When I came to America, I was forced to confront my race for the first time. I realized that people were perceiving my Asian-ness before they were perceiving me as a person. Feeling unwelcome and othered in white spaces became the norm and my other friends of color likened it to being a bad smell, invisible but unwanted. Hence, the central theme of the poem is 臭(chòu), the chinese word for smelly or stinky. There is also a lot of food imagery in this poem which I included to pay homage to all the times Asian food was dismissed as smelling bad or looking gross. It’s an experience of shame that I had as a child growing up amongst westerners and its an experience that is shared by so many Asians immigrants across the world. But this poem and video is also about my desire to reconnect with my culture and to accept and love being Chinese. Even though the tone of the poem is melancholy and homesick, the style of writing and the transition in the language indicates a sense of growth and long lasting change.