MY PARENTS MOVED to Maryland seven months after they got married. Fresh out of his doctorate program, my dad was connected by his mentor to two possible job opportunities — one in San Francisco and one in Maryland.

HAVE YOU EVER been rejected by a church? The first stop on my month-long Asia trip: Shanghai.

IN SEVENTH GRADE, I attended a camp where the speaker compared life to pie. Apple pie, to be exact.

My last morning in Hawai'i dawned lush and bright, like every morning of the previous five weeks. As I splashed water on my face, looking out over the small town of Hilo, I thought back on my unexpected journey to the Big Island.

AS PART of our public relations undergraduate degree at the University of Southern California, we were required to take a broadcast journalism class.

THERE WAS A TIME when Asians weren't considered the model minority. Rather than being maneuvered to be pitted against other minority groups, the early wave of Chinese immigrants were considered a direct threat to white populations.

MARY METCHNEK: tanned skin, curly dark hair, and dark eyes. Her speech is tinged with Hawaiian Pidgin intonations and a Midwestern drawl — curiously, words of an African language also easily slip off her tongue in conversation.

I REMEMBER the movie scene vividly. In a dimly lit cinema amidst a sea of white faces, a young Bruce Lee was sitting at the center of it all.

MY HEART SWELLED with pride as I ran closer to the Marine Corps War Memorial. The sculpture of brave men raising the American flag on Iwo Jima, Japan was too much for my one-sided, American history-infused heart to bear.

IF YOU'RE LIKE ME, you've watched a healthy amount of Korean drama. Korean dramas are notoriously addictive, despite their often-predictable storylines.

A FEW YEARS AGO, a couple of church friends and I visited Manzanar National Historic Site on the way to a fishing trip in Mammoth, California. It wasn't your typical detour — visiting an incarceration camp that imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.

"OVER THESE PAST couple of years, thinking about Ferguson and learning terms like 'white supremacy' have changed the way I interact with my parents."

You know what freedom feels like? It feels like jerking awake with the gut-wrenching realization that I have no one to blame but myself.

“GOD IS GOOD” Charles spoke softly, as Baldwin stood there watching his 76-year-old father's eyes fill with tears. "God is good." Charles held in his hands a Bible that was owned by his father — Baldwin's grandfather — a man who had left his family in China to work in America.

I WAS CRYING in the corner of my new kitchen when my mom called. "Hi Umma," I say in the brightest voice I could muster, tightening my vocal chords to curb them from shaking.

I WAS DISMAYED when my parents first told me that we'd be leaving our brownstone home in London for a small, two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. I was a Kenyan girl with a British accent.

THE TWO-CAR GARAGE of my three-bedroom condo only had enough space to fit one car. What took up space wasn't the random assortment of furniture, knick-knacks, and kitchen appliances I had slowly accumulated over years of living at that place. It was the cardboard boxes that these things came in.

WE USED TO own a house. Not an apartment, not a condo, but a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the Bay Area with a beautiful, spacious yard.

I HAD THE STORY all wrong. I used to say it as a point of pride: "I'm of African American descent from the South." In reality, I am a Filipino American from Seattle.

LOWELL HIGH SCHOOL in San Francisco is an academic magnet school that attracts the best students in the city. From the class of 1980, my classmates included a Nobel Prize winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an internationally best-selling author.

I was on stage. In Beijing. In front of about 400 young Chinese kids. It was June 10, 2011, and the city’s swampy mixture of pollution, dust, and air had me sweating through my tank top at Tango, the mega-club next door to Jin Ding Xuan.

“DADDY, I HAVE A VAGINA and you have a penis, because I'm a girl and you are a boy." I was resting on the sofa, just minding my own business, when my daughter comes up and says this whole bit about the vagina and penis.

IT'S REALLY HARD to have a good conversation about our sexuality. We tend to be on our guard, warily anticipating how something shared may challenge our own perspectives.