Shutong Hao came to the US because she needed a new heart. When she was five years old, her family travelled from China to Los Angeles for a life-saving transplant. They later built a life in the suburbs north of Dallas, but Hao was often made to feel as if she didn’t belong.
“I had multiple teachers who overlooked me, I think deliberately,” said Hao, now 29. “I really had to seek out and carve out spaces where I feel like I belong, because I never really got that as a kid.”
