The As I Am podcast
Episode 16: Tough Conversations
Conversations about difficult topics are never easy and easily avoidable. When you add in the hierarchical nature of many Asian cultures, this difficulty doubles. In this episode, we discuss our personal experience of talking to family members about topics ranging from racism and anti-blackness, to mental health and perspectives on Vietnamese colonialism.
As you will hear, we are not great at doing it ourselves. However, our hope is that through this episode, you may hear similarities with discussions that you have avoided or tried to engage in, and then just maybe, learn something to kickstart those tough conversations again.
Episode 12: Workplace Diversity
Less than 5 per cent of Asian-Australians make it to senior executive levels. Only 1.6 per cent become CEOs. It’s no secret that Asians are severely underrepresented in corporate leadership, despite being overrepresented among high-achieving university graduates. How can we overcome the ‘bamboo ceiling’? Are quotas necessary? Or is affirmative action just one part of the story? Join us as we dissect the social, cultural and structural barriers to diversity in corporate leadership with Keerthi Ravi - an Australian lawyer from Allens and founder of Diverse Women in Law, a non-for-profit organisation aiming to promote and support diverse women lawyers and law students.
Episode 11: Appropriation in Fashion
What is cultural appropriation? What is considered as appropriate and inappropriate in fashion? Who gets to decide? In this episode, we sit down and tackle arguably some of our hardest questions yet. We consider the inevitability of the borrowing and mixing of cultures in fashion, and attempt to draw the line between appropriation and appreciation. We interrogate the imbalanced power and privilege that underlie cultural appropriation and ask: who gets to benefit from a culture, and at what cost?
Episode 10: Being Mixed Race
What does it mean to be mixed race? And how does the duality of being from two cultures impact someone’s world view? This is a special episode where we collaborated with two friends and our dear listeners in order to understand these two questions. Being mixed race is undoubtedly a unique experience with both its flourishing highs and ambiguous lows, but most importantly, it is the celebration of diversity and cultural richness through the ability to draw from and experience multiple identities.
Episode 09: Bias of Attraction
We think it's pretty safe to say that dating as an Asian can be a roller coaster of an experience. Navigating a sea of stereotypes, "preferences" and trying to work out if they really like you for you, are just a few of the topics we discuss in our first episode on love and relationships.
Episodes 02: Dear Mum and Dad
Dear mum and dad - thank you for everything you have done for us. It has taken us a long time to understand and come to terms with how you raised us.