By Alyson Henderson, age 16, high school junior, Connecticut. She adds: “I have been reading and writing for as long as I can remember, and it’s through reading and writing that I learned about other people’s cultures and identities as well as my own. My dad is white and American, and my mom is Korean and immigrated when she was young. For a long time, I’ve been exploring my own identity through writing, particularly my identity as a biracial person. I often feel like I have to choose between being Asian and being white, and I can’t identify as both. However, by ignoring either part of my identity, I am ignoring so much of my life. The way I see it, choosing one half of my identity is being dishonest with myself about who I am. My poem, “half, whole” explores the struggle of never feeling fully accepted as either “half” of myself, and how I have accepted that I don’t have to be put in one box and discard parts of myself for others’ comfort.”