WHAT IS YOUR IMMIGRATION STORY?

Jason Chu is a rapper.

I'm Chinese. My family's ethnically Chinese but I really see myself as Asian American. My parents both came here for college in the 70s, my dad came from Thailand and my mom came from Malaysia. The Chinese diaspora can be so large and varied. There's so much shared culture, and there's also so many unique experiences. So, from my parents who grew up Chinese in Southeast Asia, their experiences were very much colored by being minorities in another country but minorities with some cultural and social privileges. I grew up in this environment that was really more, if anything, racial then ethnic. Growing up in a pretty white suburb of Delaware, I really identified with just diverse Asian Americans around me. I knew I was Asian, I knew there were some cultural traditions my family had, but really more than anything, I felt a kinship with other people who had similar experiences in society as me. So, we had Vietnamese friends, Korean friends, some Chinese friends and really it was more about finding a kinship with people, who'd gone through similar things. Even where we came from was different. What we went through in America felt like it brought us together.

My parents came here, like so many families after 1965, really because this was a place where economy was flourishing. It was opportunity, there was education. Because after World War Two, America had established itself as sort of the world power. So, my parents came here because they felt like this was the place with the most resources and opportunity to build something for their family in their future. 

WHAT DOES YOUR CURRENT JOURNEY LOOK LIKE?

I like to call Los Angeles, Asian American Atlanta, the same way that my Black friends, when they go to Atlanta, they feel home. Even if they're not from the South even, if they've never been in a community like that before, there's so many of my Black American friends who come to Atlanta and they feel a sense of being at home, of being around people who may not understand their home culture. But understand something about Blackness. There's a whole culture in community there. In the same way, I moved to LA specifically because I knew I wanted to make music and do activism in an Asian American community that was informed, that was large, that was supportive. And that's what've found in LA. I've found friends who are in everything from fashion, to education, to government. And being around a community that has so much potential has let me put down my roots and build my life and career in a way that feels very much me rather than anywhere else where the opportunities just one exist in the same way.

I'm really grateful to my mom for raising my sister and me to never see ourselves as a racial "other." What we would always hear from my mom growing up was, if there's something we're doing that's different from society, that's wrong, and we're right. And that's actually what still fuels my activism. I'm really grateful that I've never felt like being marginal, makes us lesser or should make us doubt ourselves. But in fact, I've always been taught from my mom that when we're doing something different than how the social norms are, it's because we're holding for our values, and we believe in something that not everybody is going to understand.

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