In this piece, which was part of my Hyphen exploration “Between Worlds”, I pose the question, what becomes of the two things meant to be connected? In math, we use the same symbol to subtract, to take one entity from another... in this piece I wanted to explore whether a hyphen, when used between such opposing spaces actually adds or subtracts from the whole picture.

“I was inspired by the musings of Asian-American authors Viet Thanh Nguyen and Maxine Hong Kingston; hyphens serve to divide even as they are meant to connect. Their use in racial and ethnic identifiers can connote an otherness, a sense that people of color are somehow not full citizens or fully American. A concept even harder to grapple with when one is not yet a citizen or American, like myself.”