baby born in fire

I’m Deenie, I go by She/They pronouns. I was born here, Southern Oregon, specifically. So it's been 17 years since I have lived here.

What was a time where you felt seen/understood by a family member in a way that was affirming of your queer identity? My family has never been very vocal about supporting queer identities so I think the biggest thing that has stuck out to me was when I was first on the news for supporting LGBTQ students. My mom and my family were just extremely proud of me. They weren’t really proud of me because of what I was passionate about or what I was supporting, they were mostly just proud that I was on the news. Even then it still felt very validating in the sense that they didn’t really care, and they accepted what I was doing no matter what it may be. It was really nice to hear how excited they were, and they were going to continue to support me whether or not I choose a journey that they don't really like.

Could you tell me about an experience where you discovered something about yourself or your family that you hadn't known before? I think my answer is gonna be very cheesy. I think in America specifically, we are very individualistic, and so we tend to stick to ourselves, we’re very independent, and we believe that life is our journey and only our journey. The American dream is to get famous, get rich, and that requires stepping over other people in order to get to that point, I feel. My family and I specifically learned a lot of strength in togetherness and just through a lot of hard times in our life, not just COVID, before then as well. We learned that sticking together, being together, was the only thing that was a given in life, and so that has translated to me being not only more independent and confident in my abilities, but being willing to reach out when I need help, to be okay with being vulnerable with other people and understanding that... even though you may want to do things yourself, being together with other people is such a big strength and big support in anyone's life.

You're the only participant so far that was born here and raised here. What was it like growing up in this region? What was it like for your family to have a business here? What were the communities that you grew up in, and how have you seen them evolve and change over time?

There's a quote that goes something along the lines of, “if a baby is born in fire, all they know is fire, and that is their normal” and I think that's a good indicator of what my life was like. I have a lot of people tell me that I'm brave for living here, for doing what I do, I'm an inspiration and while I appreciate what they say to me, and those are very encouraging words, this is my normal. Since I grew up here, I don't know anything different. I don't know what living in a supportive community is or anything like that. Growing up, I know what racism felt like before I even knew what racism was. By the time I was in elementary school, I was getting called slurs and things like that. I would sit with friends and they would make fun of me for being Asian, and the only other kids of color were Asian or Hispanic. There were only like three of us throughout elementary school. When you grow up here, you just learn to adapt, it's like your normal rather than if you grew up somewhere else that was more supportive. It's obviously a different perspective. When I was in middle school, I would get told I looked like a lesbian, or I would get told all these different slurs for queer people or slurs for people of color that weren’t even slurs for Asian people. Growing up here has been great, this town is my home. It's where my family is, it's where I grew up, but I would never recommend this place for anyone else, and it's definitely a place that I have always felt I needed to escape from, and I had never been comfortable. I think I really figured that out when I was in middle school and high school, and when I started working. My mom, she didn't grow up here, she immigrated here and she speaks “broken English” and treatment towards us is very different. Since I speak English really well, you see how they treat me and then you see how they treat her, and that blatant racism is very prominent here. Again though, it's been normalized because I grew up here. I think it's the general consensus for everyone who has grown up here, is that we have always felt the need to escape, even though this is technically our home and this is where everything we know is. So I think... there are good things! Like there river, and people are nice most of the time *laughs* but yeah, I think that escape is a good word to describe my experience here.

Could you tell a story of a time where you had to code-switch? Yeah I feel like most people do it, especially queer people and people of color. I think we've just been conditioned to have to do whatever we can to figure out how to protect ourselves in different ways, and a big aspect of that is changing our voices and changing our tone for whoever we're with. I find that I do it when I'm around friends, I have a much higher voice than when I'm talking to someone who I might be a little tense with, or if I've been talking all day, things like that. You're definitely right with the customer service voice, I definitely changed my voice for that, even when I'm on the phone picking up an order, rather than being in person and going to a table to get their order, my voice changes both ways. Same thing with language, whenever I'm talking to my aunt or my family who's from Thailand and they don't speak English very well, I definitely speak in the “broken English” way, saying sentences in ways that I normally don't and I talk in a different tone of voice. I think we just do it to accommodate whoever we're around and to make ourselves feel safer and more comfortable. I find it really interesting, especially when you started explaining it to me. I first heard it through social media, and it was about how queer men lower their voices around other men or straight men to make themselves feel more masculine and more safe and, like I said earlier, a lot of queer people and people of color do it a lot. I fine it very interesting and it's very, I guess, sad that we have to do it. Even those minuscule things that we have to do in order to protect ourselves and make ourselves feel safe is so sad, in my opinion.

Could you tell me a story about a time where you experienced queer joy living in Southern Oregon? I feel like it's hard to experience queer joy outside of a queer group in Southern Oregon. By yourself it’s really hard. My first day of school, I had just recently got a tote bag that says “Read More LGBTQ+ Books' ', and that was my first experience in school feeling comfortable showing that bag and wearing that bag, and wearing all of my Pride pins and thinking... I may not be safe,I may be talked about amongst other people, people may look at me weird, judge me, but I am comfortable with my identity and I love myself no matter what anyone else thinks of me, even if they don't support what I'm doing or who I am. I think that was a really amazing feeling to just be able to wear and own something that's clearly part of my identity and not feel like I have to hide it. I think a joy I felt in the queer community was when we [The IAffirm Coalition] first did our picnics! The other biggest thing was our town's first Pride event. I was starstruck that anything like that would be allowed here. Protesters were there, but they weren't even there for half of it, and that they left because of the whole dance thing that happened, and I was like, “this is amazing!” and this is so great to watch other people be themselves and not care that people just don't like us, and people don't like that we're just living our lives and what we believe is best for us.

Could you tell me a story about an adventure that you had in Southern Oregon? The first thing that comes to mind when I think of adventure is always hiking. I think that's the biggest thing. My friend and I went on a 10-mile hike, five miles back and forth, and we went with his mom and his other best friend. I think hiking makes you feel every single part of your body, and I think that's why people enjoy it so much and find so much energy from it, and to get all the way to the top and see everything and be basically on top of the world, it's super, super nice. That was a really good adventure because before that, I hadn’t hiked probably even two miles for years, and so my body was definitely not prepared for a ten mile hike, but I'm so happy I did it because no matter how much pain I was in during that, I just remember the feeling that I had getting to the top and being with my friends and their family, and just knowing that I accomplished something that my younger self wouldn't have allowed me to. And so that was an amazing adventure.

I feel like having friends and having a solid friend group that supports you and has your back is really important. So I'm curious about your friend group and how you found them? Or maybe an instance where you felt like you had found your people, your found family?

I believe in soulmates, and I believe in soulmates not in just love, but soulmates in friendships as well. I do believe that when you find your people, you know you have found your people, whether they are in your life for a short period of time or they are in your life forever, I believe that you know when you’ve found them. Mine, they've all left for college now, they’re freshman in college this year. Some of them I've known since elementary school, and most of them I have met in high school my sophomore year. I met them through clubs at school and mutual friends. It was just like an instant click, and I just knew that these were my people that were gonna support me through whatever time I had left with them here and whatever time I have left with them in the future, and it was super bittersweet sending them off to college, watching them all go. Even from a distance, even from 200+ miles away, they’re still so supportive of me, and text me every single day, and are willing to do whatever they can for me even when they have their own stresses in college and things like that, and so they’re really my foundation, my rock, and I'm super lucky that I found them.

Where do you guys hang out? What is the best place to hang out in your town as teenagers and as queer people? I have this one rule wherever I go, that if you ask a local what is there to do around that area, and they say that the best thing to do there is to go eat and have food, I think they are trying to compensate for a bad town. I don't believe it when you go out of the country or things like that, but in the US, I think it is a good rule of thumb, for me at least. I can say the same for my town, because there's nothing to do here. You can go to the river. If you go to the right river and it's not too crowded, then it's okay, and during the summer, not in the winter of course! And you can go eat. I always find myself asking my friends to go out of town or to the mall and go watch a play or something like that. We do a lot of stuff here to support local theaters. Like whenever there's a play here that I know about, I will always go support them, but other than that-- it’s really just eating. You just go eat, or we hang out with friends at the park, or we go to one of their houses and we play card games. That's what we found ourselves doing a lot. We would pick a house and then we would go there, and it was always a group of 12 of us. That's why we never went anywhere, cause it was always a hassle since we were such a large group. It was either go to someone's house or stress out a waiter for serving 12 people, which we would never do.

What's your favorite restaurant in your town?

It's hard to say. Any local business is a good restaurant, in my opinion. I will always try to choose local because my mom owns a local business and that's how we survive, and so like whatever restaurant is near me. Downtown is pretty great, I will go to wherever restaurant a friend is working at, and again we were such a big group, we always had someone somewhere, and so that's where we would usually go.

Do you have any memories of a particular house that you've been to with your friends, and any memories that were attached to a specific place like that?

I think I have two distinct memories. During Christmas break last year, my mom had to leave for two weeks, and so my brother and I were by ourselves, and our whole friend group threw this big Christmas party. It was a Secret Santa and we all hung out, played games, and that was the most cherished memory I have. There's this bread that a lot of my Latinx friends eat in their household, and it has this baby Jesus inside, and traditionally, whoever gets the baby Jesus has to either, I think, cook for the next party, or plan the next party or something like that. All of them were seniors, I'm the youngest in the group, the only junior last year, and so they were like, “whoever gets the baby Jesus has to pay for everyone's tickets back for next year's Christmas party!” and I got the baby Jesus! (and I still have it!) And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll totally pay for everyone’s tickets back!” It was a very sentimental moment of laughter, and just knowing that they all believed in a future of us together, was super, super nice, and them believing that no matter where each one of us goes, we're all gonna come back together at a time in the future, and that was an amazing feeling. I didn't realize it at the time, but afterwards those are the memories I still carry of them, and so that was super nice, and I think the other really core memory that I have is my best friend's dad telling me he was proud of me because I was on the news and supporting LGBTQ+ youth and doing all of that stuff. That was the first time I had ever heard, I'm proud of you from a father figure, and so it was super, super nice to hear that from not only my best friend's dad, but also both of his grandparents, and so that was another very surreal moment of “I think I'm in a good place in my life”

You talked a little bit about your mom's restaurant and the family-run business that you have. I'm so curious what it was like to grow up in a family business? Maybe you could speak to a time where you took responsibility in that family business, something around the restaurant, like a memory that you have that is really important to you. I always took for granted my mom owning this business, but it's the biggest reason we have this house right now, and why my mom has made it as far as she has gone, and why my family is still around here, and so... I am very, very grateful no matter how hard it gets for this business ,for my mom, and I think I would choose that as my home over my actual house, cause I was there so much, and during the summer, I was like, There are 12 hours a day with my mom helping her out, sleeping and stuff like that, and so I was always always there. And I think the only time I came home was if I had a meeting or if I needed to sleep, and that was about it. And so I think... I can tell you the memory my mom loves the most, and I think this is one of my favorite memories as well. She will always show me a video of me sitting under one of the shelves for our dishes, and it's me singing a song for her. I think I was like four or five, and she will always look at that video with such love and admiration in our eyes, and that is the most fulfilling to see any mother look at her child like that. And so to see her and my younger self interacting, it's really nice cause when you're speaking face-to-face with someone, like I know my mom, adores me, I know she's proud of me and things like that, but when you're speaking face-to-face with someone, you don't see an outside perspective of what they actually view you as... so when I look at her watching that video, it's just like, “Oh, I'm your daughter, you're my mom, like, this is who we are, and we love each other no matter what” and so I think that's a good memory.

Thank you.

I know we spoke about it earlier, this sense of wanting to escape. What makes you stay here, and what makes you want to go? Yeah. Family makes me stay here. Of course, school, obviously. I think that because I grew up here and I don't know anything else that makes me not wanna leave, because it's just the comfortability, and being afraid of leaving the nest and adventuring out on my own, and being so vulnerable in a big world, that this town feels so small, that it feels so… like- I'm betraying my town. If I leave it, if that makes sense. I know every street name, I know every- like if I take a wrong turn, I know how to get back on the right road to go down, and it's like that doesn't happen overnight, and it takes years to establish that knowledge and so that's why I say... I love my house, I love my family, I love my town, but I always tell my friends that this is a good town for tourists, because tourists don't stay here for a really long time, and they don't actually meet the true faces of people, and that's the only way I would recommend this town to people, is if they are just passing through, if they are going into retirement, it's a really good town. But for young people, this is a town that is scary, it's a town that is not very welcoming, it’s a town that doesn't have very many experiences besides things that will take you down the line of addiction, or a line of self-doubt and hatred and things like that, and so those are my biggest reasons to escape, and I know that the world is so big and vast, and we are so small compared to it. And I know that no matter if I stay here or if I'm somewhere else, I'm gonna do me, and that's just how I'm gonna roll, and so that's my reason to leave, for sure.

What is a memory from your time here that you'll remember the most? The first thing that pops into mind is graduation, watching all of my friends graduate and walking down to get their diplomas and shaking all of the principals hands and things like that, and watching my brother graduate and be the first of our family in America to graduate high school was super, super nice. My family graduated in Thailand, they went to school in Thailand, but that is such a different experience than graduating high school here, and so for him to navigate all of that and without any outside support from my family, because they never experienced it, was a very proud experience as a little sister, watching my mom struggle and watching my family struggle here in general, and so him paving the way for me to graduate with no hesitation, with no doubt in my own ability, is an amazing memory that I will keep and it will be the reason I come back to step on that football field or to look at that football field, to wander around my campus, my school for four years, to come back to see teachers or things like that. The biggest thing that is nice to know is that if my brother can graduate, and if he can pave the way for me, I can graduate and I can go to college, and I can come back here and be okay with what I experienced, whether it was good or bad.

Where do you wanna go to college and what do you want to study? Yeah! Uh… big, big aspirations. Ivy league school things. My dream school is Stanford. We're trying, we're hoping... But my safe school would be University of Oregon or... a school in Oregon that I really wanted to go to is Lewis & Clark, my top three schools. At the moment, I am a little undecided. I have been really, really pushing to double major in psychology and Education, and so I took an AP Psychology class last year, and it was probably my least favorite and my most favorite class... the topic was my most favorite, class in general was my least favorite, but it was such an interesting experience to learn about the brain and with my own mental health struggles, I feel a deeper connection to learn about why our brains work and why so many people struggle the way I do, in our society and in the world in general, and growing up, I've always had at least one teacher who was there to support me no matter what, who was there to be by my side, whether I was struggling with my identity, with my mental health, with family, I always had someone there. And so going into education has always been a big thing for me, cause I want to be that person who makes as much of an impact as so many teachers have made in my life.