The most powerful discovery that I made last week regarding my final project was that my “home” and it’s relationship to Asian-American culture wasn’t something that I had to go out and find, it was something that already existed that I just had to take the time to observe. There was no need for me to go and synthesize random bits of APIA culture in order to try and make some coherent whole; my life has already been affected by these cross-currents and I just had to approach the project from a new perspective in order to see them.

For example: my father and I often bond over martial arts movies (him being a student of the martial arts himself). I usually don’t even think of these movies and shows as a part of a foreign culture, and perhaps that is the essence of cross-currents: they have become my own culture as well. When I took a step back I realized that I was surrounded by Asian and Asian-American influence from the shows and movies I watched, the music I listened to, and the books I read.

The Hayao Miyazaki films from Studio Ghibli like “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” and “Ponyo” are a huge part of my family and all of us still watch them today. My brother and I have very little in common and often have a hard time connecting because of it but Studio Ghibli films were something that we could always agree upon and it brought us closer together without us ever even considering that we were taking part in a cross-current. One of my current best friends and I (who is also not Asian-American) bonded over the anime show Naruto when we were fourteen. We began trading the books back and forth and years later we are still best friends.

I already find myself becoming more aware of my cultural surroundings in my daily life because of the texts that I am being exposed to this quarter, my hope is that this new perspective will enable me to connect more easily with people from other, not-so-different, cultures and to build stronger friendships because of it.