Amy Lin
Themes — Activism, Community, East Asian Experience, Immigration
Amy Lin is a 23-year-old queer Chinese activist currently advocating for immigrant rights. Growing up, Amy has always looked up to her mother for her strong will, devotion to family, and “ability to just not give a shit”. Amy and her mother migrated to Burma from Taiwan when she was 2, and they migrated to the US from Taiwan when Amy was only 12 years old. As a child, Amy was already aware of the fact that she and her mother were immigrants, and that this set her apart from other children her age. Thus Amy began working to promote immigrant rights in 2012. Since then, Amy has worked with Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights through Education (ASPIRE), striving to raise awareness of undocumented LGBTQ+ individuals and students and the treatment they receive. She currently lives in the Bay Area with her mother, and continues to promote and advocate for immigrants and students who identify as immigrants.
- Narrator: Amy Lin
- Date recorded: April 4th, 2015
- Duration: 32m
At that time I felt there was a lack of discussion around gender and sexual orientation in the discussion of immigration reform because many of the leaders within the movement pretty…I wanna say…stereotypical, very masculine leaders. So I began to feel the discontent with the situation; I started questioning what is it about my identity as a queer woman and being undocumented and Asian have anything to do with everything else that was happening because people were still being detained.
That was [my mom]’s way of telling me that you need to be more aware of how people are treating you because things are — like, just because you’re a kid, it doesn’t mean that people see you as a kid. Everything comes in a very political way and you need to be becoming more conscious about that and then start defending yourself.