Announcing the 2021 AAPI Experience Grant Winners

Shansi is thrilled to announce the inaugural AAPI Experience Grant recipients! Noah Kawaguchi '22 and Zihan Zhang '23 have been pursing creative projects that highlight contemporary Asian and Asian American experiences in North America through music, art, and narrative.

Noah's project "Honkyoku, Horiuchi, and Beyond: A Research-Based Approach to Autoethnographic Japanese American Music Composition," builds on his experience as a musician and composer. In describing his project, he notes, "I use my experiences as a Japanese American to bring together studies of Asian American music and classical Japanese music. I use those creative sources to write three musical compositions along with a research paper that explains both my compositional intentions and my current ideas on the concept of Asian American music. My intention is to contribute to eliminating the relative cultural and political invisibility of Asian American artistic expression and the linked 'invisibility' of Asians in America."

For her project, Zihan plans to produce comics that explore experiences of members of the Chinese diaspora during the Covid-19 pandemic. Zihan explains that, to prepare for this project, she has taken a historically deep approach, having studied "various works of history fiction, and cinema representing the Chinese diasporic experience in the US." She hopes the project can "bring more perspectives to people's understanding of Asian and Asian-American identities and view these life stories as relatable instead of foreign and alien."

As part of the Grant, Zihan and Noah will present their final projects in the Fall of 2021. Please stay tuned for more announcements regarding the AAPI Experience Grant.