Student Work from ASAM Classes

  • Storybook  

    Sarang's Guide to America

    Joy Lee created this story for ASAM 1: Asian American Experiences (formerly ICS 20)

    Her assignment: Create a prototype for a children's picture book that features Asian American historical experiences and themes

     

    About the Author: Joy Lee

    • Major: English/Literature 
    • Education: Full-time De Anza student 
    • Where I Grew Up: Cupertino, California
    • Life/Professional Goal: I am studying to be a high school English teacher.
     

  • Storybook

    A Home In the Desert

    Marcus Nguyen created this story for ASAM 1: Asian American Experiences (formerly ICS 20). 

    His assignment: Create a prototype for a children's picture book that features Asian American historical experiences and themes

    A Home In the Desert

    About the Author: Marcus Nguyen

    • Major: Web development/digital arts
    • Education: Second-year, full-time De Anza student, transfering to San José State in fall 2020
    • Where I Grew Up: San José and Morgan Hill, California
    • Life/Professional Goal: Currently, my goals are to continue to study web development/UX design, and to continue to serve in my church, as we share the good news of the love of Jesus Christ.
     

  • Poem

    Yellow King

    Cuban Nguyen wrote this poem for ASAM 32: Vietnamese Literature from Tradition to Asian American Expressions (formerly INTL 11/ICS 24)

    His assignment: Read Bao Phi's poem "You Bring out the Vietnamese in Me," which was inspired by Sandra Cisneros' "You Bring out the Mexican in Me;" discuss intertextuality and the ways that literature is inspired by other literary texts; and write your own version of the poem

    About the Author: Cuban Nguyen

    • Major: Cognitive science pre-med
    • Education: Full-time De Anza student
    • Where I Grew Up: Born in Saigon, raised in Texas
    • Life/Professional Goal: If it weren't for COVID, I'd be living in Hue for a few years. I've always wanted to do investigative journalism (tricky, in a country where the slightest word against the government lands you in jail), medical research, and boxing. I want to be around, for once, people who look like me, sit like me, heck, even probably even breathe like me.

    Yellow King

     
     

    You bring out the Yellow in me,

    The center of a soft daisy,

    Site of creation of men with wings

    Who make sulky, sweet things

    In a Yellow comb

    They call home

     
     

    Who else has skin

    That bleeds into the sun as it shines?

    Sunkissed colors and complexions

    Beautiful, but even then I question

    Who I am,

    Inside

     
     

    Outside, my ancestors belong

    In the rice fields, their Yellowness slipping

    Into an ashy tan complexion

    But, at least during the sweat of day

    Their Yellowness, an astral skin

    Sweeter than an apple’s core

    Yellow peril?

    No, a Yellow pearl

    So pure, the sun thought

    That is how I shall look like!

    A colored boy, in a sea of black and white

     
     

    I chant the stories of those before me

    I’m perfectly Yellow,

    Builder of combs and railroads,

    Feared champion of the sun,

    An exotic Oriental, skin cloaking

    The real king of the jungle:

    The sun-crowned tiger

    Jailed in the camp of night

    A time always a different shade

    from our mother comb faraway

     
     

    Wiser,

    I speak into these Eastern winds

    that blow to its distant cousin

    Dear my blooming daisy,

    My ocean of patty field,

    My jungle kingdom,

    and the Yellow sun’s might,

    I cannot be

    Sunkissed at night

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