A portrait of Anna Yum in her living room in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023.

Anna Yum with her cat Kaja in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023.

Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty's shared apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.

Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty in their shared space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023:
"I have a complicated relationship with my family, which means I have a complicated relationship with my racial and ethnic identity. I haven’t spoken to my mother in eight years, and I didn’t just lose contact with her. I lost my connection to half of my family, my Japanese surname, and my sense of belonging in the AAPI community.
My mother’s half of the family was capital J.A., Japanese-American. Those two words held equal weight. The Cherry Blossom Festival was just as important as the 4th of July. They called Inari “footballs” and Danmuji “sweaty socks”. When the women married, they took their white husband’s surnames but gave their children middle names that could be spelled with kanji. The older members had been through internment camps in Arkansas but never talked about it. These new traditions were passed down to me, along with the precious heirlooms of upturned eyes, an oval face, and fine black hair. But when the family collectively cut me off at age 16, it felt more like I had been thrown a cheap t-shirt that read: “My Mom Abandoned Me and All I Got Was This Asian Face”.
My dad is white. He’s the recessive gene, the European splotch on ancestry.com, and the reason behind the harsh angles of my nose. If my dad came to pick me up from a playdate, people assumed I was adopted. We barely share a freckle, let alone any prominent features. So despite not speaking a single word of Japanese, nor ever going to Japan, in the 88.1% white city I spent my childhood in, I was fully Japanese. Because of this, because I was always called “Asian Maya” before “Maya”, because I was prodded with questions like “where are you really from?” or told that I looked “just like Lucy Liu”, I identify as Japanese first, white second.
Now I have two sons who are ¼ Chinese, ¼ Japanese, and ½ white. They were adopted by a Korean woman and a Scottish man (who can actually trace his lineage back to the same clan as my family). Like me, they are growing up in a majority white enclave, but they have deep roots to their heritage that are not as easily severed as mine. The oldest is learning Korean over facetime with his halmoni, and the youngest is being fitted with a hanbok for his 100th day celebration. My partner Michael and I will always be present in their lives if they want to learn more about our Chinese and Japanese cultures, respectively. Oftentimes it feels like the shared gene between half-asians is nagging self-doubt. A feeling that you don’t belong. All I can hope is that my children didn't inherit that."

Charlie Caulfield in their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.

Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty in their space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.

Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty in their shared loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.

Acudus Aranyian in their shared space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.

Acudus Aranyian and Colum Bowyer in their shared space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.

Colum Bowyer in their shared space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.

Colum Bowyer braiding Acudus Aranyian's rat tail in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.

Colum Bowyer and Acudus Aranyian posing on top of their bedroom in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.

Eric Yang and Charlie Gillette at Charlie's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.

Eric Yang in Charlie's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.

Eric Yang and Charlie Gillette at Charlie's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023:
"We met acting in a film together, playing boyfriend and girlfriend in a short called 'Ttal'. The film is about navigating the cultural and generational gaps that exist when you're in an interracial relationship. Many aspects of the film came true in our real lives once we started dating. Eric grew up partially in the US and partially in China and I grew up in a multicultural household with my dad's side of the family being Chilean and my mom's side being mostly German. Both of us speak multiple languages and have experienced life in other countries. While we have a lot of differences, we've found they actually serve as points of connection and shared experience as well. I think we both share a love of new experiences and a curiosity about the world that comes from having that kind of upbringing. I was born in Germany and spent the first three years of my life there before moving to Miami where my dad's siblings and parents lived. Miami is so multicultural and family gatherings would be half in English and half in Spanish. After my family moved to upstate New York when I was 10, I began to grapple with my identity, where my Latina roots often went unnoticed or misunderstood because of the way I look. For years, I silenced this part of me. Now, my work is driven by a commitment to explore and express the diverse narratives that have sculpted me, using my voice and my craft to weave together the threads of my identity into a narrative that speaks of unity in diversity."

Charlie Gillette in her apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.