The home my family and I have forged and nurtured is a remnant of our histories. When I was a kid, my parents chastised me when I spoke English in the house, told me the occasional ancient Korean myth during story time, fed me jjigae and banchan, and when I grew older, taught me about our past, especially Korea’s turbulent and oppressive 20th century (including the dictatorship, coup and military regime they grew up under). They ensured that, though I may be a gyopo, I would remain committed to my roots. I grew up in the Korean immigrant community, spending Friday nights at whichever first- generation parents hosted that weekend, moms chatting over coffee, dads playing poker and drinking beer and their kids and I chasing each other around and pretending to cast random spells from the “Harry Potter” series on each other. And I grew up observing how my parents’ marginalization was markedly different from my own as a native English speaker, when their accent wasn’t “respectable” enough to some; my mom sometimes jostling me awake from a nap by shoving the landline in my face and gesturing frantically when in need of translation, while you could practically hear the bank teller or insurance representative — whomever it was at the time — rolling their eyes through the signal. The home I grew up in was intrinsically an immigrant household: my parents, by turns naturally and very intentionally, enshrined my Korean identity and the memory of their displacement in my being and sense of selfhood. And now most of my friends, the people I gravitate to, are children of immigrants like me. I consider my support for immigrant justice to number among the few beliefs that glue me together, but recently I was forced to confront, for the first time, the fact that I had never once actively pondered with any intention and time even one of the many reasons why I stand with immigrants of all nations. I realized this on November 2, when the Student Community of Progressive Empowerment (SCOPE), a University of Michigan student organization dedicated to advocacy and support for immigrants and undocumented students, held a day of action at the Shapiro Undergraduate Library in collaboration with the U-M Beta Omicron chapter of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, to promote their “I Stand With Immigrants” initiative. I lingered awkwardly at their table for a couple minutes that felt much longer, when finally a couple SCOPE volunteers approached me. They greeted me with warmth and entreated me to fill out an index card for their posting wall in response to the prompt “I stand with immigrants because…” My support for immigrants has always been an automatic and instinctive conviction, one which requires no debate or second thoughts — so the question of why I stand with immigrants took me aback. I feel similarly born into the question of why write? To put pen to paper has always been a ritual for me — one which I have often taken for granted. As an eight-year-old, I used to write endless “novels” that were essentially poorly plagiarized amalgamations of whatever fantasy or science fiction series I was consuming at the moment — horrible dystopian time travel thrillers about plucky white women with dumb names like Eliza Hunt — until my right hand cramped and the flesh where it met my pen was flushed and stamped with the BIC logo, and my mom insisted I set my binder down. And when I learned how to write Korean at the age of seven, I tried, briefly and also wildly unsuccessfully, to write stories in the hangeul characters. I wrote one about a 나나 나나, or “tree monster,” that had barely any premise beyond the fact that I thought the phrase 나나 나나 (“namu gwaemul”) sounded cool in my head. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com To write myself into existence Graduation Edition 2023 — 9 Read more at MichiganDaily.com Michigan in Color A letter to my future self JESSICA KWON 2022 MiC Managing Editor It was a ceremonial and cinematic day in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango. The streets were flooded with families observing the ceremonies taking place throughout the city. At every angle of our peripheral, there were bandas playing corridos, food trucks selling elotes and raspados and a desfile full of mariachi bands accompanied with young women dressed in folklórico attire. We were making our way to the feria, which for many was the main attraction of the festivities. Though the cloudy weather may have discouraged many from being outside, there was no denying that the people of Santiago Papasquiaro were not going to miss the first day of their esteemed and most anticipated fair. Since I was in the sixth grade, my family and I traveled to my parents’ hometown in Mexico every year. The month of July attracted not only a lot of domestic visitors, but a lot of other Mexican-American families that had ties to the state of Durango. I felt immensely joyous to be standing on the soil where generations of my family had grown up. Except in 2016, I wasn’t really there. I was in the middle of nowhere Montana. The date was July 16. The frightening noise of my phone’s alarm jolted me awake at 4:30 in the morning. Reality quickly sank in, and I was upset that I was not a part of the vibrant crowd marching down the streets of Santiago Papasquiaro. Rather than spending the summer in Mexico visiting my abuelitas and primos, my dad insisted that my brother Oscar and I spend a couple of months with him in Montana to work at his construction site—the very opposite of Durango. The wind blew loudly through the many valleys and mountaintops of America’s ninth least populated state. Within those blue, green and gray valleys was scattered, sparse and rundown infrastructure. The very limited civilization seemed so insignificant when contrasted to the vastness of the state’s nature. People displayed classic American cordiality, of course, but rarely the hospitality and colors I had witnessed in Mexico just a year prior. At 15 years old, the thought of making my own money seemed promising and offered some financial freedom my peers were not afforded. After doing my own research on the up and coming state, I learned that many other construction workers ventured to the Great Plains state of Montana and made really good money. Hell, I was excited! Little did I know what I was getting myself into. After two months of working with my dad, I somehow failed to get used to the monotonous routine he went through every morning. The pesky alarm, pungent smell of the drywall and joint compound boxes scattered throughout our temporary apartment competed with my overwhelming drowsiness from my lack of sleep. We had returned home from the construction site at 1:30 a.m., a few hours prior, so it was extremely difficult for me to find some sort of motivation to keep my eyes open. On the other hand, my dad had no problem with getting less than three hours of sleep. He somehow managed to wake up in a radiant mood every morning. Every other day, he would wake up earlier than the rest of the crew and buy us all donuts from the nearest 7-Eleven. It annoyed me so much in my tired grumpiness. How the hell did he do it? He urged Oscar and me to hurry because he did not want us to be late on our last day of work. My dad has worked in construction for more than 30 years. In those three decades, he has mastered the craft of drywall finishing. Construction workers who specialize in this are referred to as tapers. Though the task of a taper is considered by many other construction workers to be one of the least physically demanding, the monotonous task of smearing joint compound across hundreds of different units still felt extremely strenuous. I had no idea how my dad, at the age of 54, remained poised through these conditions. Although my dad is nearing the age in which he becomes eligible for the plethora of benefits all elderly Americans are entitled to, my dad’s citizenship status deems him ineligible of receiving these perks. A summer in the construction boots of my father IRVING PEA MiC Columnist Sitting in a Detroit cafe, I’m currently typing away as I listen to a trio of middle-aged men jokingly bicker about their orders getting switched. “I ordered the cheese!” “No, I swear it was me!” A pause as they continue chewing. The silence breaks: “We’re good though.” And laughter commences. I may be wrong, but something tells me that they’ve been friends for a while, a thought that puts a smile on my face as I sip my coffee, continue to type away and wait for my dad to pick me up from the A2D2 bus. This year is the final one of my undergraduate career, and it seems like every passing day brings me closer and closer to a reality that simultaneously excites me but also frightens me: change. As a senior still recruiting for a full-time career (pity me!!!!), there’s a lot of ambiguity about what next year will look like. I have my goals: purposeful work, the Big Apple and frequent trips back home. Translating those goals into specificity is what’s proven to be difficult, and there’s an undeniable sense of anxiety in thinking about what will last after this hurricane of change takes place — what will remain in the eye of the storm? This train of thought isn’t necessarily comforting, which brings me to you. Or me, I should say. How are we? Let’s say it’s us 10 years from now. We’re at 31, letting everyone who’ll listen know that “actually, your thirties are the new twenties!” Did we get that J.D.? Have we started the family? Do we see Sara, Rubab, Mama and Papa almost every other day? I wonder if we’ve grown tired of New York at some point, the city that we swore up and down since age 11 was made for us; the city that we knowingly nod about when someone says, “You just give New York vibes.” InshAllah, there are some things that I know are true, simply because we’ll work to make them so. I’ll have my space and still see the Imtiaz clan frequently. I’ll get my J.D., because we told ourselves we would. Potlucks with Inaya and Mits may look different, but I know we’ll somehow find a way to bring an item from the classic menu every time. My friend Kat wrote about perceiving time in a non-linear sense, and, as always, her words have left an impact on me long after I initially read them. Apprehension of being on the precipice of capital A adulthood is understandable, but I’m trying to think that, barring unforeseen circumstances, we can always find a sense of stasis in any future universe. In a weird way, because I can see the future in this way, I’m determined to make it happen. So in writing to us, I know that maybe things aren’t picture perfect, rose-colored glasses, but I do know that things are. I think therefore I am, a really novel thought, right? Regardless, given that reality, we can keep on keeping on. Suddenly, the record scratches. I know we’ll have these cycles though. I wonder if we’ll still use every word beyond the it-word. Sad, melancholic, dejected (a personal fav), despondent, going on and on until the thesaurus.com suggestions expire. The reality remains that life will probably still be difficult as it will still be beautiful. We’ll call Marie in the wee hours of the night, and trade theories as to why it is that we think so much. Hopefully by then we won’t be so embarrassed of that fact. Still, you and I will probably scoff at “Everything happens for the best,” and immediately correct it with “Everything happens.” The only control is yourself and your faith. Currently, I’ve come to learn that life hits us with various circumstances, good and bad. We aren’t guaranteed the Good Life, but we’re guaranteed life, the basis of which we can forge our reality from. Does that mentality change throughout the years for us? I’m sure the pendulum still swings back and forth, teetering between chasing what we want and accepting our reality. Shit, you’re just 31 — we’re still figuring it out. In that sense, life is like people. Sixth-grade debate class had us argue the pressing question on Schoology posts, “Are humans inherently good or inherently bad?” We’d type away until meeting the minimum of three sentences and maximum of five, some arguing we’re born angelic, others claiming we’re naturally evil. Like some (not many) things, the answer is probably in the middle: we have the capacity to be both good and bad. And internalizing this perspective of free-will morality has helped me reframe any pessimism of how life sometimes just sucks. ELIYA IMTIAZ 2022 MiC Managing Editor Attending a 9 a.m. lecture. Setting up a table at the Posting Wall. Printing out a last-minute essay. Gathering for a student organization meeting after hours. As students at the University of Michigan, we spend so much of our time in Angell Hall, but how many of us actually know who James Burrill Angell is and what his legacy entails? Learned pieces of the University’s history seem to be met exclusively with shock and disappointment from students, faculty and alumni, and my moral outrage is growing weary. As a third-year student, each passing term’s revelations have left me with more to consider in regards to my relationship to this institution and its roots. I feel tainted with remorse for the countless survivors of sexual misconduct denied their due justice. I stand in solidarity with the unmet needs of the Graduate Employees’ Organization and the Lecturers’ Employee Organization from an inadequate reopening plan. I remain appalled by the historically racist and exploitative practices of the Order of Angell, an exclusive senior honor society that disbanded just this past spring. Most of all, I am frustrated at the lack of accountability taken by the administration to address an imperfect history of the Leaders and the Best. Over the course of the past month, members from my organization South Asian Awareness Network came together with organizers from the United Asian American Organizations, Central Student Government and LSA Student Government to discuss the legacy of former University President James B. Angell and the memorialization of his name to one of the highest-traffic student buildings on campus. Each week’s meetings worked toward brainstorming and planning a response to appropriately address his legacy. Here’s what we came up with: a CSG resolution draft calling for the removal of Angell’s name from the University building, a teach-in and dialogue surrounding the present-day implications of Angell’s history, and a cultural fashion show on the steps of Angell Hall in celebration and reclamation of a space that the late president himself may not have expected our presence in. For context, Angell held a 38-year term as the president of the University and was a nationally recognized leader in higher education, bringing in record number enrollments and increasing accessibility for many students. In addition to his presidency, Angell served as a U.S. ambassador to China during which he re-negotiated the Burlingame Treaty. While this treaty endorsed immigration at the high point of U.S.-China relations, the Treaty of Angell recognized the U.S. government’s power to regulate the immigration of Chinese laborers due to domestic economic tension. As American Culture professor Ian Shin explained during the mid- November teach-in, Angell signed on to this treaty out of a sense of public duty as opposed to actual support for exclusion. Regardless of his initial hesitations to sign, the Treaty of Angell paved the way for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, one of the most racist immigration bills in American history. Regardless of his intent to bring students on campus together, the secret society Order of Angell — formerly known as Michigamua — eventually became known for its profane appropriation of Native American culture and its notoriously racist and elitist nature. President James B. Angell may have been a moral centrist, but the consequences of his neutrality leave a permanent mark on the University’s history. Is this someone worth memorializing? On Nov. 17, 2021, CSG’s ongoing resolution passed for the renaming of the University building Angell Hall and Angell Scholar Award. While I consider this a necessary step in the right direction, I can’t help but admit to a qualm I’ve had since the teach- in. As Professor Shin encouraged us to consider the various ways we may address the problematic legacies of historical figures, he gave an example of a previous name removal at the University: the North University Building was originally named after University President Clarence Cook (C.C.) Little in 1968, up until 2018. Little held a brief, unaccomplished term as University president from 1925 to 1929. He was a geneticist who actively promoted eugenics, the sterilization of the “unfit,” and called for immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws. Addressing Angell EASHETA SHAH MiC Columnist Jessica Kwon/MiC Read more at MichiganDaily.com Eliya Imtiaz/MiC Zoe Zhang/MiC Read more at MichiganDaily.com Design by SoJung Ham Read more at MichiganDaily.com ARTS over the YEARS SEPTEMBER 1 — A Michigan in Color Manifesto: “We urge all readers to continue to learn and unlearn. Continue to question the systems that we are voluntarily and involuntarily a part of. Continue to readjust your lens when a new angle is presented — having the difficult conversations along with the joyful ones.” FEBRUARY 1 — From the joint desk of Michigan in Color and Groundcover News: Michigan in Color and Groundcover News present a special collaboration, intended to raise awareness about Washtenaw County’s unhoused community and their experiences, and forge a connection with the U-M community. FEBRUARY 1 — The Black Hair Series: With the mission to showcase the “multifaceted nature of Black hair,” 16 Black U-M students, alongside two barbers and hairstylists, are interviewed, recorded and photographed to gain insight on their own stories and personal hair journeys. 2021 MAY 18 — Michigan in Color Collective Statement on Palestine: “The Michigan in Color community strives to emphasize and embody how the pursuit for justice and liberty anywhere in the world will never be in vain. We will continue the struggle for freedom until every human, in every corner of the globe, is free.” APRIL 6 — A statement from MiC on anti-Asian violence: “Moving forward, the Michigan in Color team will continue to commit itself to being diligent about speaking out against systemic and interpersonal oppression in a timely and truthful manner. We owe it to the communities we serve to write and report meticulously on the issues as they unfold.” MiC over the YEARS 2022 2023 2020 Queer in Color — Michigan in Color releases Queer in Color, a space to amplify Queer students of color voices through forms of creative expression. All work featured in Queer in Color is created by Queer MiC members or collaborators. NOVEMBER 2: Michigan in Color hosts its first annual Open MiC Night on the Diag — On October 5, Michigan in Color hosts its first arts expo, showcasing the talents of many students of Color. The night includes a variety of art forms including music, dance, spoken word, stand up comedy and a static art display.