Hi! I'm Allison Wei. Growing up in Troy, Michigan with traditional Chinese immigrant parents, I didn't think that a creative career (in my case, writing) was possible. This was partly because of parental pressure, partly because I simply didn't have role models who looked like me. 

That changed when I came to the University of Michigan. My freshman year, I had a poetry instructor, Carlina Duan, who looked like me (a Chinese-American woman). She showed me that I could indeed be a writer. ​This experience taught me: Representation changes everything.

I created this project to provide accessible role models to other young Asian American creatives. It's a resource I would have wanted growing up. While creative representation is often concentrated in the East & West Coast, I wanted to spotlight creatives from Michigan/the Midwest to show that you can be anything you want to be, no matter where you come from.

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