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WINNER, LEVEL 3 Victor Liu Saratoga

Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie Huang

What’s up Eddie?

I figured that starting this letter with a “Dear” and ending it off with a “Sincerely” or something along those lines wouldn’t be the right way to address a friend or a long-lost cousin that I haven’t met yet. But believe me, I’m not an Eminem-chasing Stan-I’m like you, just another Asian-American kid trying to navigate his way through the tangled maps of his immigrant parents’ American Dream. The only difference between us is that you’ve been in the driver’s seat of your journey for the past thirty-five years; I’ve just embarked on this voyage. Of course, I’ve seen you through my laptop screen on multiple episodes of Viceland’s Huang’s World and The Atlantic interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, but I think my first true connection with you happened between the front and back covers of your memoir-turned-TV-show, Fresh Off the Boat. Those 276 pages gave me a glimpse into the life of a modern Chinaman living next to Disney World-a universally relatable picture of a yellow boat finding its way to shore in a sea of rough, white waves. I gravitated towards Fresh Off the Boat because you, Eddie Huang, went against the grain. You were either too stubborn or too brave to think about repercussions before you acted out against subtle or not-to-subtle racism; regardless of what may have motivated you to slam Edgar’s hand into that microwave or to pummel AK’s face into the asphalt, I wish I had the guts to deal with what racism I faced at school or at Boy Scout summer camp (yeah I know, it’s painfully ironic). But, instead of fighting back like you gradually learned to do, I did absolutely nothing. I’m not completely condoning your exact response to racism, but I laud you for having one to begin with. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club attempted to connect me with an outdated mid-20th century Asian American experience that vaguely referenced the veiled racism Asians dealt with on a national level; your memoir immersed into a more contemporary, personal Asian-American narrative-you didn’t shy away from mentioning the “ching chong Eddie Huangs” and “chinky eyes.” Fresh Off the Boat was, and has been in a way, an unlikely and unconventional GPS to pilot my own Asian-American experiences. Enjoying and wanting to pursue writing and the humanities as an Asian-American living in the Bay Area had been more of an afterthought before I picked up Fresh Off the Boat; admittedly, I had incorrectly believed that we Asians were cookie-cuttered and formulaic, all destined to be doctors, computer engineers, lawyers or something in-between. When you dabbled in the streetwear industry and put your law career on an indefinite hold to open your restaurant and chase your passions, I was sold-I could be an Asian-American writer, just like you have been. I may not have had the courage to go against the grain to fight off (not physically of course) racism like you did, but I could at least go against the grain this time around and do what I wanted to do, not what my community told me to. And while critics have been quick to single out your colloquial tone, frequent usage of slang, and cryptic pop-culture references in the memoir, I think that has made it all the more impactful and transformative for my personal growth. You tell it like it is, no sugarcoating, like that heavy-handed “Asian parenting” with which we’ve become familiar. Fresh Off the Boat is a medicine that has let me take a bird’s eye view of our place as Asian-Americans in the midst of white-picket-fenced neighborhoods and underground hip-hop, and you don’t offer an accompanying spoonful of sugar. In many ways, I like to think that we’re two halves of the same Asian-American, second-generation boy. There are some tell-tale similarities in your memoir. You grew up idolizing Kareem and admiring his “ill sky hook;” I grew up kicking soccer balls and futilely attempting to “bend it like Beckham.” We both grew up loving tomatoes and egg cooked over rice, and we knew something was about to go down when our parents called us by our full Chinese names. We came to school with our stinky, exotic lunches and at one point, both wished we could trade our yellow skins, straight black hair, and hazel eyes for white skins, curly blonde hair, and those coveted sky blue eyes. And as always, we grew out of our desires to drench ourselves in shallow American whiteness with equally

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superficial excuses-you when you realized you couldn’t handle the macaroni and cheese, me when I realized wearing shoes in the house would make everything dirty. In other ways, I realized that we couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. Emery was your victim when you practiced RKOs and emulated other WWE moves; I was too scared to jump off the top of the slide onto the tanbark in a fast-paced game of playground lava monster. Your dad ruled the streets of Taipei with a .45, and your uncles compared their double barreled shotguns on lazy weekends; my parents have never seen-let alone touched-a firearm up close. You could, and probably still can, quote any O-Dog line from Menace II Society; I get weak at the sight of blood, whether it’s fake or real. You’re a Renaissance Man of sorts, but not in a stereotypical Asian sense. Instead of participating in math competitions and joining debate club in school, you tried out for the football team and almost single-handedly ran a restaurant. You needed to mature faster than you should have and lost part of your childhood to survive neighborhood bullies, overly demanding middle school football coaches, and the streets of a racist Orlando; I think I still have a lot of growing up to do-I’ve been lucky enough to avoid all of that in a community that ostensibly places education above everything else. But despite our differences, I also like to imagine that if we both grew up in the same circumstances on the same coast, we’d have more or less been the same person. And what made us different wasn’t nature, but rather nurture: that we shared desire to relentlessly chase our passions-you with your streetwear and restaurants, me with my writing-regardless of what our surrounding conditions might tell us to do, is a fundamental similarity that makes us more alike than we are different. I don’t think Fresh Off the Boat taught me how to definitely deal with racism. Just like you said, the “go back to your Chinas” will persist (you live in the heart of New York City, and you still get that at least three times a year!). Fresh Off the Boat did, however, teach me what no teacher or school textbook could: I learned to pick the path I wanted to follow on that labyrinthine map of our parents’ American Dream. So, I want to thank you for being an older brother and a role-model to Emery, Evan, and in a way, me too.

From one self-proclaimed human panda to another, Victor Liu

My hometown of Saratoga, California might be located at the center of the Silicon Valley, but my interests lie in the humanities. My desire to explore my passions beyond the technology and innovation, which I have been fortunate enough to be exposed to, through an Asian-American lens led me to read Eddie Huang’s Fresh Off the Boat and address my letter to him. In my free time, I am an Eagle Scout of my Boy Scout troop, a captain of my speech and debate team, an editor for the school newspaper, and an amateur poet/photographer. I really wish I could dunk a basketball on a standard NBA hoop, but unfortunately, not all of our dreams can come true.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Hayden Bixby Upland High School, Upland

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Dear Ms. Harper Lee,

My grandfather says he picked up his copy of your book right around when it was first published in 1960, right in the heyday of the civil rights movement. Your name has been in my family for three generations. He never read many books throughout his lifetime, but To Kill a Mockingbird was always the closest to his heart. My father and his parents worked endlessly to get my father into college in the 1980s, and when it finally happened, my grandfather gave him his old and tattered copy of the book. He read it one day while he was supposed to be studying for his midterms, and he says that his life changed forever because of it. I have never seen my grandpa’s copy of the book; my father has it stored somewhere in the garage. But my copy is fine, and the story that is held within its pages will never change. Before I read the book in seventh grade, I was very quick to make judgments about people as soon as I met them. I automatically assumed my new next-door neighbor was weird and creepy when they first moved in during sixth grade, just like how Scout automatically believes what Jem and Dill tell her about Boo Radley. If I learned anything from your book, it’s that very few people actually behave the way that they do upon your first impression of them. You have to look deeper to find out what that person is actually like. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout and Jem only realize what Boo Radley is actually like when he saves their lives by killing Bob Ewell before he gets to them. If they had only made more of an attempt to know the shy and elusive Boo they wouldn’t have been so shocked to find that he is actually the person who saved their lives. Back to present day: One tragic day, my dog nearly got ran over by a car. The person who saved my dog? The new next- door neighbor. He stopped the car just in time to save my dog’s life. I now have a new friend and got to keep my best friend as a result. It turns out that after my grandfather, father, and I read the book in our own separate times throughout history, something happened to each of us similar to my situation. We all met people who we judged wrong, and only realized it when the person performed an act of kindness for us. The theme of the book shaped each of us into a better person, and I thank you very much for that. I hope to give this book to my child one day so they can have the same experience that the last three generations of my family have had. Thank you for making my family better than it ever could have been.

Sincerely, Hayden Bixby

Hi! My name is Hayden Bixby. I just finished my freshman year at Upland High School in Upland, California. I have always enjoyed English class as it has given me opportunities to read new books and express my feelings about new and interesting topics. My Honors English class this year was particularly challenging because of the hard work that comes with trying to balance marching band and my academics. However, I feel like I had a great year and learned many new things. My English teacher was very good and was able to teach me many new ways to improve my writing. I hope that you can see this in my paper.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Maggie Grisco El Rancho High School, Pico Rivera

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Dear Vladimir Nabokov,

Your book Lolita, impacted me in ways only others might rely on experience for. I found myself relating to Dolores Haze by being in tune with my sexuality at the young age of twelve. I felt that we were the same person living in different time periods. I saw myself as a character in your book, living each hardship as if they were my own. Despite what the average reader might think, I see that your book is not a tragic love story of how man loses the love of his life due to his own madness, but rather a young twelve year old girl who is given the misfortune of losing her parents and is sexually abused by her obsessive stepfather. Humbert Humbert took Dolores’s curiosity and exploited it, and for this situation, I can relate. Though I was not sexually abused by a psychotic stepfather, I was abused by someone I considered my best friend. It started in the summer when I was twelve years old. Over the span of four years, I allowed myself to be groped, treated like an object, and convinced to do acts I did not feel comfortable doing. After every encounter, my face had an appointment with the toilet. I did not know that guilt and disgust were abnormal feelings after such encounters. I was told that I was loved and I was convinced at a young age it was normal to commit such acts. It was not until it was too late did I realize, after all my years of preaching signs of a toxic relationship, I was too blind to see I was in one myself. I became repulsed with who I was, I was not able to look at myself in the mirror or even care about my appearance. I wore a wide smile at school and salty tears at home. I felt like I was some disgusting, stupid girl who tried to grow up too fast but got kicked in the heart. This was where Lolita came in to help me; I felt as if I was not alone in this world. Lolita gave me hope, something to hold on to for the night. Dolores gave me inspiration to keep fighting through the abuse and never give up by constantly attempting to run away and succeeding. Mr. Nabokov, I read your book countless times as I shed tears through the night, wishing I could heal me heart from the detriment it was given. I even watched the over romanticized 1997 film once a week. At first I was angry at Dolores for leaving behind a man who cared about her so much, why would they paint Dolores in this light? Then I realized; that was the angle that you must have wanted the book to be seen in. An unreliable narrator telling a horrific story the way he wants people to perceive it. Humbert wanted to be seen as the victim. Very sneaky Nabokov. I feel my abuser is similar by bending the story to others by painting me in a much more sinful light. The rumors I have heard about myself just ruined me. The way Dolores is hardly ever given dialogue is how I felt. My own story was being robbed from me as if a gag was shoved in between my lips. Throughout the novel, Dolores is never referred to by her name; she is always “Nymphet” or “Lolita”. By this small detail, Humbert dehumanizes her by rendering her as his object. This is how I feel. I was an object to my abuser and let me tell you Mr. Nabokov that is the worst feeling in the world that I would not even wish upon the abuser himself. You are taking someone’s autonomy away and for this I felt I was in the same cage as Dolores. When Dolores dies at the end of the book, I was inundated with sadness and tears. My hero was finally free from the cage she was entrapped in, but at what cost? You gave me false hope Mr. Nabokov that Dolores was finally getting the happy ending that she deserved, which was extremely naughty, but I forgive you nonetheless. If she lived I never would have found the inspiration not to die. I felt that I had to live in order to carry on the legacy that Dolores never got. When promiscuous girls die it is because they deserve it. Well not me and certainly not Dolores. I live to prove to my abuser, to prove to those rumors, to prove to stupid Humbert: Promiscuous girls deserve to live. Mr. Nabokov, I apologize for bombarding you with you with such a personal story, it is just that you gave me a story to have hope and I wanted to give you the same. Before I realized I was being abused, Lolita was still a big part of my life. She made me not feel guilty that I was sexual at the age of twelve that it was okay to flirt and cuss. It was okay to make childish mistakes. She will never leave me and I look forward to opening the book and seeing her flirting with Humbert, annoying her mother, kissing her way through summer camp. Your elegant writing will forever leave me smitten. May my story leave you with the idea that your controversial book, which has been forbidden from libraries and movie theaters, made a difference in my life for the better. You made such an impact on my life that I will never be able to show my appreciation enough. My gratitude to you Mr. Nabokov is eternal, just

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like your literature. One of my favorite quotes in your book is a quote that I dedicate to my abuser, “He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”

With much admiration, Maggie Grisco

My name is Maggie Grisco and I attend El Rancho High School. My birthday is August 13th, which makes me a Leo. I am both Filipino and Mexican, which makes me mixed. I am often busy with my classes so that I do not get enough time to read freely, which makes me upset. I aspire to attend a four year university and obtain a Bachelors in Psychology. With that degree, I plan to go into law and become an advocate for domestically abused women and help make the world a safer place.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Yazlin Ixchel Juarez El Rancho High School, Pico Rivera

Cantora, Sylvia Lopez-Medina

Dear Sylvia Lopez-Medina,

If Cantora was a person, she’d be my mother, my friend, and my hero. The treasure troves of history and love wrapped up in your novel take on a beautiful presence in my life that I, like many other Chicana girls, find solace in during times of hardship. All art forms, visual, performing, and Literary should deliver light to the human mind, and Cantora is one of my favorite art pieces. In all ten years of book-loving, I’ve never read one quite as poetic and authentic as yours, and since that day I’ve never met its equal. Not only does this story have great objective prowess as a literary feat on its own, but it also has personal value to me and my family. Cantora had been tucked away in my mother’s bookshelf since her college days, next to a copy of Like Water for Chocolate and portraits of Benito Juarez, Cesar Chavez, and Moctezuma. Just as the many maternal figures in Cantora have passed on their traditions to their daughters, my mother passed this book onto me and my sisters. Now, it sits on my bed, weathered with love, tattooed with annotations, and littered with post-its sticking out of the pages like papel picado. When I first read your book, I was in the 8th grade, and had only just begun to explore my Chicana roots that my mother longed to share with me. At this age, in my childhood, and even now I can empathize and identify with your youngest character Amparo, who grew up in the crux of Spanish and indigenous households, yet had little knowledge of her family’s culture and history. Like Amparo, I was not taught Spanish, and felt a disconnect between me and my non-English speaking grandmother. At times, I felt almost shunned and ridiculed for not keeping that tradition, however I think that many of Amparo’s ancestors can relate to that feeling as well. Have you ever felt that internal conflict Amparo faced growing up in three cultures? Who is Amparo to you and your family history? Despite not fitting into the mold of most Hispanic women in touch with their past, I still can identify with many strong mother figures in the Calderon family tree, as they remind me of many strong women in my own life. Reading this book helped me see through the eyes of my ancestors that have sacrificed so much to survive and provide happiness for themselves and their children. Like Rosario, my paternal grandmother-who I have never had a strong connection to because of the language barriers-escaped the treacherous mountains of Mexico to escape arranged marriages, crime waves, and patriarchal family traditions. Reading Rosario’s hardship made me appreciate what I have thanks to my grandparents, and lead me to ask my father questions about the untold stories of my Mexican predecessors. What might have hit closer to home was not just the maternal characters-brilliant heroes of home-but also the men in the stories-fearsome fathers and husbands. Rather than portraying these Hispanic men as valiant romantics, like many other authors do, you choose to expose the other side of Hispanic families of past and present: patriarchal, secretive, prideful and occasionally white-washed. Rosario’s father, her first “villain”, ruled over the hacienda with an iron-fist, and the women of the household had to keep their opinions, dreams, and personal traditions to themselves for fear of punishment, until Rosario opposed her father and ran away to live a life on her own. I deeply respect her bravery and independence, for it reminds me of my own mother’s strength to walk away from my cruel father something many women before her did not have the ganas to do. Without our strong mothers, Rosario’s children and I would not have the opportunities we have today, and I will follow in their footsteps. My life, and the life of Amparo, are rich with traditions of not keeping traditions, of family and of brave, new women changing their fates. If the story wasn’t transfixing enough, the writing itself had me in awe from cover to cover. The beautiful prose that you use, both poetic and rough, made me feel like I was really there with the family in the treacherous mountains, the elegant haciendas, and the warm kitchens they called home. The suspense, joy, resilience, and mourning was alive all three times I read the book, and I always found myself weeping, laughing, and gripping the

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emerald-paper cover in anticipation. I wanted to know every inch of the book, and challenged myself by writing notes in the machines and asking my mother questions, as if it were my own mystery. It may not surprise you to know that I am an aspiring writer and poet as well as a book-fanatic. Before reading Cantora, I still had many astounding authors to look up to for inspiration in their magical, fun, and dreamy writing. But reading the story of this brave Chicano family rewriting history, and creating their own destinies, while holding onto the essence of family, helped me realize that I did not have to have a picture-perfect life to make a work of art from it; like I said before, you are my favorite artist, and all of the greats learn from the greats. Someday, maybe my book will be someone else’s best friend too. (P.S. Any advice on writing a book at my age, 16?)

Sincerely, Yazlin Ixchel Juarez

I am an aspiring writer with a troublingly large number of hobbies. These include baking, painting, photography, social sciences, music, art history, and taking care of my siblings, but I love creative writing the most. In the future, I hope to pursue degrees in arts and literature at a university, and use my skills to represent my Chicana roots and the rights of all indigenous people. I take pride in my Mexican-American community of Pico Rivera, California, where I live with my parents, four siblings, and two sweet dogs.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Brandon Kim Culver City High School, Culver City

Dune, Frank Herbert

Dear Frank Herbert,

I was hardly in seventh grade, a young, aspiring writer, when I first met you through the dense pages of Dune, your 800 page colossus of a novel-a long gone author whose lingering words still remained on the decades old pages for me to read, slowly, at first, my mental tongue stumbling over the unfamiliar syntax, the strange choice of phrases and punctuation that was so common in science fiction pieces back then-but then faster and faster as I grew to better understand your style, the admirably complex plot, the carefully constructed scenes and dialogue, devouring the words like a starved child in search of food, eventually finishing the book in the span of two days. In those two days I remained lost within an entirely different world, one of endless dunes and political machinations, visions of prescience and the battles that took place over the very spice that caused it; I walked, with your motley cast of characters, through beautifully crafted phrases and meticulously developed ideas that still remained decades after they were first released to the world for me to absorb and think, starry-eyed, listening to the lingering voice of one who realized so much and was able to share it in such a way. For a week after that, I thought as only a seventh grader could, contemplating what I had read and wondering, in the end, if it ever meant anything to me. In the midst of it all was Paul Atreides himself, the cynical hero, forced to take on the unwanted curse of prescience. What about him intrigued me so? Why did this book, out of the hundreds upon hundreds I had read prior, stand out to me? But as a seventh grader does, I eventually moved on-I finished the book, and my questions lay unanswered as I went through with my life and my actions, my attention being caught by flashy, brightly lit screens, mountains of schoolwork-my thoughts were the last to go, still lingering upon a world like no other I had ever experienced-and yet they, too, moved on. Dune passed as merely another book in a world full of them. A year passed. Then another. Books came and went, each year less and less of them-but none could compare to that one masterpiece I had read in two days during the summer, the one that made me, for the first time in my young life, actually think about the world. And in the midst of it all, I lost my grandfather, gone at the age of 78-fallen from a mountain peak in the midst of rain and darkness. My grandfather was a renowned hiker back when he was alive, even in his late age-so the fact that he had died, and not only that, but gone missing for three days on the same mountain he had hiked 800 times before-it was a shock. While me grandfather and I weren’t particularly close in the modern sense-he wasn’t the most affectionate person on the planet-the lessons he imparted to me, particularly in terms of hiking and nature, made him someone I constantly looked up to. And so it was around April that I stood, in my room, having just gotten the news of my grandfather’s death- I stood, an empty feeling inside; alone, attempting to cry, only to find that I could not. Why? Where was my grief? Was this not the climax of the story? The sudden discovery of a death in the family, the sobbing that later ensued? Why-why could I not grieve? And yet, unbidden, the black and gold cover of your book, of Dune, sprang forth from the depths of my memory. My mind cycled through the murky forest of my thoughts and landed upon a particular scene where the young Paul Atreides was marked by an inexplicable inability to grieve-too far gone in the throes of pure, logical calculation, too far gone for emotion to take hold of him before his release from the claws of logic. In his tale, I found solace. I too, was marked by an inability to grieve, a strange apathy caused by shock, by my lack of emotions- was it logic? Was it intelligence? Again, unbidden questions appeared, once more, once childish, now crucial-and again, I had no answer. And yet, still, I found solace. Even a literary character, I suppose, can resonate with the same, real-life emotions that one feels. You understood that. Two years ago, I had read Dune for the sole purpose of entertainment, nothing more. Now I would read it again-this time searching for another thread, another path to follow, just like Paul did in his prescient vision of the web of the future. A few days later, I found Dune lying on my nightstand, covered-perhaps fittingly-in dust. I opened it, and began reading. I found the novel much easier to follow this time-and in my search for grief, in my search for another

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thread, I found myself noticing small details I hadn’t noticed before. I found myself searching for the hidden meaning behind each word, being led further and further off the main plot until I had reached an entirely separate conclusion. Identical in the words, perhaps, but different in meaning. And then I read the book again, starting from a different section, following a different path. And again. In the end, I found an answer in the midst of all of these tangled threads-a Golden Path, if you will. A way out. It was not a sudden revelation-it was nothing like what Paul Atreides experienced-it was not a sudden opening of oneself into an inner, hidden place, frightening in its intensity. It was merely a gradual knowing of what to do. A way to deal with grief-or perhaps the absence of it. And yet, like Paul Atreides, I could still see. All paths of the future lead to somewhere. Everything happens for a purpose. One event-dealing with one death, reading one book-is merely that: one event in along chain of cause and effect, leading to the future. I could indeed grieve for my grandfather-but it would be in my own way. Perhaps there would be no physical signs of grief-but I would grieve, nonetheless. I could indeed draw inspiration from Dune, from Paul Atreides, from you, and come up with my own philosophies, my own realizations of life, that something happens because it happens because it happens because it happens-my life, my outlook on it, my grief, my mind-it was changed. Because of Dune. Because I read it once in seventh grade, loved it, then remembered it again two years later. Now I could see the world for myself. Grieve for my grandfather, honor his memory. Balance logic, emotion, faith-I could see, because of Dune. We all see, because we are human. We need not supreme, calculating logic; we need not mythical prescience; we are all human-no gom jabbar is needed to tell us that. I am human, therefore I can see. Dune gave me more than a way to grieve for my grandfather. It gave me a way to look at the world.

Brandon Kim is an emerging writer who is an upcoming sophomore at Culver City High School. He has been accepted into numerous writing conferences, including CSSSA and the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, and has won several awards in a variety of competitions, including the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. He is a devoted writer, having had a love for all things literature since childhood, and currently lives in Culver City with his family. He has a deep love for the outdoors and considers himself to be an avid hiker.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Chelsea Leung Saratoga High School, Saratoga

Kira-Kira, Cynthia Kadohata

Dear Ms. Cynthia Kadohata,

My dad told me once, “it’s a white man’s world out there.” At the time, I didn’t understand; I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a place where I see more Asian faces than white faces-more people like me than people who shout racial slurs or think resentfully about the Chinese family moving in next door. I was 11 years old when I first read your book Kira-Kira-one of the few books out there with an Asian- American protagonist. Back then, I had yet to witness any discrimination directed toward Asian-Americans-and towards me. Although I knew about Japanese internment and other anti-Asian discrimination like the Chinese Exclusion Act, I didn’t truly realize the depth of my dad’s words until reading about the Japanese-American Katie’s ordeal as she moves from a closeted Japanese-American community to mostly-white Georgia. Reading Katie’s words was like reading a diary of my own thoughts. Growing up in the seemingly-Asian majority bubble of Silicon Valley, I was never even aware that my race could be a factor in other people’s attitudes towards me. But once I stepped out of famously liberal California, that whole bubble-that glittering, “kira-kira” bubble popped. At first, when two German boys squawked hurtful slurs at my friend and me that mocked a language (Chinese) I can barely speak, I didn’t realize that their words were directed toward me. I couldn’t fathom that not everyone wants Asians to succeed in America and elsewhere around the world. And not due to any personal vendettas or hatred toward a particular Asian, but just because Asians are, well, Asian. Like me, Katie doesn’t understand this at first-not until her older and wiser sister, Lynn, explains the role of race in this world and why their parents cannot hold any other jobs than those at a chicken hatchery, where mostly Japanese workers labor for long hours and poor pay. Like Katie, I didn’t see “Asian” as anything other than the box I checked whenever asked about my “demographic” until my parents, experienced immigrants from Hong Kong, explained the significance of my black hair and monolid eyes. And just like that, Katie and I saw the same truth: it really is a white man’s world out there. But Lynn can’t protect Katie forever. When Lynn passes away, leaving Katie struggling to find any sparkling-any “kira-kira”-moments in the turmoil of her life, I felt as if I had experienced a very real death. For the first time, I considered the mortality of my parents. What would I be without their protection and love? Like Katie, I worried; would I be able to uphold their ethics, to always stand up for myself and others who were being beaten down? But you showed me that because those dearest to us hold only a limited time on earth, it’s incredibly important for us to treasure our finite time with them. We can learn something from our loved ones every day, even if that something is small. Katie learns to see the beauty of Kleenex when Lynn drops tissues in the wind over a field, but is also inspired by her sister’s fight with lymphoma and strength till the very end. I learned the importance of sturdy and waterproof shoes from my mom, but also gained courage from her struggle to achieve the American Dream and give her daughter the childhood she never had. And you, Ms. Kadohata, showed me all this from your folding of so many important issues into one unforgettable story. To my 11 year old eyes, Kira-Kira opened up a new understanding of the world we live in. And every time I open the Newbery Award-spangled cover and reread the simple yet powerful words, I recognize that there’s always something better out there-like how Katie’s community comes together after Lynn’s death to force the white owner of the chicken hatchery to provide a small comfort to the bereaved: three days of paid grief leave. I saw that even in times of unimaginable pain, there’s always a rainbow after the rain. And without your book, I could not have imagined that in these past few years, so many Americans would unite to courageously battle everything I have learned to stand against: anti-immigration sentiment, white supremacy, and overall injustice. I think you taught me how to be an optimist. Thank you-for showing me that even the worst of the world cannot extinguish the brilliant twinkle-the “kira-kira”-of hope.

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Yours always, Chelsea Leung

Chelsea is a junior at Saratoga High in Saratoga, California. At SHS she is president of Culinary Club and edits the school newspaper, the Saratoga Falcon. In her free time Chelsea enjoys knitting, reading, and cooking.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Namrata Poola Upland High School, Upland

The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein

Dear Shel Silverstein,

When I was younger, describing love had always been hard for me. What value it has, what it means, I could never pinpoint the concept. In fact, I felt extremely guilty for not being able to identify what love was, given that I had such caring family members and friends. Was I being selfish and disregarding their love? I could not determine it so since I did not even know what the word signified. Realizing this lead me to wonder, Will I ever be able to truly return their love? Being a child at the time, I immediately took it upon myself to display my affection by making numerous greeting cards and crafts for my loved ones to make sure they could apprehend my love for them. But then I encountered that pesky word again; how could I show them my love if I did not know what it meant? Was I conveying my affection incorrectly? Was I demeaning the term itself? In this moment of turmoil in my life, I encountered your extensively emotional book, The Giving Tree. When I first picked up your book at a tender age of four or five, barely being able to read, I could not properly comprehend the theme. Instead, I became extremely frustrated with the boy, as I presume many of your audience have, later exclaiming to my mother about his excessive selfishness, insensitivity, and cruelty. I also felt immensely sorrowful for the poor old tree which just wanted to make the boy happy by providing him with everything that she could. At this point, I could only identify some of the surface messages that your book conveyed, including repercussions of greed and even the significance of empathy, but I was unable to see the bigger picture. It was not until I reread your emotionally straining story later on that I could recognize the tree’s pure love for the boy. I consider myself fortunate to have matured enough to realize the overall message of your book: love indicates unconditional sacrifice. From this point, my whole world coincidentally began to change. After my mother was able to confront the domestic problems and harassment she was facing from my father, they proceeded to divorce each other. It would be concluded that I would permanently stay with mother, which is what I wanted, only allowing my father occasional calls or visits. After completing this process, my mother decided to move to southern California with her younger sister and her family. Due to rereading and assimilating your book, I then began to somewhat accurately distinguish which people in my life genuinely loved me. But more than anyone else, I could sense the immense love my mother had for me, seeing that she was willing to sacrifice her whole life prior to the divorce to move to California just so I could be raised properly. She even had to step down from her medical career for a while, but she left no stone unturned to keep me happy. I often question if I was unable to thank her for her love, but looking back today I can undeniably see that she loved me very much. This is still true today, but I hope that she does not have to sacrifice as much as before. This major occurrence in my life brought me back to analyze The Giving Tree. There came an undeniable period in my life where my mother hustled hard to adequately provide for me. During this time, a haunting thought crept into my mind: Was I the real-life version of the boy in the story? Just this concept lead me to feel like a burden to my mother. I feared I would reduce her to a stump, knowing that she would sacrifice anything and everything for me without hesitation. Had I become the very person whom I so angrily despised with a burning passion? If so, how should I proceed to rectify my character? Frightened of myself and what I would do to my loving mother, I did not know how to accept myself. After much contemplation about how to do so, I concluded that the least I could do was return my mother’s love. However, I do not know if I will ever be both emotionally and physically capable enough to love my mother as much as she loves me. Due to this, I try to sacrifice all I can for her, but there are often times when I am too inconsiderate and self-centered to do so, being just an immature adolescent. There has not yet been a time where I have not felt extremely regretful for hurting my mother in any way, but as with all people, morality sometimes slips my mind. Evidently, The Giving Tree has had a momentous impact on my life and will continue to do so as long as I maintain my morals. I will always remember the story for teaching me the priceless life lesson that loving someone means unconditionally sacrificing for them. Your book helped me discover a lot about myself and, hopefully, made me a better person overall. There is no doubt that I will revisit your work whenever I begin to question the character

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of people associated with my life or even myself. I hope that I can learn to unconditionally love everyone special in my life as much as the tree loved the boy. Thank you for providing me with such a great story.

Sincerely, Namrata Poola

My name is Namrata Poola and I am currently a fourteen year old looking forward to beginning sophomore year. I am proud to be born in southern India and was initially raised there but later resided in England for a year, traveled to Kentucky where I spent a significant portion of my childhood, and ultimately settled in Upland, California where I live today. In my household, I live with my mother and grandparents. At school, I constantly attempt to pursue my academics to the best of my abilities and have successfully achieved exemplary scores but additionally like to watch television and spend time with friends during my leisure. Along with my scholarly capabilities, I consider myself to be skilled in the field of crafting and instrumental music, specifically the piano. Overall, however, I have always preferred to spend time with loved ones engaging in meaningful experiences.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Shania Wang The Harker School, San Jose

Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

Dear Celeste Ng,

If you could have any super power, what would it be? For as long as I can remember, my answer has always been the same: the power to read minds. Constantly, we have thoughts that go unheard, words we never speak. That was part of the reason I fell in love with books. Books provided a glimpse inside the characters’ minds, allowing me to feel and think and react and embrace on a deeper level. Books allowed me to hear everything we never told others. Similar to life’s many blessings, I came across Everything I Never Told You completely unexpectedly by chance. I was in a cozy used bookstore with the intention of buying a book my friend had recommended to me. Someone had knocked a copy of Everything I Never Told You off the shelf, and I bent down to pick it up. For some reason, just before I returned it to its position, I decided to open it up and start reading. Thank the Lord I did. At the beginning, I was most attracted to Lees’ racial and gender identity. As a Chinese-American, I felt that I could relate to James’s challenges of fitting in. I remember how once when I was younger, a girl in my sister’s class called our family black-not because we looked anything remotely African-American but simply because we were not white. As a female, I connected with Marilyn’s attempts to achieve more despite societal constraints. I recall working tirelessly to earn a spot on our middle school math team, the only girl amongst a group of boys, yet still met with derogatory glances. While reading their respective struggles with blending in and standing out, I felt comforted by our similarities. Too often, I wish of being someone-anyone-else. Admittedly, I, too, imagine living as a white male, wondering about the considerable ease of life without the relentless presence of stereotypes and scorn. Alongside these characters, I experienced their emotions as they encountered setbacks and failures, drawing parallels with my own life. Unlike them, I am fortunate enough to live in California in the 21st century, a society in which being Asian or female is nowhere nearly as radical. However, despite the differences between the 1940s and today, their experiences and lessons still resonated deeply with me. James tried to suppress his Chinese background, avoiding the language, culture, food, and everything that would possibly connect him to his heritage, while Marilyn alienated herself from anything resembling her mother’s life, actively defying her expectations. As Lydia, Nath, and Hannah attempted to establish their own sense of belonging, I recognized their parents’ mistake that caused their inklings of insecurity and dissatisfaction to exponentially grow and magnify until it became unbearable. Rather than pretend to ignore or allow others to determine who we are, we must define it ourselves. Our identities are ours to embrace, not to be dictated by others. People will always judge and expend their own opinions, and we will never be able to control their actions. However, what we can control is our reactions. We can decide whether we will allow society to tear us down or fully accept our differences. We can choose to be like Jack, who acknowledged his sexual orientation and remained confident. We can determine our own fate and reach our full potential. Sometimes, our greatest enemy is ourselves. From the Lees’ journeys, I know that for others to accept me, I must first accept myself. As grateful as I am that your writing allowed me to better understand that necessity that I come to terms with my self-identity, I was not surprised to emerge with that lesson. What did surprise me, however, was what you taught me about society that catalyzed a permeating changed outlook on life. Beyond personal development, Everything I Never Told You helped me improve as a member of my community. I live in Silicon Valley, where unattainable expectations remain ubiquitous, forever piling up until they become suffocating. From Tiger Moms to Ivy League classmates, pressure to succeed exists in all forms. Despite our youthful dream, the harsh reality of life is characterized by disappointment. As you described perfectly, “you never got what you wanted; you just learned to get by without it.” Silicon Valley is home to Silicon Valley suicides. People I know have taken their lives, drowning under the weight until the few knots tying everything together become undone, as Lydia’s did. Always, the community responds the same way that Lydia’s family did. Some, like Marilyn, react with disbelief, convincing themselves of

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an imagined alternate universe. “There’s no way he did-he was so happy!” others, like James turn off their emotions and forget, desensitizing their feelings to achieve the ease of indifference. Still others, like Nath, channel their energy into blame, pinpointing the cause on a person or item or event. Every time, we tell ourselves that it was unpreventable, granting us a tiny slice of comfort that allows us to move on. Life continues on in the same way. Until the next time. There always is a next time. Yet, it is preventable if we can strive to change rather than settle in our compliance. You showed me another strategy: Hannah. Like Hannah, we can observe and try to understand. At the end of the day, the reality is that the deaths did happen despite what we may tell ourselves. We can’t reveal all of the secrets because some things simply aren’t meant to be understood. We can’t forget or deny. But we can grow. We can learn. We can do better in the future. I can do better in the future. I can reach out and understand classmates that I neglected before. I can communicate and openly welcome the words that people are afraid to say. I can comfort those who feel hopeless and trapped by their unspoken secrets. I don’t have to be Pam Saunders or Kelly Adler who never attempted to connect and could only offer empty grievances. I can be a Jack or Hannah and make a difference. One day, I have hope that there won’t have to be a next time. For everything that you have done for me, this doesn’t seem enough to reflect my appreciation. Nevertheless, there is really only one thing I want to say: thank you.

With hope, Shania Wang

Shania Wang is a senior at The Harker School in San Jose, CA. She loves reading for the opportunity to live vicariously and escape reality. Outgoing and friendly, she enjoys meeting new people and is actively involved in the school community, holding positions on Student Council, DECA, TEDx, Women in STEM, Link Crew, and more. Her main academic interests lie in economics and medicine. Shania also loves coffee shops – she can almost always be found at one, curled up with a good book.

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HONOR AWARD, LEVEL 3 Valerie Wu San Jose

Home, Toni Morrison

Dear Toni Morrison,

Much like the protagonist of your novel Home, I am having an existential crisis. Frank Money is to me what a reflection is; in my eyes, he is a direct representation of myself. Frank is Gatsby reaching for the green light, the American Dream. Although I can’t claim that I have ever fought in the Korean War, or followed a seamstress home and fell in love, I can claim homesickness. I can claim anomie, or a rootlessness that prevents self-growth. These elements of the novel feel universal to me. As a young Asian American female in this nation, I am, like Frank, preoccupied with notions of another country. Frank returns home from the Korean War to a segregated homeland, finding that he is suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder. What I can’t help but perceive this to be is a narrative of hope as much as of fragility-a story of not transcending race, but uniquely becoming a part of it. I grew up in a predominantly Asian American community in Silicon Valley; though I cannot claim segregation, I can acknowledge this blindness to color. This isolated culture further emphasized our alienation from the broader nation as a whole. We did not know whose house it was. We asked the house a question, but realized that houses were inanimate. It was us that gave them a voice. When Frank wanders the streets of Seattle as a homeless man, I could easily put myself in his shoes. When Frank encounters passengers on the train home that have been beaten for attempting to prove themselves equal, I could see the student who had been told her essay had been plagiarized because her parents were immigrants, and there was no way a second-generation immigrant could write as well as she did. I could see myself in the eyes of the white woman who refused to show my family to a table when the restaurant was empty. I could see math teachers raising eyebrows at test scores, failing to comprehend how someone with yellow skin could achieve such mediocre scores. I could see myself struggling to find a place in this country. In Frank’s journey of selfhood, I found instances of myself, the me that wasn’t identified by racial slurs or the color of my skin. The characters you write about in Home feel complex and tangible. To some, Frank is a “tilted man,” mentally unstable. To others, Frank is disintegrating because of his dreams, or the failure of them. To himself, Frank is simply a man with a tough decision: whether to resign himself to the “home” he has in Lotus, Georgia, or the home he wants to build for himself. Your story is incredibly significant to me as a woman of color; though segregation and slavery may be of the past, racism and its legacy are still very much present. And given these, I wonder if America will ever be a home, or if people of color like Frank or myself will always be searching for it. So I cannot claim to have ever fought in the Korean War, followed a seamstress home and fell in love. But I can claim seeing pictures of a segregated Montgomery, Alabama in 1961, or reading the story of Recy Taylor, who after being raped by six white men, could only ask to please let her go home. I can claim an understanding of growing up, mediated by the history of Chinese railroad workers and revolution a country away. And wonder if home is a direct reflection of the country we live in, or the people we live with. I wonder if I have consciously shaped my home as much as it has shaped me. What Home has done for me is taught me that amongst the incidents of police brutality in the United States, racial identities form. Your writing has given me hope that home doesn’t just consist of collective racial identities, but elements of communities. And it’s in these communities that we begin to form too.

Sincerely, Valerie Wu

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Valerie Wu is a Chinese American student in San Jose, California. She is a two-time National Gold Medalist in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her writing promotes ethnic and social consciousness in contemporary society, and has been recognized by the National Young Arts Foundation, the Huffington Post, the Asian Pacific Fund, and more.