“Born and Raised“

Hannah Kinzer

Filipino| Minneapolis, MN | she/her/hers | Public Sector

The anger in his voice made the girl next to me look down at her feet. Others looked placidly at their phones, and a black-haired man to my left glanced around nervously. Somewhere across the road from the platform, concealed by the oil-black night, the man continued screaming about the “new virus” and how “Asians were to blame.” It occurred to me then that this onslaught of curses was directed at me too. “Is this what it means to be Asian in America?” I wondered.

As a Filipino adoptee, I was one of a few kids told to mark “Asian” on standardized tests in my suburban elementary school. It wasn’t until I traveled to the Philippines in 2010 that I realized being labeled as Asian and being Asian are not necessarily the same. In the Philippines, my appearance matched people around me and no longer distinguished me as Asian, while my American upbringing was conspicuous. I returned from the two-week trip with questions and a determination to go back to the Philippines to explore them. It took ten years before I could coordinate an opportunity to return. At the start of 2020, I had plans to spend the summer doing a field experience supporting public health in the Philippines. 

And then the pandemic hit. 

And George Floyd was murdered.

Instead of exploring questions about being Asian in the Philippines, I found myself questioning what it meant to be Asian in America. Instead of making friends with Filipino students and health professionals over shared excitement for research, I made friends in virtual meetings over shared confusion, frustration, and resilience as America grappled with its ongoing legacy of racism. Instead of listening to car horns in Manila traffic, I listened to threats from an angry man at a Green Line platform.

Hannah Kinzer grew up just outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and moved to Minnesota to pursue her graduate studies in public health at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She focuses on advancing the health of all people by raising community voices in research. Her main research interests are in health communication and infectious disease. When she is not in class, doing research, or working, Hannah enjoys going for a run, playing board games, and trying new recipes. During the pandemic, Hannah has enjoyed listening to audiobooks, exploring new podcasts, and sustaining an ever-growing collection of plants.