SquadTalks with Sung Yeon Choimorrow: Celebrating—and Uplifting—the Diversity of the AAPI Community

By: Natalie Zunker

When she was 18, Sung Yeon Choimorrow moved to the United States from Asia. Since her arrival, she’s dedicated her life to justice work. But her inspiration to help change the world originated in grade school in Korea. After learning about Ryu Gwansun, a 17 year old organizer who was executed for her efforts in the Korean Independence movement, she was left with a lingering affirmation that she held with her as she immigrated to the US:, “Girls can do things to help change our country—change our world.”

This memory, coupled with her experience volunteering at Mother Teresa’s organization while growing up in India, instilled the origins of her understanding of what it meant to change the world. She learned, “No matter what the issue is, I want to work, and be a part of changing our world, so everybody can have that kind of compassion and dignity whether it’s in death or in life,” says Choimorrow.  

Today, Choimorrow works as Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), a community based non-profit focused on building power within Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and girls. Her efforts to spread awareness about AAPI experiences through speaking engagements took her all the way to the White House this May, where she encouraged President Biden and Vice President Harris to remain accountable, and continue to amplify AAPI stories. Just one day later, she spoke to the LaunchSquad team about her background, NAPAWF’s efforts and how we can all play an active role to uplift the AAPI community—during AAPI month and beyond.

AAPI month, first initiated by former congressional staffer, Jeanie Jew in the 1970s, was designated to highlight the contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans on United States history, culture and achievements. But dialogue, action and engagement with the AAPI community has never been more important due to increased violence and discrimination against Asian Americans.  

After speaking to 70 reporters in the span of four days following the Atlanta shootings, Choimorrow’s biggest takeaway was how little they knew about the AAPI community, and how shocked they were by her lived experiences. 

“I have never felt so affirmed and encouraged that this is work that needed to be done,” she said. 

While educating our team on the goals of NAPAWF, Choimorrow shared that in order to effectively support the AAPI community, we must recognize its diversity. 

“We are a community that comes from 50 countries of origin and speaks over 100 languages and dialects in the United states,” said Choimorrow. “What ends up happening is many in our community become completely invisible, especially when we aggregate all the data about Asian Americans.”

Choimorrow shared that because all of Asian American data is collected together, it makes Asian American women appear to be doing really well—right now, they say the average Asian American woman is making 85 cents to a white man’s dollar, while nationally, the average woman makes 78 cents to a white man’s dollar. However, after pulling the data out, the four ethnic groups that have the widest wage gaps are Asian American women: Nepali American, Bhutanese American, Hmong American and Burmese American all make 51 cents to a white man’s dollar. 

“When you say Asian Americans are all doing really well, then the government and the private sector doesn’t feel the need to translate materials into your language for access because you don’t need support. And what we saw during the pandemic is so many in our community being left out of unemployment benefits, PPPs—you name it,” said Choimorrow. “We really try to do our work and make our decisions to uplift the most vulnerable in our community. And to talk about how, those of us who do over-index and who are doing better, how do we use our collective identity in a way to support and help everybody rise together?”

Before parting our team, her biggest call to action to allies was to not be a bystander. Instead of avoiding someone who’s making racist or sexist remarks, interrupt. It’s our responsibility to start normalizing interrupting these behaviors so they’re not tolerated. She invites us to pay attention to how Asian Americans are portrayed—for parents, how are schools including Asian American stories so they’re seen as part of America? And not just in May. 

“One of the things that we’re doubling down on in our commitment is to make sure that our stories don’t ever get lost again,” she says.. “Because we cannot let history repeat itself; it’s repeated itself enough.”