Canwen Xu

“The people I spent the most time around were those in my predominantly white high school, people who saw me as the other, as a foreigner, as someone who would never be quite the same as them. Growing up in this environment, I had learned how to perceive myself the way that they perceived me. Sometimes, it felt as though I had two identities: who I really was, and who others perceived me to be. And as I stared at myself in the mirror, with my tight ponytail and tortoiseshell glasses, my ripped Stanford shirt and baggy sweatpants, I saw not the first but the second, not the me that I knew, but the person that others knew as me.”
― Canwen Xu, Boring Asian Female