Diversifying US-Asia Relations
Like many Japan enthusiasts, my journey to understand Japan started with my major exposure to the culture through an assortment of media – My father’s military stories, News, Discovery Channel documentaries, random exchanges between Steve Urkel and his Japanese speaking
The Black girl that speaks Chinese. That was the way people identified me in my small, predominantly-white college in Connecticut. At first, it really bothered me because what did race have to do with my intellectual ability? Nothing. Little did
Being Black and studying in Asia never seemed weird to me until other people told me it was. Growing up in Maryland, I had a lot of classmates who were of Asian descent. More specifically, I had a lot of
All views expressed are Obio’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State. My introduction to formal Mandarin language learning was during my first days as a college freshman in 2000. My Chinese professor founded the
I never wanted to learn Mandarin. It was my school’s first year offering the language and I had no interest in it. As a proud Haitian-American, I wanted to learn French. It would help me with Creole and I could