Highlighting MacArthur Fellows This Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is a chance to recognize the contributions of millions of Asian American and Pacific Islanders to the history and culture of the United States.

MacArthur Fellows of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent are tackling a number of issues in a wide range of fields. This month and beyond, we encourage you to explore the work of these exceptionally creative individuals.

Here are ten quotes from some about their work and their personal experiences. Let us know in the comments which ones resonate with you:

“Our world is transformed by covert information, political messages. How would that work if it was art?” — Mel Chin, Artist

“When I was an undergraduate there was a professor who offered me the opportunity to do research in her lab and earn part-time money feeding her spider colony…You don’t work with spiders very long before you start noticing how important silk is to their life and just how special that is for spiders.” — Cheryl Hayashi, Spider Silk Biologist

“I think of academia as my playground to be able to do all the explorations of concepts and ideas that are just really hard to do sometimes in industry. I get that intellectual freedom to create these off-the-wall, wacky ideas.” — Shwetak Patel, Sensor Technologist and Computer Scientist

“Theater at its best is not a one-way relationship. It’s very much an alive dynamic. The audience and the performers, the text, music, visual spatial environment, all of those elements are working together to create an event…My job is creating the environment for those connections to take shape.” — Mimi Lien, Set Designer

“I did live through a revolution, but I’m not sure it counts if you’re four years old. Those questions have preoccupied me, ever since college — the difference between theorizing a revolution and living a revolution.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen, Fiction Writer and Cultural Critic

“I think this is a documentary filmmaker’s responsibility to hold the power accountable, and when there is no other mechanism that can do that that’s the power of storytelling. When we start to acknowledge the consequences and examine the behavior that led to those consequences is when we can actually make changes.” — Nanfu Wang, Documentary Filmmaker

“I was a teacher for seventeen years, and over time I’ve learned that teaching and storytelling have a lot in common. Being a writer and being a teacher both require you to put yourself in the role of the other. As a teacher, you have to picture yourself as a student consuming the information you’re feeding them. As a writer, you have to imagine yourself as the reader.” — Gene Luen Yang, Graphic Novelist

“This is a real shift away from punitiveness towards a justice that involves reparation, accountability and healing. And I think one of the most important things about restorative justice and why I was so drawn to it is the possibility that we can have accountability and healing without any reliance on courts or the criminal legal system at all.” — sujatha baliga, Attorney and Restorative Justice Practitioner

“Once you solve a problem, you tend to remember only the short path that got you from A to B. You forgot all the dead ends. It’s a bit of a shame. It gives the wrong impression that people who are good at mathematics only choose the right steps. But there is a lot of trial and error and really terribly embarrassing ideas.” — Terence Tao, Mathematician

“As I was thinking about new technologies that could help us develop more sensitive gravitational detectors, I found myself in a growing field called quantum opto­mechanics. I had to learn how to avoid jargon to get my ideas across between fields that speak quite different languages. This improved my teaching and helped prepare me for being dean.” — Nergis Mavalvala, Quantum Astrophysicist