Students from Ball State University, Purdue and IU-Purdue University Indianapolis joined IU-Bloomington students Saturday in Hodge Hall to participate in this year’s Indiana Asian American Association conference, entitled Embracing Asian/Pacific American Aspirations.
For six years, the student-led IU Asian American Association has organized the only Asian American and Pacific Islander conference in Indiana. The goal of the conference is to foster intercultural understanding in the Midwest and inspire open discussions related to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The conference featured author Ken Liu as the keynote speaker, a panel of Asian American and Pacific Islander professionals and interactive workshops on advocacy, privilege and power.
President of the Asian American Association of IU and writer Grace Yang said she suggested inviting Liu as the keynote speaker because she was impressed by how the stories in his book, “The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories,” address issues of cultural identity and can be very moving for readers.
During his talk, Liusaid he was always interested in being a writer but worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer and litigation consultant before becoming a full-time writer.
Liu told attendees that narratives create order out of the contingency and randomness of life. He spoke about one story not having the power to represent a whole culture and he called for more representation, writers and stories.
“We are the authors of our own fates, our own epic fantasies,” Liu said.
Meloddy Gao, social advocacy chair of Asian American Association of IU, organized the partnership with OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates for the conference and moderated a panel discussion on professional development, diversity and microaggressions in the workplace. The panel featured IU alumnus Jelling Lai, program manager for Cummins Distribution Business; Chris Li, president of Micro-Tech Endoscopy; Justin Thammachack, data analytics and data engineer for Cognizant; and Daniel Park, graduate assistant at the Asian Culture Center.
Lai said she is an introvert but speaks up as a leader by thinking about who she is advocating for. Learn to lead yourself before you lead others, she said.
Kent Tong, program associate of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, said Asian American and Pacific Islanders are the fastest growing minority group in the country, but also the least politically organized. Through his involvement with the Vietnamese Student Association at Loyola University New Orleans, Tong said he developed an interest in political advocacy and professional development.
OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates has partnered with the Southeast Asian Deportation Defense Network to support Southeast Asian Americans and their families.
“As a Cambodian refugee myself, I understand the incredible hardships and struggle that many had to sustain their families while also dealing with the trauma of war,” Rita Pin Ahrens, executive director of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, said in a press release. “It’s inhumane to now forcibly separate them from their families and upheave the lives that they have built here.”
IUPUI junior Katherine Shr said advocacy for diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander communities is crucial in Indiana.
“If we don’t do something about it, then who will,” Shr said.
