abacus, belonging, AAPI, trailblazers
Recap of the week and some personal thoughts on all of the above
This week began in a courtroom and ended on stage. Both were about power. Both were about storytelling.
On Monday, I attended a screening of Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, part of the Appellate Division’s programming in recognition of AAPI Heritage Month. On Thursday, I moderated a panel at the Serica Trailblazer conference. Two very different rooms. But in both, the same quiet question surfaced again and again:
What does it mean to belong?
I’ve navigated this question, trying to adapt while hold together the contradictions of cultural codes and the environments I move through. There’s no fixed answer, especially because identity isn’t static at all but a constantly recalibrated set of expectations.
The story of Abacus is still relevant today. Ten years after the court cleared the Sung family, it remains a case study in selective justice. The only financial institution prosecuted in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis was a community bank in Chinatown, immigrant-owned and too small to fight back through media or institutional influence. If anything, the case was pursued precisely because it was symbolic and contained.
The documentary follows the Sung family—patriarch Thomas Sung, a Chinese immigrant lawyer-turned-banker who founded the bank to serve his community, and his daughters, three of whom are lawyers, who are instrumental in how the story unfolded. The film subtly lays out how Abacus was made a scapegoat for systemic failures in the financial industry. While massive Wall Street banks received bailouts despite causing the global financial meltdown, this small community bank faced criminal charges for relatively minor infractions that other institutions routinely committed.
Not demure or shy from confrontation, as Asian Americans are often characterized, the Sungs fought back.
The Sung sisters came for a Q&A after the screening, and the same tenacity and heart seen in the documentary were palpable in the way they spoke—clear-eyed, generous, and even funny—about what must have been one of the most harrowing periods of their lives. They didn’t carry the case like a burden but like a chapter they authored, on their own terms.
The first time I saw Abacus was years earlier, before COVID, on a flight in transit between Shanghai and New York. At the time, I was traveling constantly to Hangzhou while working for Alibaba, and caught in a different kind of identity crisis. What should have been an advantage—my bicultural awareness—was often overlooked because it was convenient to do so.
I remember debating the variability and implications of a Hoover Institution report that cast suspicion on Chinese Americans. I raised questions about its framing. A superior of mine, someone who held problematic, reductive views about China and its culture, told me flatly, “You don’t know China at all.”
The comment wasn’t just dismissive; it revealed how quickly people reach for narratives that reinforce their assumptions. On the U.S. side, my advice and efforts to relay the China team’s perspectives were often ignored. On the China side, I was expected to say yes to demands without resistance, as my female Chinese colleagues often did.
Somewhere over the Pacific, altitude and exhaustion kicked in. I cried watching Abacus. It struck something deep. The sense of unfairness. The quiet dignity with which the Sung family fought back. Their clarity, their conviction, their refusal to fold. I remember thinking: I just need to be that brave. That steady.
Ten years later, what’s changed? Wall Street has moved on to the new crisis of the moment. But the dynamics Abacus surfaced—about power, discretion, and whose success is treated as provisional—are still with us. The case revealed what happens when institutions prize the appearance of accountability over substance and how easily immigrant stories, even when built on responsibility and restraint, can be recast as liabilities when the system needs a headline.
We use “AAPI” as shorthand—Asian American and Pacific Islander—but it’s a term heavy with both utility and contradiction. Yes, it allows for coalition-building and institutional recognition. But it also collapses wildly different histories, traumas, and class realities into an acronym. In Minor Feelings: an Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong unpacks this dynamic further. She introduces the concept of “minor feelings”—the complex emotions that arise from occupying an ambiguous racial position in America. Asian Americans are often told their experiences with bias are invalid, making the resulting confusion and alienation difficult to name, let alone address.
Even the “model minority” myth, so often framed as praise, is a trap when dug deeper. It positions us as compliant and successful enough to be useful but not enough to be seen fully.
It was refreshing to hear the panelists at Serica’s Trailblazer conference give direct and prescriptive answers. If we’ve named these minor feelings, then let’s legitimize them—and do something with that clarity.
Cindy’s work through the Committee of 100 isn’t just about incorporating more Asian American stories into the curriculum—it’s about reshaping the broader framework of inclusion. The organization has advocated for integrating Chinese American history into K-12 education standards across the country, believing that knowing our collective past helps anchor a more equitable future.
Jenny reminded us that healing isn’t always solemn—it can be experimental, playful, and grounded in finding deeper meaning. Her work explores how identity can be reimagined through creative expression, artmaking, and play. In her framing, narrative becomes a tool for reclaiming identity in a new way.
And Kathy Hirata Chin’s courtroom reenactments are not just educational exercises. They are acts of civic memory. Through AABANY’s Reenactments Project, Kathy, along with her husband Judge Denny Chin, and volunteers dramatize landmark legal cases involving Asian Americans—from Korematsu v. United States to Tape v. Hurley—and so much more. These performances are grounded in facts, rigorously researched, and publicly staged to spark awareness, dialogue, and reflection on the legal foundations of inclusion and exclusion of Asian Americans in this country. At the gala on the same evening where Kathy was honored, she summed up perfectly:
“We need these stories, and we need to support the principles and legal systems that made them possible. We all need to stand up and speak up for what is right and keep telling stories.”
Until next week,
Ivy