Young Pal Stallings Interview, October 16, 2021

Hi, my name is Katy. Could you tell us your name?

My name is Young Pal.

Nice to meet you. So, we're just asking a couple questions today, the first one is: where and how do you find community as an Asian American in DC?

That's a good question. Well, at my school there's a lot of Asian people, but I'm Japanese. And I, most of them are Chinese. I'm pretty sure. I haven't really met any other Japanese people in DC. But like, there's a lot of Asian communities. There's a lot of, especially in Chinatown, there's a lot of Asian like stores. Near U Street there's a Japanese Market called Hannah Grocery and there's a lot of Japanese people that work there. I met a close like family friend there. So, yes, mostly the businesses is where I find community.

Do you come to Chinatown often to go to the stores or see people?

I come here sometimes, my friends like to get come here to get Boba. So that's fun. I used to come here. There's like a skate spot nearby. I used to come here like to get snacks sometimes. But currently, no not that often.

What do you think is the role of places like Chinatown in the Asian American experience, including Japanese Americans too?

I think it's really important because it's really easy to feel secluded as an Asian-American, you know, like not too many people have a similar culture as you. Well, I don't want to say not many. There's not many American people that have similar culture as you so you can feel like, especially at school, I sometimes felt like I was not fitting in. I didn't match like what other people were. But I think it's really important for these places, not only for the Asian American community, but also for the American community, the Western community to learn about different cultures and experience other people's culture.

Yeah, so could you tell us I guess—did you make a poster? Could you tell us about it?

So yeah, this is my poster. I got some inspiration from the one that Miu made. So it's a gen gen gen gen, which is like the Japanese way to say [run], which is what she used. And then this is my name. It's just my name. This is [eco] which is like a, colloquial way to say "Let's go." So like, you know, it's migration. I kind of thought of that instantly. This just says nihonjin which means Japanese like person. So that's like kind of my identity. And then this says [speaks Japanese phrase]. So it's different but the same because like, you know, you can't deny that some people look different, some people have different cultures, but at the end of the day, we're all human. Like, we have to realize that and accept that. We're all different, but we're also the same at the same time

That's great, thank you so much.