What is culture really?
On identity, heritage, and why cultural work has to come from the inside
This AAPI month, I’ve been thinking a lot about identity and culture.
I identify as half-Asian, but my mother is Chinese from Trinidad. She didn’t grow up learning Chinese traditions, food, or language. She grew up on roti, meat patties, steel drum bands, and spoke English, French & Spanish.
So…what does that make her? And more so, what the hell does that make me?
Culture isn’t a box you fit into.
It’s something you carry, remix, and pass down.
My mother is proof of that.
Her identity was never less whole for not fitting a single cultural mold. It was fuller. It was vibrant, eclectic, unexpected.
In today’s world—especially in the US—people are literally being pulled off the streets and locked in cages for being different. For having different backgrounds, coming from different places, possessing different points of view.
It’s insanity.
But the resistance is here. And the people will not go quietly into the good night. The fight starts with celebration. With owning your identity, no matter how obscure, messy, or misunderstood.
Let it be loud. Let it take up space. Let it be shouted from the rooftops: this is who I am. This is where I come from. And I’m not going to make myself smaller to make others feel more comfortable.
For a lot of us, that's not optional. That's necessary.
Little me (a fashionista) and my younger brother Chris (who is also looking dapper af).
Culture deserves to be centered, not tokenized.
It matters who’s doing the work.
Too many brands show up for the celebration, for the pretty parts, without ever having walked a mile in those (very tired) shoes.
As a multicultural creative who grew up in LA but was born in NYC, I've lived my entire life inside culture. Multiple, overlapping, and none of them straightforward.
It’s not a credential I can just put on a resume. (Although that would be dope.)
It’s something I’ve carried in every room I’ve walked into, every brief I’ve responded to, every story I’ve helped tell.
That work can’t be faked.
Real resonance, a true sense of belonging, has to come from someone who carries it\.
Because celebration without experience isn’t enough.
We’re not there yet. But we’re working on it. From the inside.
