In 2020, being resistant to the sourdough craze, I learned how to weave. I taught myself with books, Instagram, and many, many Youtube videos.

There are two core parts of weaving: The warp and the weft. The warp is the backbone of any piece, whether it’s a tapestry or a table runner. The warp is where you start. A painstaking process that is repetitive, and because of that, slightly meditative.

But the weft! The weft is where you go from mere string, fiber and yarn to art. The weft is my favorite part because you get to play. Colors, textures, you can do anything with what you have on hand. I’ve used fancy art yarn and cut-up pieces of muslin. I’ve seen weavers use sticks, pine needles, anything at hand. It doesn’t matter. All of these things come together to make what is in my mind onto the loom.

To me, we - the kids of immigrants, the hyphens - are the weft in today’s world. We are different colors, textures. We are rich and poor. Thick and thin. It doesn’t matter. All these things come together and make us who we are collectively.

When I try to explain this identity I hold, it takes five minutes. That’s probably the case for many of us.

The majority of us are second generation, though not everyone agrees what that is (second to live in this place? second to be born here?). We can also third or fourth generation. Some are bi or multi racial. Others just grew up in a culture that is not their native ethnicity. We are kids of immigrants, or sometimes we immigrated when we were young. But what we have in common matters more than the breadth of sociological categories.

We struggled with how to grow up in a world that was not the same as our parents. Some of us interpreted for our elders when we were young, others know only a bit of their mother tongue. We might even be No Sabo kids. The contents of our lunch boxes were ridiculed by other kids. But when we turned the other way, we didn’t feel like enough. We’re not fully fluent and bilingual. We have American accents and mannerisms. We are too loud, too ambitious, but not ambitious enough in the expected way, we shouldn’t speak that way to our elders and we don’t understand what it took to get the opportunities we now have, the sacrifice, you know?

It can be hard and frustrating. Feeling like the deck is stacked against you no matter where you look.

But we are the weft. The world is a perfectly warped loom in front of us, and we make it beautiful. We make our country, whatever country it is, a meld of old and new, growth and history.

The majority of families of second-generation kids, particularly Asian and Latino, immigrated to the US starting in the 1960s or so. While we extend past GenX, Millennial, Gen Z, what is notable is we are now setting the agenda. We are running for office, Silicon Valley is full of us, our family recipes are fueling restaurants. It is our time, and we are making the most of it.

I wanted a place where we were represented. Where we can celebrate each other and ask tough questions. I wanted us to have a home, to have storytellers just for us. In an ever growing demographic, there’s few ways to connect with each other outside of the wild world of social media.

We need a space to hold for each other and the fabric of our world needs us.

In case you just got here, like much of my work, Weft is going to be a bit of a work in progress. The goal: One newsletter every month. Exactly what that will look like will probably change, but, like any kid of immigrants, I have big dreams.

If you have a thought, story idea, or resource to share, you can reach me by replying to this email.