The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in two cases at the end of the month and could decide the fate of affirmative action in higher education. In 2018, I testified before a federal judge in one of those cases, Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, attesting to the importance of affirmative action in my life and why it is valuable to the Asian American community.
I am the daughter of working-class Chinese immigrants who speak very little English. I was born at Chinese Hospital and grew up in Lower Nob Hill in San Francisco. My parents worked at restaurants for low wages, and our family of six barely scraped by. We lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment among urban professionals and underserved communities.
Before I was even a teenager, I advocated and translated for my family. In my household, my siblings and I are the first generation to graduate from college. In my personal statement for my college application to Harvard, I wrote about how these experiences shaped my passion to do work that would help others with similar struggles.
