One day, when Rajiv was in kindergarten, he came home crying. He was the only student of Indian descent at his elementary school, and his classmates had been teasing him mercilessly about his name, mispronouncing it on purpose.

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“I came home in tears and I asked my parents, ‘Can you just change my name, so I can have a normal name, so I can fit in?” he remembers. “That’s when my parents sat me down and explained that my name meant, in ancient Sanskrit, Blue Lotus.”

They told him how the lotus – India’s national flower – is rooted in the mud, but rises through it to blossom. They taught him about the flower’s deep religious connotations around purity, resurrection and enlightenment.

“It was a beautiful moment for me retrospectively,” says Rajiv, 37, a Starbucks store manager in Atlanta. “It was really fundamental to me understanding and embracing my identity.”

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For Rajiv, who was born in Delaware to parents who’d immigrated to the U.S. from India, that moment sparked a lifelong journey to try and fully connect with his heritage, to try and discover who he really is.

The journey took him back to India during his college summers. He worked in a hospital in Lucknow doing research alongside his aunt, a psychologist. He walked in the footsteps of the pre-colonial maharajas who had once ruled the desert states near the Indo-Pakistani border. And he visited the same bustling neighborhoods and stores in Delhi where his parents lived and shopped.

“Those college experiences were fundamental in grounding me,” Rajiv says. “Traveling alone in India forced me to relearn the language, gain confidence in a drastically different culture and appreciate the shift that my parents underwent when they came to the U.S., knowing no one, and without any support.”

The journey continued after he got married, when he traveled to “the four different corners of India” with his wife – who is half-Japanese and half-white – so he could celebrate his heritage alongside her. And the journey lives on today, as he tries to capture and preserve the stories of his grandparents on video, so he can pass down a first-hand account to future generations.

“My Asian heritage is something that I have become closer to and embraced more and more as I’ve aged,” Rajiv says. “My own acceptance, my own understanding of my heritage has deepened.”

He still has family in India, including his elderly grandmother and an uncle who has cancer. He worries about them, along with all those in India who are currently <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/navigating-through-covid-19/">facing a heartbreaking situation</a> with overwhelming numbers of people with COVID-19 and dangerous variants. “To feel so powerless as the crisis magnifies in my homeland has been so distressing,” he says. 

When Rajiv reflects on what he’s learned&nbsp;during his travels to India and the lessons from his life, he remembers how his mother nurtured her own community and, with dignity, “persevered in winning over the hearts of everyone she came in contact with.” She patiently explained Indian culture over a cup of chai to co-workers who were unfamiliar with it, and prepared family favorites like chickpea curry, lentil stew and spicy spaghetti whenever Rajiv’s friends came over for a study session.

Maybe her example of hospitality and respect for guests, he says, is one possible way to help confront the problems around race in America. It’s something he’s increasingly mindful of as he thinks both about how to interact with his customers (he’s been a Starbucks store manager since 2014), and how to take action amidst the recent uptick in reported attacks against Asians and Asian Americans, including the mass shootings of Asian women that happened in his city in March.

“We ourselves have to be comfortable enough to say, this is who we are. It’s so easy for people to shy away from who they are, to diminish their heritage in an effort to fit in, because it’s the path of least resistance,” Rajiv says. “You have to fundamentally understand yourself and your heritage and culture first, and then bring people along for the ride, who don’t have the exposure. That, coupled with seeing the pride that we have in our culture, will lead to greater acceptance.”

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During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Rajiv, a Starbucks store manager in Atlanta, talks about connecting more deeply with his own Indian identity.

Honoring AAPI Heritage Month: A store manager’s journey to discover his Indian identity

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During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Rajiv, a Starbucks store manager in Atlanta, talks about connecting more deeply with his own Indian identity and how his mother’s approach to hospitality might be one way to stop the hate.

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Whenever an elderly Asian customer comes into the New York City Starbucks where Sienna works as a barista, she makes extra sure that they feel seen and taken care of. She has three reasons, she says.

First, she wants them to feel safe in light of the increase in reported attacks against Asians and Asian Americans nationwide. Second, they remind her of her own beloved Filipino grandparents, who she grew up with in Hawaii. And third, she’s motivated by the invisibility she’s felt and experienced professionally as an early-career Filipino actor.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Sienna moved to New York City to attend college, study acting and try to break into Broadway and the film industry. But it hasn’t been easy, and not just because the pandemic has shut down many creative outlets.

“In terms of what actually gets produced in the mainstream, in your TV shows or films or Broadway shows, there aren’t a lot of Filipino stories out there,” says Sienna, 26. “A lot of Filipino actors I grew up watching portrayed characters not of Filipino background, but east Asian or even Latinx roles.

“I just feel like in that sense, Filipinos are not seen. What I would like to promote with my work is to push for actual Filipino representation and Filipino stories.”

Those stories are stories of home. Her parents are artists – her mother, a pianist, and her father, a painter who works as an architect – who encouraged her to act, play music and dance hula. They also told her vivid tales of their old neighborhood in Ilocos Norte, on the northwest tip of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines – about the neighbor with the distinct cough or the Catholic church bell tower across the street that would toll so loudly.

Her two older sisters, who were born in the Philippines, told her different kinds of stories, scary ones from Filipino folklore, about giants who lived in the trees and shape-shifting women who chased little children.

Her grandparents made such a big impact on her, that in college, Sienna wrote a story of her own, trying to both honor her grandfather’s experience back in the Philippines and make sense of her own heritage that stems from it. She describes him biking miles and miles to work, fishing in a local river with his brothers and pursuing a master’s degree in education in Manila. It’s interspersed with a burst of scenes from her life in Hawaii – eating slow-cooked pork laulau with a scoop of rice, and sucking the cartilage off an oxtail soup bone – and her first encounter with New York – where the “air is crisp like an apple, and the wind sharp like the knife that slices it” and she has an awkward encounter with a bagel-shop employee who attempts to speak to her in Tagalog, which she doesn’t know.

She has adapted the story into a solo piece that she hopes to perform.

“I have so much respect for my family and their life histories. That is so rich and valuable,” Sienna says. “Why wouldn’t we have these stories represented in Hollywood or Broadway?”

Those stories also remind her to move through this world with care and intentionality, whether it’s being patient and kind to the many older Asian immigrants who live in her neighborhood and come into her store – for whom language, even when ordering coffee, can be a barrier – or processing the racial reckoning happening throughout the country.

“For the most part, it’s about moving through the world with huge compassion,” Sienna says. “Whenever anyone or any community comes forward sharing their experience, or asking for support in help in combatting racism, it’s important to listen with compassion and try to help each other move forward in whatever way we can, and to tap into our skills and our strengths and not be afraid to use that.”

Sienna, a Starbucks barista in New York, shares how she’s sometimes felt invisible – and how it’s motivated her to help others in the Asian community.

Honoring AAPI Heritage Month: A Filipino actor’s quest to truly be seen and see others

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What does it mean to be “Asian enough?”

That was a question Gina often asked herself while growing up. Half-Korean and half-white, she spent most of her first 18 years in Korea, on a U.S. Army base and then in Seoul. She was immersed in the country’s culture and traditions, fluent in the language and surrounded by Korean friends and family.

But when she moved to the U.S. to attend college in a predominantly white, rural community, she found that some of her mannerisms stuck out. In Korea, for example, holding hands and linking arms with her female classmates was a way to signify friendship. But in the context of her new roommates, some of whom had never had an Asian friend before, that felt suddenly and completely foreign.

“I checked myself because I wanted to fit in,” remembers Gina, now a Starbucks district manager in Virginia. Meanwhile, “my Korean friends thought I was trying to become more American. It was a constant struggle where you can’t be both to their fullest extent.”

Gina, 33, began to find acceptance of her identity after meeting her husband, who was born in Korea, but had a completely different lived experience after being adopted by a Danish American family in the Midwest. He didn’t speak the language and wasn’t familiar at all with the customs.

“It was important for me to help him find his identity and be proud of being Korean,” she says. “Through that mutual discovery process, I was able to feel more comfortable in my own skin, that I can fully feel comfortable being an Asian as I would like to be, without having to make excuses or having validation.”

Now that they have children, “it’s very important and a part of my responsibility to help them be able to understand what part of their identity makes them unique, that makes them be able to have additional value out in society,” Gina says. “I want my kids to feel empowered. I want them to know that they can be fully and culturally how they choose” – whether it’s wearing a traditional hanbok to school or learning how to honor their halmoni, or grandmother.

About five years ago, Gina joined the Starbucks Women’s Impact Network (WIN), a partner (employee) resource group, where she found a community of strong women leaders. They helped her gain confidence and “be comfortable around uncomfortable topics.” She thought specifically about the many times she felt “invisible” during discussions about race, when some people assumed she was only championing Asian causes because of her husband and their children, or when others invalidated her views because they assumed she was white or not Asian enough to fully understand the struggles.

By then, she’d met many other Asian American peers, who like her, were working through identity issues too. So last October, she helped launch the Mid-Atlantic regional chapter of the Pan-Asian Partner Network (PPN), another partner resource group. They are now more than 100 members strong.

“My entire life, I’ve dealt with this idea of wanting to fit in, without having to check one box or the other,” Gina says. “I saw there was a part of my own personal community that wasn’t being represented and supported. It was just a moment for me to take every experience that I’d had, and do what I’d always wanted someone to do for me.”

The timing was especially meaningful. Amidst the recent rise in anti-Asian violence, PPN regional chapters have been holding listening sessions across the country this spring, so partners can find community and resources, and process and reflect on their experiences. More than 1,600 Starbucks partners have participated so far.

“For a long time, I felt like I shouldn’t be the one to launch the PPN chapter, because I’m not fully Asian, or I don’t represent the true Asian experience,” she says. “But I’m so glad for my experiences. At the end of the day, I push all that aside. I hope that people, in hearing my story, maybe feel inspired and speak up themselves, unapologetically be themselves, and not feel like they have to be an imposter in one aspect or another. I love that I can fully be me.”

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During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Gina, a Starbucks district manager who is half-Korean and half-white, shares her story of learning to embrace her unique experiences.

Honoring AAPI Heritage Month: Embracing diversity within diversity

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During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Gina, a Starbucks district manager who is half-Korean and half-white, shares her story of learning to embrace her unique experiences and her desire to help others “unapologetically be themselves.”

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A number of organizations are doing important work to educate, advocate and provide support in the fight against anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. Below, please find links to resources about the Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) experience.

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Resources for fighting anti-Asian racism and xenophobia.

Standing against Asian hate

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<p style="text-align: center">This May, during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Starbucks is proud to share the stories of some of our AAPI partners, stories about connecting with our roots, about learning to unapologetically be ourselves, about the need to be seen. When we know about each other, we’re stronger together.
<strong><a href="https://courses.starbucksglobalacademy.com/courses/course-v1:ASU+TBW204+2019/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Learn</a> • <a href="https://www.standagainsthatred.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Listen</a> • <a href="https://stopaapihate.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Take Action</a></strong></p>

Honoring AAPI Heritage Month

This May, during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Starbucks is proud to share the stories of some of our AAPI partners

AAPI Heritage Month

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This May, during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Starbucks is proud to share the stories of some of our AAPI partners.

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