Nathan Xia was standing by the door to his second grade classroom when he overheard two of his Chinese American peers talking about how their parents warned them to stay away from him because he was a “troublemaker.”
He often felt disconnected from his Asian American peers, struggling to fit into the mold of the obedient, academically driven student. In the first grade, he was sent to the principal’s office after leading his entire class out to recess early when their teacher stepped out of the classroom, causing the instructor to panic upon returning to an empty room.
“I could never sit still. I never liked math and science. I got good at it because my parents pushed me really hard to get good in school, but I never really had a passion for it. It never came naturally to me either,” Xia tells NextShark. “I felt like I never really fit in with a lot of my Asian peers and my white peers. I think from a young age, I felt like I was caught in this weird in-between. It was frustrating. I struggled a lot, trying to find myself and where I fit in the world.”
“I realized I really liked making films and just creating and feeling like I was able to actually express myself and find my own voice,” Xia recalls. “To just create was kind of like the antithesis of what piano was to me, which was…
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