integral parts of my identity, and I wanted to do social justice work in those communities, and 2. In order to be myself and do the work I wanted to do, it was important for me to come out to my parents before I graduated.
During my last semester of college, I signed up for a class taught by an L. Lopez. Fortuitously, Lori Lopez was a member of API Equality-LA and had facilitated the training I attended two years before. She brought a flyer for API Equality-LA’s Coming Out Workshop to class one day, and I immediately took it as a sign. It was a month before graduation, and here was this workshop just for queer APIs who wanted to come out to their families. I resolved to take the first step towards coming out and attend.
Once there, I felt extremely overwhelmed, but in the best possible way. Being surrounded by queer API folks was empowering in itself, especially because many of the queer spaces I’d been in before were predominantly white. Although it was an unfamiliar room full of unfamiliar faces, I felt more at home there than I had anywhere else in a long time.
Read the full article by Shelly Chen of 8 Asians.
