Wikimedia Commons / James Lee via Pexels / Corrie Maurik Like many, the first time I heard the term “Wasian” was through social media. The Gen Z term for East Asian–white mixed people was passed to me through a white friend who had come across it on TikTok in the summer of 2021. Recently, the […] More »

Photo by DONOT6 As Zhi Jia finished junior high, his father was diagnosed with cancer. The two had only recently moved to Canada from China—just father and son—and were still settling into their new life in Calgary. Jia’s father’s cancer was a rare and often aggressive form called a neuroendocrine carcinoma that occurs in the […] More »

In Toronto’s Chinatown, an average morning goes on as usual, with longtime business owners setting up shop and elderly residents chatting loudly in local bakeries. But underneath the mundanity lies change. When onlookers enter the Chinatown landmark, the famous Dragon City Mall, the sight of its empty shops and corridors with the occasional elderly passersby […] More »

The graffiti-covered Van Horne skatepark on the edge of Montreal’s Mile End is usually dotted with boys in beanies and sneakers, launching themselves into the rink with the cracking sound of skateboard wheels hitting concrete. But, every Thursday night for a brief stint during the summer of 2021, they were replaced with a different crowd: […] More »

In the heart of the city, while more than 385,000 South Asians go about their lives, the University of Toronto (U of T) has quietly set a precedent. Amid the clamour for social justice and equality, U of T’s teaching assistants have negotiated with their union to include caste as a discriminatory practice—a move that […] More »

As a half-Pakistani person, I often cozied up on the couch for Bollywood movie nights with my family growing up. These nights were more than a tradition—they were a rite of passage. I’m a fair-skinned South Asian, and this was a way for me to connect to my culture when I didn’t necessarily present as […] More »

Dear Brown people in Vancouver, Do you feel it too? The way those who don’t look like us seem to slip their distaste for us “subtly” between sentences? The fact that irrespective of our immigration status, fluent English, accomplishments, education, upbringing and value systems, we are still… unwanted? The barely concealed microaggressions and scarily racist […] More »

My mom told me that once, when I was a toddler, a stranger advised her to sign me up for modelling. My green eyes, medium-light skin, and curly dark brown hair gave me a certain look, they said, which was super in. My mom said no, despite the fact that mixed-race girls like myself were […] More »

In the summer of 2020, against the backdrop of a global pandemic, the world had its re-reckoning with racism, and so did the place where I studied, Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. It began when George Floyd, a Black American, died on May 25 of that year after being pinned to the ground […] More »

Illustration by Jaden Tsan “It’s not like you even act that Asian”—these words were spoken to me by a white now-ex-boyfriend of mine during a casual conversation. At the time, I let it go because I was not sure how I felt about it, but the words have stuck with me. How exactly am I […] More »

Illustration by Brintha Koneshachandra Dear Mom, The other day, I was making us breakfast and I reached into the fridge to grab the container of yogurt to eat with our puri. Now, you would think, having done essentially this every weekend of my entire life, I would not screech, “Ugh! Mom, where is the yogurt?! […] More »