The Asian Heritage Month Assembly, hosted by the Asian Student Union (ASU), kicked off with a choreographed dance by several members before covering a wide variety of topics, including Asian Fetishization, a spicy ramen challenge (eat some spicy ramen if you get a question right or wrong, depending on how much you love spicy ramen) AAPI cultural representation and cultural appropriation, AAPI artists, and a show stopping Bollywood dance segment.

^{The Bollywood dance number featuring many dancers and costumes.}

Isabella H. ’25, Kayley Y. ’25, Allison W. ’25, and Nadia M. ’25 reflected on their presentation on the topic of Asian Fetishization:

“We as a group are very passionate about bringing awareness to the subject of Asian Fetishization, as several of us have been witness to or victims of such stereotyping. Much of our research was directly drawn from our poster earlier in the year, and we worked together each week up until the presentation to write and revise our script and slides. Being able to present about such an important topic in front of the school definitely felt very cathartic. Next year, we hope to keep raising awareness for issues the Asian community faces.”

Posters created by ASU are available for viewing on their Instagram page (you can find the posters in the saved Instagram highlights) alongside posters sharing research on COVID-19 Asian Hate Crimes and The Model Minority Myth. Their instagram content also documents important issues, news, and useful  information for anyone hoping to learn more about the issues facing the AAPI community. 

A particularly memorable moment from the assembly was the Spicy Ramen Challenge: drawing on the growing Emma tradition of faculty and students competing at Morning Reports, competitors were challenged to answer trivia questions on various AAPI topics. If they missed an answer, or answered incorrectly, they had to eat some spicy ramen. However, the Emma campus community loves ramen, and the participants not only added additional spice to their cups but had a slurp even when they answered the questions correctly!

 

^{Director of Learning Support and spicy food fan Chris Ouellette gets ready for spicy ramen alongside Math Instructor Brett LaFave.}

One presentation detailing differences between cultural appropriation and appreciation offered suggestions and definitions for the audience on how to avoid the former, and embrace the latter:

• Buy cultural art created by someone from that culture 

• Share something you understand about your own culture through your art

• Learn/advocate about/for a culture that is misinterpreted

• Avoid making biased comments on a culture that you are not familiar with

• Respect other’s perspective on different cultures or cultural items 

• Support local cultural businesses

Other sections of the programming involved data from an anonymous student survey, to give our community a better understanding of the experiences of AAPI community members. 

This year, the assembly also added a new element: a movie fundraiser. A screening of Crazy Rich Asians took place over the weekend to raise funds towards AAPI Women Lead, and included bubble tea alongside Asian snacks and popcorn. 

“The Bollywood dance has become an unspoken ASU Assembly tradition,” says lead dancer Krisha J. ’23 “Dance connects the mind, body, and soul of a person… but in this case, it has also connected culture! My sophomore year, I remember thinking that it would be cool if we could share Indian culture to the community through dance, and realized, what better way to do it, than having the SASD and other members of the Emma community perform at the Assembly! So, I gathered members of the SASD and other friends who were interested in doing this.”

Finding time and space to rehearse was a challenge for each section of the assembly, but the large group for the bollywood dance was at times overwhelming (especially coordinating the schedules of busy Emma students). Krisha landed on holding two practices a week so that whoever was available could join when they could.

“So much hard work and time was put into this by all the members,” added Krisha. “The costumes, which were shipped from India, also took so much effort from my mother and her friend in India! However, we all had a lot of fun throughout this whole process, and the greatest joy of all has been hearing all the screams at the assembly which have shown how much people enjoyed the dance. This is a passion of mine and SASD, which is an activity that I feel engages the Emma community at large. I am excited to continue the tradition next year as well along with my friends!”

This was ASU’s faculty advisor, Chinese Instructor Guangyu Hao’s first time helping the students craft the assembly, and she emphasized the importance of balancing moments of joy and celebration with raising awareness about the harm experienced within the AAPI community.

“We tried to send a core message through the whole assembly that yes, we are celebrating, but the work isn’t done yet,” she says. “We want to raise awareness through the presentations, and that’s why we carefully picked topics students feel connected to—when they leave, they can have a direct impact carrying this information with them. We tried to give more information for after the assembly explaining  how everyone can have an impact.”

This also means that those involved in developing the programming for the assembly were mindful that they were giving information, but also putting on a show, and worked hard to set the pacing of the assembly.

ASU co-heads, Hanh N. ’24 and Sam Y. ’23 reflected on that aspect of the programming for this year’s assembly:

“The ASU Assembly is one of our club's largest events of the year, in which we further celebrate the diverse cultures of Emma while raising awareness about specific issues that pervade our community and beyond. This year, we wanted to create an assembly agenda that would be a good balance between performances/games and presentations, so we added fun things like the Spicy Ramen Challenge while keeping informative presentations about subjects like Asian Cultural Appropriation and Fetishization. Although it was hard to get such a large group of students together to rehearse and practice at times (especially because it is near the end of year), we believe that for all the craziness of May, we worked hard to coordinate and execute a meaningful but also enjoyable assembly!”

For additional coverage on the assembly, head over to SmugMug!