Ansel Chen

Themes — Childhood, Coming Out, Familial Relationships, Gender

Ansel Chen, a nonbinary second generation Chinese American, got involved with API Equality – Northern California through their senior project in high school. In 2015, they reached out to Amy Sueyoshi as a consultant for their project on LGBTQ youth of color and how culture and race affects expression of sexuality and quality of life. Ansel grew up in the East Bay with their Cantonese-speaking family and was unaware of nonbinary identification until 2013. They were inspired to choose the name Ansel after watching the movie Divergent.

I think nonbinary and genderfluid people have been trying for a very long time to get themselves recognized and I think we’ve only gotten recognized recently, and not very much. I think there is room, and the more people learn about that there’s something outside of the binary and to not shame people who are outside of it, then yeah. People still have a hard time with trans nonbinary people.