On this episode, Dan Wu introduces us to mother-and-daughter duo Joyce Chen and Xiao-Yin Chen. Joyce reflects on her early life in China and how she ended up in Harlan, Kentucky (which wasn't full of chicken farms, to her surprise). As a mom, she was determined that Xiao-Yin wouldn't miss out on any typical American experiences, and would have opportunities beyond working in Chinese restaurants or being laser-focused on academic achievement. So Yin grew up with few limitations, doing everything her friends did. Now that she's an adult, and living in a bigger city with more Asian Americans, she's intentional about deepening her connection to her Chinese heritage.

It's not unusual for young people to keep things secret from their parents. Having to repeat a college course, letting the apartment get too messy... but Nancy Ngo's secret was a little different. She didn't tell her parents she was in the running to be a 2022 Kentucky Derby Princess. "I only told them I applied after I got into the first round, because I knew they were going to be like... what is that?" Ngo served as Derby Queen in 2022. On this episode, she talks to Charlene Buckles about her deep commitment to human rights and public service, generational gaps in AAPI families, and why she chose to go for the tiara and sash.

When Dr. Angela Singla was a little girl, she got sick during a trip to India. While hospitalized there, she had an eye-opening experience. "I saw a female physician come in," she says. "And I was just blown away, because I had never seen a female physician before." It started her on a path that eventually led her to become an OB-GYN. On this episode, Dr. Singla sits down with Nima Kulkarni to talk about reproductive health care, political engagement among Indian Americans, and why she walked away from her medical career to focus on community service.

Your name is usually the first thing you share when you meet new people. And if you're an immigrant, your name can either make you blend in, or mark you as a perpetual other. Some immigrants change or shorten their original names. Some have their names changed by bureaucrats. Some keep them. And each outcome has its own set of emotional and cultural consequences.

It’s a phenomenon uncomfortably familiar to many biracial people. Not enough to belong to one group, too much to belong to another. In this episode, Charlene Buckles sits down with public interest lawyer Kaili Moss to explore this “third space” between Okinawan and Black, and how being a queer woman adds yet another dimension.

Every immigrant family has to decide what their relationship will be with their first language. Some parents insist their kids speak it, some turn away from it entirely, and some land somewhere in between. In this round-table episode, Dan Wu, Charlene Buckles and Nima Kulkarni unpack the nuanced ways language informs our self image and how we fit into our families and communities. | Learn more about the show and subscribe for free at whereyallreallyfrom.org. "Where Y'all Really From" is part of the Louisville Public Media Podcast Incubator. We get support from the Eye Care Institute's Butchertown Clinical Trials.

In this episode, Dan Wu introduces us to Teja Sudhakar, a poet and University of Kentucky graduate, originally from Chennai, India. Teja talks about her chapbook, "Looking for Smoke," and reads a poem called "The Interviewer Stands." She describes her lifelong love of writing, and how she made the decision to embrace it as a vocation. -----Before you go: Every immigrant family has to decide what their relationship will be with their first language. Some parents insist their kids speak it, some turn away from it entirely, and some land somewhere in between. We’re talking about it later this season, and we want to hear from YOU. Do you speak your family’s first language? How does language shape the way your family connects? Visit whereyallreallyfrom.org and click “talk back” to let us know. We may feature your answer in our future episode.

We’re back with an all-new season, and our first guest is Chef Edward Lee. When he was around 11, he told his parents he wanted to be a chef. “They were like, sure, and Bobby’s gonna be an astronaut. Great.” He never changed his mind about that calling. But along the way, he added other titles to his bio. Like author, small business owner, mentor, philanthropist, and yes, TV personality, though that’s his least favorite to talk about. We sat down with him to talk about the link between food and identity, his work with The Lee Initiative, and the incremental nature of saving the world. "Change doesn't happen because one person waves a magic wand," he says. "Change happens because millions of people do millions of small things." Before you go: Every immigrant family has to decide what their relationship will be with their first language. Some parents insist their kids speak it, some turn away from it entirely, and some land somewhere in between. We’re talking about it later this season, and we want to hear from YOU. Do you speak your family’s first language? How does language shape the way your family connects? Visit whereyallreallyfrom.org and click “talk back” to let us know. We may feature your answer in our future episode.

Hi friends, it's been a while. And tragically, we find ourselves in a situation similar to the one that inspired us to start this show in the first place. Violence has affected our community again, with two mass shootings in California during celebrations of the Lunar New Year. Our need to process these events is too urgent to wait for our next season launch. We need community and conversation now. So today, Nima Kulkarni and Charlene Buckles sit down and talk about what happened, how intra-community violence hits differently and mental wellness in our seniors. We also talk about how our instinct to mourn in silence can impede our healing, and how to be a good ally to your AAPI loved ones after trauma. And we've put together a list of AAPI mental health resources. You can find it here: lpm.org/AAPImentalhealth We're almost ready to launch season two, and we'll be tackling issues like parent/child relationships, interracial dating and marriage, how knowing or not knowing your community of origin's native language affects your sense of belonging... and more. We'll see you soon, and in the meantime, please take good care of yourselves.

Sure, our season's over... but we miss you already! So in this bonus mini episode, our hosts Dan Wu and Charlene Buckles reflect on season one, which ran the gamut from interpersonal decolonization to Doritos and buttermilk. We're gonna go work on season two now, so let us know what you want to hear more about at wyrf@louisvillepublicmedia.org or at whereyallreallyfrom.org. Thank you so much for being part of our inaugural season!

We're closing our season with an interview of Olympian proportions. Fencers Gerek Meinhardt and Lee Kiefer are... pretty accomplished. Gerek is a four-time Olympian who took home team bronze medals in 2016 and 2021. And Lee is the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Champion, a three-time Olympian, and the most decorated women's foil fencer in U.S. history. When they're not training for or competing in the most elite fencing tournaments in the world, they get plenty of rest. Just kidding! They're both in med school at the University of Kentucky. "We were friends for a long time. The fencing world is pretty small," Gerek says. "We were on a lot of world championship teams together growing up." Gerek is from San Francisco. Lee grew up in Kentucky, and she says all the fencers from their two clubs were friends: "There's something about the casual San Francisco energy and maybe like the friendly, southern hospitality of Kentucky, that somehow works very well together." It must work very well together; they got married in 2019. "We share every single success and it just like, it's, it's additive for us. But if you see this practice, that is a different story," Lee says. "I don't like to lose! And I mean, I know Gerek's not very good. He's like number two in the world. I shouldn't be so hard on myself." In this episode, they talk about what it's really like at the Olympics, their philosophy on loving what you do, and the work ethic they inherited from their Asian parents—Lee's mom is from the Philippines and Gerek's mom is Chinese, born in Taiwan.

Living in Williamsburg, Kentucky, a town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains with a population of 5,000, is a mixed bag for a Pacific Islander. Angelika Weaver's mom is from Kiribati, an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean (it sort of rhymes with "hear a bus," because -ti makes an s sound in the Gilbertese language that's spoken there). Angelika herself was born in Williamsburg, where everyone knows everyone else. "I do feel like I am part of the community," she tells Dan Wu, on this week's episode. "But then there will be moments in time that I will be very aware that I am different." She elaborates: Take, for example, when the George Floyd thing happened and people were very divided in this town about what that meant. Some of those instances I feel like I'm very separate from what other people believe or think, and they don't sometimes realize that I am half Asian American. I am half Pacific Islander. And so the things that they say are hurtful, but at the same time, sometimes I think they don't realize that the things that they say are hurtful, because they just see me as another Appalachian woman. "It's like the positive and the negative all rolled up together," Dan says. "Like you're accepted enough to be part of their racism." Angelika works as an advocate for victims of intimate partner violence and sexual assault in Whitley County. She says about 10 years ago, she shifted her focus from intervention to prevention, which meant broadening her scope from individual victims' situations. "If I want to get rid of domestic violence and sexual assault in a community, then I really need to look at the community as a whole," she says. "The criminal justice system is a reflection of the community it serves. And so we say things like, we don't believe women should be sexually assaulted. But we also say things like, maybe she deserved that because she was at the wrong side of town, and she was wearing a short dress." She says that kind of cultural change is slow, but it's possible. "If enough people believe in the same message, we just all have to get together with one voice to make that happen." A warning for cynics: Listening to this conversation may give you a touch of that same optimism.