Yes, I'm a minister. No, I don't have a church.

This blog post was originally written for and posted in Unbound . Racism kills. It dehumanizes us all, telling some of us we are less than human and rendering others of us incapable of having a decent conversation about it. It takes our best intentions and misshapes them beyond recognition; no matter what we do or what we mean to do, we move and breathe and live within laws and a cultural reality that is racist. But the one good thing racism has given me is Asian America. Asian America is a social construct, not a biological one. It is a legal category I fall into by virtue of nothing more than my mother’s ancestors. No person from Asia shows up in the U.S. and automatically feels linked to people from other Asian countries. Asian American identity isn’t about rice, although I’ve joked about this before. People of many races eat rice, and even rice within Asian American communities has great diversity. It isn’t about any food or flavor, really, which means any dish or dressing ...

For my readers:  This is a piece I presented the 2nd Moderator's Convocation on Asian American Presbyterians, an event preceding the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly, which is a gathering of the highest governing body in the denomination. The 1st Moderator's Convocation on Asian American Presbyterians took place 14 years ago, when the first Asian American moderator of the PC(USA) was elected (the Rev. Dr. Syngman Rhee).  This event was in the PechaKucha style , a Japanese style of presentation that is image-driven, lasting only 6 minutes. It was really hard for me to find images! But all of these are either mine, or from friends/family used by permission, or from true open-source websites. (Just had to say that, since I work for a publisher.) The topic I addressed, along with four other presenters, was "Where is God calling us to go?" The first thing I remember my parents teaching me about my identity was, “I’m Japanese and Jewish.” ...