{"id":25756,"date":"2023-05-19T14:26:49","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T18:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=25756"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:22:27","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T21:22:27","slug":"katelyn-wong-26-keeps-furman-in-the-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/katelyn-wong-26-keeps-furman-in-the-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Katelyn Wong \u201926 on history and heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

AAPI Heritage Month at Furman<\/a>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Katelyn Wong \u201926 is spending most of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month<\/a> in England, following the paths of centuries-old pilgrimages on the May Experience<\/a> Canterbury Trails course. Her own pilgrimage toward Furman as a Chinese American student began closer to home, partly thanks to her sisters, Kayla Wong \u201919 and Kelsey Wong \u201921 M\u201922.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had grown up around campus already, and so I already loved the community,\u201d said the Greenville, South Carolina, native. \u201cThen, when my two older sisters came here, I got to know the academics and the professors a little bit more. It had everything I wanted in a school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bits and pieces of culture<\/h3>\n
\"\"

The Wong family poses outside Daniel Chapel for the 2022 Summer Commencement. From left: Stephanie Wong, Katelyn Wong \u201926, Kelsey Wong \u201921 M\u201922, Kayla Wong \u201919 and Kirk Wong.<\/p><\/div>\n

Wong\u2019s father was born and raised in California after his parents emigrated to the United States from China. \u201cMy grandparents wanted to be very American, and they didn\u2019t teach my dad and his two brothers any Chinese,\u201d she said. \u201cMy mother was actually the one who encouraged us to connect with that culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong\u2019s mother made sure her daughters\u2019 home-school lessons included Chinese culture and history. She found Chinese schools and programs in the area, including a two-week intensive Chinese language course hosted on Furman\u2019s campus during the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my mom used to put together a whole Lunar New Year celebration for our neighborhood,\u201d said Wong. \u201cSo, we learned bits and pieces growing up, and when we all went to college, we ended up taking Chinese as our language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming to Furman from a home-school environment<\/a> has helped Wong connect with Asian culture in other ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was integrated into a much more diverse group of people,\u201d she said. \u201cI was able to find people who had similar experiences, who were also Asian American and knew that culture a little bit more than my high school friends did. We all kind of gravitated toward each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

A family thing<\/h3>\n

Finding friends who understood certain Asian family dynamics was novel, Wong said, \u201cbecause in high school I found that my family sometimes did things that my other fully white American friends didn\u2019t really understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take Wong\u2019s older sisters: Both have graduated and are working as teachers in the Greenville area \u2013 and both are unmarried, so they are living with their parents now, saving money toward future home purchases. They have the example of their father, who didn\u2019t move out of his own parents\u2019 house until after his marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome to find out, that\u2019s a very Asian thing to do,\u201d said Wong. \u201cI thought that was so normal, but my non-Asian friends would say, \u2018That\u2019s kind of weird.\u2019 As soon as they graduate, they would be kicked out of the house. But then my Asian American friends would say, \u2018No, that totally makes sense. That\u2019s what you do. It\u2019s the filial piety kind of deal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

An admissions ambassador, performer in the Furman Dance Club and the Pauper Players<\/a> musical theater organization and member of the Delta Gamma sorority, Wong is planning to double major in communication studies and Asian studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Asian studies part is just kind of for fun at this point,\u201d she said, \u201csince I\u2019m taking the languages anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following in her older sisters\u2019 footsteps, the Chinese American student found a growing AAPI community on campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":25759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,51,70],"tags":[2089],"class_list":["post-25756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asian-studies","category-communication-studies","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","tag-aapi-heritage-month-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}