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                <text>Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries.</text>
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                <text>Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies.</text>
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                    <text>1
Joshua Kim &amp; Yawen Tang
AAS 307
Final Report
SECTION ONE (5 points)
Person interviewed: Sarah Park
Interviewee’s title or position: Manager of a Martin’s Cleaners in East Setauket
Date, time, and length of interview: Apr.12, 8:00 am, 35mins
Our objective in conducting this interview:
1. Getting to know Sarah Park’s background: How’s her family status? How’s her childhood?
How many years she has been lived in United States?
2. Getting to know Sarah Park’s work: Why she works at the cleaners? Does she own the store?
What she does for her work?
3. Getting to know Sarah Park’s personal life: Is the married? Is she a religious? How’s her
husband and children?
4. Getting to know the role that Sarah Park plays in the U.S.-Asian relations. We wanted to know
whether Sarah Park ever met any discrimination against her. Also, we wanted to figure out how
Sarah Park different from American women, and how she build up the bridge and understanding
between American and Asian Women.

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SECTION TWO (10 points)
Before the interview, we only had her name and the name of the cleaners’ she works at.
We wanted to find her on Facebook but failed, then we figured it is possibly because her store
was not that well known. Then we found her store on the google map, with all the necessary
information. For an example, we had discovered that her address is at 170 NY-25A, SetauketEast Setauket, NY 11733 and the dry cleaner place was called “Martin’s French Cleaners.”
Moreover, we had discovered that her workdays and work hours were 8:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m. every
day of the week besides Sundays and Mondays. Then, we started worked on the questions.
Moreover, our original questions mainly focus on her work and the woman’s role she plays as a
Korean American. With the help of our professor, we wrote the interview request for her in a
letter, and we gave it to her in person. However, she did not reply to the letter, the most probable
reason was because she was so occupied with her work. Thus, I (Yawen) went to her store again
to schedule the interview time because of the lack of communication. When I talked to her, we
found out that she has Korean accent, which means she immigrated to United States instead of
being born here. Therefore, we changed and added questions about her immigration, and the life
she had before she came to U.S. In preparation of the interview, we had fully charged our phone
for recording and prepared a camera for photos and videos the day before we took the interview.
We had also wore nicer clothes than usual to give off a professional attire and had practiced the
interview questions beforehand so that we do not seem unprepared and as if we were reading our
questions aloud for the first time. Our friends drove us to the interview site.

�3
List your interview questions.
What do you do on a daily basis for your job?
How did you attain your current career?
What was your early childhood like?
Were you ever discriminated against racially?
How does your career affect your family and what is their stance on it?
Do you think that White Americans work harder than Asians or vice versa?
How does your religious beliefs affect your life?
SECTION THREE
For the interview project, we got complete answers to our questions, despite Sarah Park
not being fluent in English. She tried to the utmost of her abilities to give us answers that were
not curtailed, but instead longer and more descriptive, in spite of the language barrier. For an
example, one of the interview questions that we had asked her was “when you had came to
American, what was your hardest challenge?” Her reply paraphrased was that she had arrived in
America in 1982 because of her job in an airline company named CPA and worked there for a
decade before quitting. Then she had gotten involved in real estate for four or five years. During
that time span, she had met her husband married him, giving birth to two sons in 1986 and 1988.
She also stated that they had finally opened up their dry cleaner’s store called “Martin’s French
Cleaners” in 2002. As demonstrated in this example, she had answered other questions as well
without us having to ask them at all to her. The questions that she answered in addition were

�4
“Were you into any other career before you have attained your current job?” and “When had you
first come to America?” The primary reason she had talked for a lengthy period of time was
partially because we had given her positive verbal and non -verbal cues.
The structure of our interview questions was mixed with simple yet specific questions
and general questions. If we had simply done simple questions, we would have gotten very
specific dates, nevertheless it would be meaningless without the actual content. On the other
hand, if we had attained just broad questions without any specific and simple questions, our
presentation would seem very vague and not professional. The simple yet specific questions
were meant to complement the broad overview attained from the general question to make our
presentation look professional and assert us being very knowledgeable about our subject. An
example of a simple question would be that “What year did you attend your university that you
had went to?” For a broad question, an example would be “please describe your early childhood.”
The probing questions that we had used was “How did you do attain the current job you
have presently” and “how does your job affect your family and what are their stances on this
issue?” Because each of the questions covered a lot of additional information, it is considered an
open ended question or a probing question. The answers to these questions were not specific,
thus it had given considerable freedom to the interviewee to state information that is correlated
with the issue. Since the question is not an easy question, the answer would inevitably be a
complicated one covering many subtopics to answer the primary topic of the question. For an
example, “how did you attain the current job you have presently.” The process that Sarah Park
had used in answering this question was to mention what college she had went to which was

�5
In- cheon college in Korea as well as the previous jobs regarding her as a real estate agent and a
travel agent. She could have just said that I had married, and me and my husband in 2002 pooled
our financial resources together in order to buy the dry cleaner store, however she had mentioned
the whole backstory of the process getting there.
Regarding our team strategy in completing our final interview project, Yawen and I had
split the work. She had done the first slide called the “content slide” of our presentation
regarding how our interviewee’s goals related to US- Asian relations and how our interviewee
accomplished those goals. Also Yawen had to state how the information regarding Sarah Park
related the information we have learned in class and also in terms of new information or
additional information pertaining to Sarah Park. I had to do the “interview process slide” in
which I had to describe the interview process such as emailing or calling the interviewee to
schedule the interview as well as the interview experience. In addition, I had to mention specific
verbal and non- verbal cues that we have to give Sarah Park, as well as verbal and non- verbal
cues which we thought Sarah Park would express and thought we had to wary about and take
into great consideration. Some of these cues were facial expressions, voice volume, voice
inflection, eye contact, sighing, nail tapping, ect. Regarding the interview questions, roughly half
of the questions that were used came from me while the other half came from Yawen.
The interviewee did not give us any documents or references to articles to read, but she
did mention how we could also interview her husband. However, since the project was only
about one person and since they both worked together as co- owners of the dry cleaner’s store,
we had politely refused. The husband was busy working in the back of the store, and we would
have genuinely felt guilty if we had hindered the business any further with our presence making
the customers feel a little uncomfortable and making the room more crowded than it had to be.

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SECTION 4:
Regarding emerging trends, Sarah Park mentioned how feminine power was weaker than
today in the twenty first century. She had said how in the early 1980s she was the only female
member of her family that attended college, and how it was a big step for her. Instead of
discouraging her, her parents had encouraged her to do the best she can do without having any
regrets of the results if they turn out to be as not as good. Sarah Park then mentioned the new
academic trend which was about how even more women today attend college, and making up
now over fifty percent of the total populations in colleges throughout America, outnumbering the
percentage of males in college by a small degree..
Sarah Park also mentioned parents’ different interpretation of sacrifice for their offspring
between Asians and Westerners. Parents making ultimate sacrifices for their children tended to
be more prominent in Asian culture rather than Western culture. In other words, American
families did help out their children financially, but perhaps not to the extreme degree in which
Asian families sacrificed for their sons and daughters. She then stated how her family made
sacrifices financially by saving every bit of their hard earned money to send her to college.
Examples were that they did not go out to restaurants as often as they once did, they bought more
cheap fast foods, instead of the expensive organic food products, and stopped shopping for new
goods such as clothes and new cellphones altogether. This in turn, affected Sarah Park, when she
became a mother of two sons who were ready to go to college. She had said how she gave up her
own cell phone to save income, because there only needs to be one cellphone between her and
her husband. Another example was how she said “I don’t need three meals a day, I can just eat
two meals a day.” Despite this, she did not cancel any of her sons’ cellphones, which meant that

�7
she still had to pay their phone bills and did not want to upset them by taking away their phones.
Her sons realized this and appreciated it.
In terms of her recommendations of future interviews, Sarah Park had stated how it was
extremely helpful that we had sent her the interview questions beforehand, so she was prepared
to answer the questions more easily and said to keep doing that from now. She had also
appreciated the fact that we had come early in the morning which was the time she had said for
us to come visit her. This was because during the early morning she was not very busy and had
the most time to spare for the interview. Perhaps this was the reason why she did not show any
negative verbal or non- verbal signs to us to leave or end the interview sooner. The fact that we
had adapted to her preferences immediately due to our flexibility with time was appreciated by
her as well and was she said to us to apply that to future interviews as well.
Interview notes:
What do you do for your job on a daily basis?
Basically the cleaner’s work in our store is separate in two areas workwise. I am covering the
front and my husband is covering the back. We have a tailor and presser and my husband and
myself. So what we do when the customer comes in, they bring a bundle of clothes for cleaning,
then i made the ticket and tag an after the cleaned garment is I take it over and inspect if it is
good enough for the press, after I start it bag it and load on the computer. My husband inspects it
again after it is bagged, if there is something wrong with the clothes I talk to my husband
personally. Cleaning is divided in two ways, wet clean and dry clean. Some of the garment is not
good enough for dry clean. The closest explanation of wet cleaning is like handwashing.

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What was your early childhood like?
My father was a banker so for that year we have to move around, because at that time, many
areas did not have a bank, so my dad established a bank. We have to move towns for that year, it
was when was really young in elementary school. It was a countryside, but I have that memory
which was beautiful, there were rice fields, farms, and a lot of children my age who would play
all day long until dawn. It was a really bright and happy experience. But by middle school my
family and I had to look for the college, so I had to study a lot.
“Were you ever discriminated against racially in America?”
I expected it and I did not care much about what other people thought of me and the attitudes of
strangers meant nothing to me. I did have a few rude cases here and there, however there was not
much instances of racism here in America.
“How did your career affect your family?”
I could not take care of oldest son who was in ninth grade. I understood that he was not a baby,
however it is was the first time that I could not take care of him because I was busy with work.
My philosophy was to suffer as fully as possible and as much as possible. When my sons were in
the second and fourth grade –that was the first time in which I could not take care of them. My
life exists to suffer for my children. When I had arrived home, it was already dinner time. Before,
I used to always be with the children twenty four hours a day besides them being in school.
“Do you think that White Americans work harder or do Asian immigrants work harder?”
“The circumstances that the first generation immigrant lived life differently from the Americans.
America was on the top and it is economically different for white Americans versus Asian

�9
immigrants. There is not much free time for us (first generation immigrants), that is the way we
had lived, and of course work is different, because we have to work in order to survive. Our
attitudes are also different than Americans, because we feel like we don’t belong here.
How do you think that your religious beliefs affect your life?
I think that religion is different based on your personality. My personality is always asking
questions such as “where did I come from ?”, “why the world is not treated equally?”, it bothers
me a lot. My family in Korea was not rich but I have no memories or experiences in which
money was a big issue. Everything was in my hands, whatever I had wanted, in other words I’m
not that greedy and not much I wanted because we are not rich. I never felt any shortages
financially . However later we had financial crises two times. The first time the store caught on
fire and the second time is when my husband broke up with his partnership with his friend in
business. However, I never experienced financial crisis until that moment. It was already early
40 for my age and the first time I thought about it. When I was in first or second grade, the pastor
came over and my mom and pastor came out from the living room to the garden, my mom gave
him something, I knew it was money. Then pastor in Korea was not that financially stable. I
wondered why my mom gave money to him, is it not better that money goes in the offer, my
mother was a Christian so I grew up in church and learned about ethics, but because that kind of
question, my husband became baptized and married me and went to church. For the time of the
financial crisis it was suffering and I could not spend enough time with my children, and I
wanted to do something else besides making money. I just need basic housing. Three meals a day?
I can make it two. We also thought about bible and church and religion. Though my husband and
I are two totally different people personality wise, our Christian beliefs connect us and make us
one and make us closer in our relationship.

�10
SECTION FIVE (25 points)
What aspects of the interview did you find to be particularly meaningful?
There are many aspects of Sarah Park we find to be touching and interesting. The first
thing is that Sarah Park helped us to know how a mundane Asian woman can have such strength
and determination for her family. Sarah Park’s father was a banker, therefore, even though Sarah
Park’s origin family was not incredibly rich, she grew up from a middle upper class family in
Korea. Moreover, Sarah never had a memory of lacking money in her original family of the past,
and she went to college to pursue her dream, which is an opportunity that is very challenging to
acquire in Asian countries back in the 1970s. Growing up in such a family, Sarah Park is not a
weak woman or a spoiled one. She tried her best to save money for her family, especially for her
two sons. The resilience and resolve from her have been showed from her experience.
We also found Sarah Park’s religious belief is very important of defining her. Even
though she is occupied by her work, she still tries her best to go to the church as frequently as
she can. As a businesswoman, she has so many questions to ask herself, but none of these
questions is about money. She wants to know “where did I come from ?”, “why the world is not
treated equally?”. Her religious belief makes her care about not only herself or immediate family,
but also others and the whole world. Her daily work routine at the cleaners does not stop her
being someone that thinking of philosophical questions. Of course that she is not like a famous
political figure, but she serves as an epitome of thousands of ordinary Asian women who live in
US who are trying their best to support their family and keep their own faith.

�11
What aspects were not useful? What more would you like to know?
We find the interview as whole is very meaningful, and each question does lead us to
somewhere. However, if we have to say, we think her daily work routine is not very useful to our
interview. We spent three mins on how she does her work, which is neither interesting nor
defines her character. Also, we think the specific information of her sons is not very useful either,
such as when did she give births to her two sons and how they spoke Korean. These details are
not very useful to the interview. Sarah Park is a very interesting lady but we did not have enough
time to talk with her. We want to know more about her personal life. We want to know questions
like “Does she have time to hangout with her friends? ””Are they mostly Korean or American? ”
Because she is a highly-educated woman, we also want to know how does she think the political
environment in Korea compared to in U.S.? We are also curious about does she ever feel
depressed or disappointed of doing her current job, for she went to college but ended up with
doing some profession that does not require high education.
What other in-class presentations did you find particularly useful? Explain
The presentations which I (Yawen ), had found useful and interesting were about Eileen
Lui and Grace Young. For the first presentation, Eileen Lui is the Founder of “Soyai” which is a
social enterprise whose purpose is to help the youths in underdeveloped areas of countries such
as Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, etc. She had used to work at Cambodia, and volunteered for
children with the disease HIV at orphanages. Many of these children were without hope, because
they knew that they were gravely ill, however Eileen Lui gave them hope and happiness by
playing with them, talking to them, and simply being with them. In addition, she supported a
monastery in Cambodia and financially supported them, however the people in charge of the

�12
monastery continuously asked for more and more money. Thus, she had to ask her friends in
Malaysia to sponsor a youth center there. In that youth center, she had encouraged teens who
were old enough to work stating to them that they were the oldest out of the kids and needed to
step and take responsibility financially wise, though Eileen would keep supporting them for a
while, she could not do it forever. Moreover, at their request she helped them learn basic English
and learn how to use computers. As a result, they had attained jobs such as interior designers and
programmers who now could use computers to help them work. Eileen Lui really left a lasting
impression on those in need in the Asian countries she had visited and helped, through her social
work. She did not have to be as an Asian immigrant to comprehend the hardships people are
enduring and suffering through, as a Asian American she wanted to uplift these impoverished
people in Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar. Though at first, bombarded because of the financial
demands of the monastery, she established a permanent youth center mentioned previously to
establish a sustainable and permanent way of life for the teens and children there, not simply a
temporary way of life receiving her money, however not working or having no way to work.
Another presentation which I found useful was Grace Young. She is a cookbook writer
who has integrated storytelling and traditional cooking to her books. Grace Young was a Chinese
immigrant and learned traditional cooking techniques from her parents. She had visited chefs in
China to see how they cook and if she could learn new additional recipes from her native culture.
When she was arrived there and was in the Chef’s kitchen, she noticed that he used a different
type of sugar from rock sugar for the recipe of pork belly, which consisted of the ingredients of
rice wine, soy sauce, cinnamon, ect. Also regarding her personal life, her own shyness was her
main obstacle. Her goal was to bring the Western World and the Eastern World together and
keep Asian tradition ongoing in the ever changing world. My personal opinion regarding her

�13
goal is very positive, and I admire how she is working in her own ways no matter how small to
uphold traditional values and gain acceptance from more and more Westerners of all native
Chinese dishes through the work of her cookbooks which introduce such dishes to the Canada,
America, United Kingdom, etc. Her desire to combine both worlds and be a bridge between them
can be compared to Pearl S. Buck, though a smaller scale which involves cultural foods.

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�2

�Took turns asking questions
We asked a lot of active listening questions and asked for more specifics based on
something she said
Open-ended questions
Words of encouragement “right, wow that’s interesting”
Very long interview – 52 minutes
Non-verbal cues – unable bc skype issue but she was smiling a lot while we were on
and joking
She was very professional – cautious of giving too much of her own opinions, stuck to
facts, answered with examples
Duration and date of interview
What did our questions center around
How were the answers we received

3

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                    <text>Flora Ho and Aashishpal Singh
Final Paper
Section 1
Person Interviewed: Sarah-Ann Smith
Interviewee’s Title/Position: Ex-Foreign Service Officer in U.S. State Department, Author of
Trang Sen, Public Speaker and Ex-Professor at the University of North Carolina
Date, Time and Length of Interview: April 23rd 2018 at 4:00PM. The duration of the interview
was approximately 52 minutes.
Our objective in conducting this interview: Our objective was to learn more about Ms. Smith
and her multitude of experiences throughout her career. We focused a lot on her work as a
foreign service officer because at the time she served as one, it was extremely rare for a woman
to obtain that job and title. Since her mission with the State Department was based mostly in
Asian countries, we hoped that she could share with us her experience being a woman link
between Asia and the United States.

Section 2
Background information about Ms. Sarah-Ann Smith could only be found with detailed
searches. Sarah-Ann Smith was a common name, therefore we added her book name, Trang Sen,
and she was immediately found on Pisgah Press, which is known for their publications of books
that provide insight into human conditions and the world around us. She was also found on
LinkedIn, where we were able to get some educational and professional background on her. We
became well aware of her tenure as a foreign officer for the U.S State Department and the great
deal of time she spent at the American University studying International Affairs.

�The real introduction to Sarah-Ann Smith began when we were connected through
Professor Christoff. She immediately provided us with a copy of Ms. Smith’s most popular book,
Trang Sen, and we contacted her through email. Ms. Smith provided quick responses and was
very helpful. She provided us with her bio form from a previous interview, which gave us a
broad overview of her most notable experiences and accomplishments. The bio went into detail
about her duties in the state department, especially in Hong Kong, and her role in the triangular
relationships held between China, Taiwan, and the U.S after the Vietnam war. Her exposure to
the war had a big impact on her career, which actually inspired her book. She also speaks
Mandarin and worked as a professor in the U.S, China, and Southeast Asia.
Reading Trang Sen really gave insight on Ms. Smith’s view of life and her profession.
The concepts of harmony between countries and understanding of each other’s culture are
prevalent in her writing. This is mirrored through her work in foreign service and her
international missions with the Presbyterian church. She saw herself as a bridge between the U.S
and China. Through this background search, we learned so much useful information about Ms.
Smith which allowed us to formulate the most appropriate questions for her. We wanted to learn
what inspired her to get involved in foreign relations and what it was like being a woman in such
a male dominated field. These were the questions we asked in our interview:







Tell us about growing up in South Carolina.
Do you think that going to an all-women’s college influenced you to want to begin a
career in international affairs since at that time, it was not encouraged for women to go
into that field?
What caused you to focus on Asian countries in particular?
o What was it about these Asian men that really influenced you? What experiences
did they share that really stuck with you? (Active listening - Probing)
How did you begin your career in foreign affairs specifically within the US government?
Was there any battle between getting involved in foreign policy vs. your faith
in the religion, or do you think this went hand in hand? (Active listening)
Do you think that while you were working in the embassies of other countries, you were
treated differently because you were a woman?

�


o So that invitation for tea that the general gave you. Do you think he would have
given that invitation to a male officer? (Active listening – Probing)
Do you think that the governments of other countries [Japan and Hong Kong] incorporate
more women into their governments and embassies?
Did you have some underlying goal in telling the story of Trang Sen?

Section 3
Sarah-Ann Smith was a seasoned interviewee – it was clear that we were not her first
interviewers. She was comfortable with anything we asked and provided detailed responses filled
with interesting and useful information. We did our best to create a comfortable environment
where Ms. Smith could speak as freely as she liked. Most of our questions were open-ended,
allowing Ms. Smith to basically tell a story for each of her answers. This gave light to aspects in
her life which weren’t covered in our list of questions. For example, our opening question simply
asked what it was like to grow up in South Carolina. Her response gave us insight on her
ideology which was influenced by a very “conservative and racist” area since the South was in
mayhem during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. She explained how her upbringing is
what influenced her to become involved in the Christian church. We had no prior knowledge of
her faith in Christianity, however, we learned that her involvement in the church is what inspired
her career in international affairs. We gained a lot of information by asking “why” and “how”
questions to understand Ms. Smith’s reasons for her choices and how they influenced her career.
We planned a structured interview for Ms. Smith, however, the open-ended questions
created a more unstructured environment where we began probing to stimulate conversation on
an unexpected topic, which she passively mentioned in her answer. For example, her unexpected
mention of her devotion to the Christian faith reminded us of missionary women throughout
history who saw Christianity as a means to spread Western influence and “save” people
throughout Asia. We asked her to expand and it was nice to hear that her mission was not about

�saving or transforming anyone, but rather to get people with differences to understand one
another.
We worked very well as a team. We were both on the email chain with Ms. Smith and
worked separately and together on our pre-interview research. We were responsible for coming
up with our own list of questions, from which we collectively picked out the best ten. Something
that was very beneficial was reading Trang Sen before our interview. The book was relatively
short and provided great insight on Ms. Smith’s views of the Vietnam War and ideology in life.
It also helped us understand specific scenes Ms. Smith referred to in our conversation. Since we
conducted our interview though the phone, and not video chat, we found it would be best for one
person to do a bulk of the talking so that Ms. Smith could get comfortable with answering to one
person. Flora handled this role and was great at probing for further explanations, allowing Aash
to speak when he thought of something interesting. However, we both stayed active in the
conversation to ensure her we are on the same page.

Section 4
Interview Write Up (concisely)
Sarah-Ann Smith grew up in Columbia, South Carolina in the 1940s and was surrounded
by a “very conservative and racist world.” It was when Smith started working in Richmond,
Virginia and attended a sit-in movement when she realized how wrong she grew up; this
motivated her to begin to try and teach herself to think a different way. She gave us a little lesson
about United States history to explain what she meant by these statements in case one got the
wrong impression or interpretation. She explained that the South had been majority Democrat in
the 1940s-1950s and later became Republican after the Civil Rights Movements in the 1960s.

�Therefore, the environment in the South was somewhat “racist” because of their
Republican/conservative views during that difficult time.
Smith attended a small all-women’s college in Charlotte, North Carolina. However,
international relations had not always been the field of work that Smith intended to be involved
with because she actually already had a career as a director of Christian education in a Church. In
1965, Smith moved to New York to work for the Presbyterian International Mission and
Relations Commission during the Vietnam war and surprisingly, this is what caused Smith to be
interested in international affairs. There, she met many intelligent young men from Asia who
were students brought to America on scholarship by the Presbyterian Church that impressed
Smith and after speaking with them, she learned how different their perspective was on U.S.
policy was than those of Americans. This caused her to want to be more open towards other
people’s points of views on American policies. This resonated with us because we learned in
class this semester about the stark differences that Asian-Americans and other minorities faced
growing up in America as opposed to White-Americans because they needed to learn how to
assimilate into mainstream American culture while still being exposed to their native Asian
cultures at home. We learned about how important these differences are when examining how a
person grew up and the kind of impact it continues to have on him/her as an adult. In addition,
many people in our class agreed that people from other countries often believed that Americans
had a superiority complex that caused them to try and impose their superiority onto other nations
which may have become clear to Smith at this time.
After quitting her job in New York, Smith returned to school to obtain a master’s degree
in international studies at American University in Washington. She had originally planned to do
some work relating to international affairs education through some Church or non-profit

�organization, but she soon became interested in foreign policy within the United States
government. She took various exams for the government, including the foreign service exam and
was later asked to join the foreign service with the class of 1973, which she, of course, accepted.
At this time, she was only the fifth woman in the State Department’s history to to become a
Chinese language officer and thus, she faced an enormous amount of discrimination during her
time there. She even informed us that the reason she did not pursue a full 20-year career in the
State Department, like most officers do, is because of how hard it was to be a woman diplomat at
that time. To our surprise, Smith did not have a hard time relating to the Chinese or people of
other embassies as a woman, but faced the most discrimination from her own American
colleagues. One example Smith shared with us was when she was told that she needed to attend
the tea [party] that the general’s wife had for all of the wives of the officers. Another highly
inappropriate example of the discrimination that she felt was when she was the only officer to
not be invited to a stag dinner for a Japanese diplomat who was actually a friend of hers. In
regards to how she thinks the world is now on incorporating more women into their governments
and embassies, Smith feels that “it’s a mixed bag but it’s not good. It won’t be good until its fifty
percent-fifty percent.” She also believes there is still also a long way to go for us in the United
States because we haven’t even had a woman president yet, like many other countries have!
Although Smith went on to explain that she has long parted from her Church connections
and now identifies mostly with Chinese Daoism, her experience with the commission still greatly
impacted her career. The mission that she worked with was not like a typical American women’s
mission where they went to other countries in hopes to save “the heathen” there and cleanse them
with Christianity. This touched upon a theme that we learned in class in which many
commissions believed they were doing something for the people of other countries instead of

�trying to accomplish missions with those people. This may be due to the superior complex of
Americans that we touched upon earlier. Instead, her mission had an open concept and
philosophy; it understood that they needed to be in dialogue with not only indigenous churches
in various countries around the world, but also with various faiths. This was similar to the ideals
of Reischauer, who believed that missions in countries abroad, such as his in Japan, needed to be
approached through assimilation to really understand them, and not criticism; he never saw
himself as superior to the Japanese. This open mindset helped Smith during her work as a foreign
officer by giving her the ability to stay neutral in times of conflict. For example, during her
service, Smith worked a lot on the triangular relationship of Taiwan, China and the United States
during the Taiwanese opposition movement. She felt that she had a better understanding of
Taiwan than most Chinese foreign officers because of her experience with the commission since
she was able to be more neutral, not pro-China nor pro-Taiwan, but to see Taiwan as an entity
that is important on their own. She believed that the people of Taiwan had the right to their own
space and political system (during a time when Taiwan was under the control of China).
This triangular relationship of China, Taiwan and the United States, in which the United
States stood as a guarantor of Taiwan to guarantee [to the UN and China] that they were only
using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, seemed to be very important to Smith and her career
because even after she left the State Department, she conducted several studies on the Taiwan
opposition movement for the State Department since she knew how little the government paid
attention to it. She even went around the United States interviewing leaders and asking them
questions on what they thought they were doing.
Clearly, Smith had an influential role in the relationship between the United States and
China but she did not have much experience with women specifically in this role and thus, her

�work actually did not involve “women’s work for women” much. She had made many
connections with women in the consulates of other countries such as Hong Kong, China, Taiwan
and Iran, but she did not do any hands on work like report on women’s issues to the State
Department or anything on that official channel. However, she did share with us that she often
interviewed women who were active in the women’s movement, such as Diane Ying, who is the
publisher of a Chinese newspaper and would have discussions with other Chinese women in
power about women’s roles in the United States and China. Smith is also unmarried and does not
have children so she was not subject to the ideals of “manifest domesticity” or the typical roles
bestowed upon women by society, allowing her to be focused on her successful career.
In our interview with Smith, she also shared the way that she came up with the idea of
writing her book, Trang Sen. Surprisingly, she had not even been to Vietnam yet when she first
got the idea. She was parked outside of a movie theatre in northern Virginia where she was
watching dozens of Vietnamese immigrants wandering back and forth through a small shopping
area when she decided she would write a novel about a Vietnamese girl who immigrated to
America. She made it clear that she wanted to write it from the girl’s viewpoint and not from an
American’s standpoint, exemplifying her understanding of other cultures. Smith’s style of
writing is intuitive, and she often knows a general idea of what’s going to happen but none of the
details along the way. Something interesting is that after she has come up with a scene or a series
of scenes, she reads an anthropology book about the location of the scene, such as ‘village life in
Vietnam’, and modify what she had wrote in order to be more accurate. Although she had never
intended for Trang Sen to become a historical novel, she has found that it has come to be one
after meeting with multiple book groups. She said that “once you write them, it is up to the
readers to determine what they are.”

�Lastly, Smith shared with us that her goal in her life is to help people better understand
each other. This mostly involved trying to broaden Americans’ understanding of the rest of the
world and the “others” in our own society. In her work as a diplomat, she saw her goal as serving
as a bridge between the United States and China, by both explaining U.S. policy to others abroad
and adding depth to her own colleagues’ understandings as well. Even now when Smith works
as a public speaker and teacher, she continues to add to Americans’ knowledge of parts of the
world where the U.S. is deeply involved.
We think that our interview went very smoothly. Sarah-Ann has accomplished so much
in her life and career that it was difficult to really ask all of the questions that we had for her with
the amount of time we had set for our interview. We were so fascinated with her work abroad
and as a foreign agent that we did not have much time to discuss her book and how it has
influenced her since that is what she is most involved with in her work today. Sarah-Ann is just
as brilliant as the women that we wrote about in our midterm papers, except we had the
opportunity to actually speak with her and discuss her role in U.S.-Asian relations. We were
lucky that she was so open with us and wasn’t hesitant to share personal stories from her life.

Section 5
Sarah-Anne Smith has such a wonderful story and we have learned meaningful lessons
through her experience. For example, Ms. Smith made it clear that she had no idea her career
would take the path that it did since she originally wanted to work with the Church and not
foreign affairs. She provided solace in letting us know that careers are filled with unexpected
realizations and opportunities. She had become unexpectedly drawn to foreign policy while
getting her masters at the American University, leading her to take various tests to work for the

�U.S government. She went on attempting to get her PhD when we was asked to join the foreign
service and her whole career trajectory changed. She went on to tell us about the discrimination
she faced as a woman foreign service officer. It was such a surprise to learn that a majority of the
sexism came from within her own department when we expected the U.S to be tolerant while
foreign countries might take women less seriously. Yet, Ms. Smith states that the gender
inequality prevented her from pursuing a permanent career in in foreign service.
We did not find that Sarah-Ann said anything that was not useful to us in our interview.
She made sure that everything she said had substance and related to the question. Even if she got
off topic, it would lead us to a new fascination for us to ask about, not a roadblock. She would
tell us about points in history that were important to her work and if we did not know much
about it, she would explain it thoroughly to us and this would actually help us understand her life
better. She stated mostly facts about her life and told us stories while trying to give as little of her
personal opinions as possible. We do wish we could have learned more about her personal
ideologies and views, but did not want to pry on aspects that she preferred to keep private.
The thing about interviewing successful people is that we had to be careful of taking up
too much time. Ms. Smith had so many interesting information to share with us that we didn’t
get through every question we wanted to ask. We were prepared to speak more about Tran Sen,
however, the information about her career and why she got into foreign service gave us more
insight into her ideology and way of life. We also wanted to ask her about her personal life –
family, friends, influences, and what she was up to now.
A few of the in-class presentations really stood out to us and some that presented before
us ended up being very useful when we were designing our own PowerPoint. One pair spoke
about their interviewee, Eileen Lui, so highly because they were actually friends with her and

�that stuck out to us because they truly wanted to spread her message and work. We realized that
we needed to exhibit this same enthusiasm in our presentation as well. Another presentation was
that of Rosemarie Barnett since she is an attorney in New York and we both want to be lawyers.
Her advice to women about having to “borrow from the men’s playbook” was interesting; she
feels that women often need to know how to brag about themselves like men do and it is not
enough just to get the work done well anymore. We regretted that we did not ask Sarah-Ann
about any advice that she would have for women hoping to enter the foreign service field;
perhaps this is something we would like to ask in a follow-up interview. We also recall a
presentation in class about a Chinese woman who owns a Laundromat and this pair stood out to
us because they had actually gone to the interviewee’s place of work. We believe that they were
the only pair to have interviewed their interviewee in person and was able to see firsthand what
they have accomplished. We wish that we could have done the same with Sarah-Ann if she lived
in New York.

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                    <text>Nancy Wang and Her Career/Goals
The women we interviewed is Nancy Wang. First let me briefly summarize the basic
information of her, her job, her career, her mission goal and the relation between her
and the women’s role in US-Asian relations. Nancy Wang is an Asian American. She
was born and brought up in Louisiana, and now she is living in San Francisco,
California, with her husband. Her father was American while her mother was Chinese.
During her life, she desired to work in areas where she would serve people. Later on
in life, her desire was to work as a dancer. Based on the interview, we know that
Nancy’s father used to work for the State Department of security, he served as a
common general in New Orleans, and her Mother was a Nurse. Due to her Parents
job and the daily life influence of her parents, she said she was brought up with a
good values and morals. She always knew that everyone has a duty to help others
and serve for the community, the societies. Nancy’s first job after school was as a
social worker. In there she helped different kinds of people by counseling them.
According to what she said, the majority of the clients she took care of are all similar
to her -- Asian American women. Her major work is to help them understand the
difference between the western and eastern cultures, and how to balance these two.
Later on, after finishing the career of a social worker, she become a dancer and
contributed to spread the ancient Asian tale, myth and some other cultures by the

1

�traditional dance performance. Being a dancer also finally caused her to meet her
future husband. See this man, he is Nancy’s husband, Robert Kikuchi. He is a Japanese
American, same as Nancy, he also devote his life to be the Asian traditional dancer
and a storyteller.
Career/Goals and Her Mission and How She Is Fulfilling Them
When we asked about her mission goal, Nancy claimed that her goals in life were to
help people. Although later she changed her career from working with people to
working for people. She was very successful in achieving and fulfilling her goals on
helping people. Like what I just mentioned, she started a counseling organization
where she worked as a social worker. During the years she worked as a social worker,
she helped many people especially the younger women realize their potential. Her
main aim was to blend the gap between the western culture and the eastern one,
especially teaching them how they ought to regard either of the cultures. As a dancer,
she travelled different places inspiring people through music. She was able to
overcome the stigmatization of Asian and American and taught others the same. As a
storyteller, she works with her husband Kikuchi, they created many kinetic stories,
and many of them are focus on the topic of Asian folktales, immigration history, and
some stories relate to her own life experience and the other Asian’s daily life in this
country. This couple always use their great wisdom and life experience to combine
those things, combine the music, dance, theater and the storytelling together to
present for many countries audience. Like this picture, it’s in San Francisco’s Asian
community, and they were performing opera which is about the traditional folktale in
ancient China.
Relation between her goals and career to that of women’s roles in US-Asian
relations
Finally ask about the relation between her and the women’s role in US-Asian relation.
She conclude that In her life, especially her mission and career, relates greatly with
that of Asian Americans women in US. Many of them struggle to feel at home
without being isolated or discriminated against. They focus on building their career
and helping others. That is what the life of Nancy is all about. Dancing, helping other,
trying to feel accepted, studying, are some of the roles supported by the majority of
Asian American women.

1

�After introducing ourselves and thanking Mrs. Wang for allowing us to conduct the
interview, we began by asking an open-ended question: “Tell us a little about yourself
and you career?”. This followed by more open-ended questions such as: “How has
being a woman affected your career and how has that played a role in how you have
performed and written your plays?” and “What do you think are the biggest cultural
differences between China and the United States?”. These questions really provided
us with an enormous wealth of information and even covered some questions that
we didn't get a chance to formally ask Mrs. Wang. During one exchange, Mrs. Wang
talks about how being a woman has affected her career and elaborates that although
being one has had an impact on her experiences and career choices, she felt that her
experiences couldn't be reduced to one characteristic about herself. She says that this
is “what they call…” “I can’t remember the name”,” something about a crossover of
things, as a female, as a minority, as an ethnic person of color, and all these ways that
they crisscross each other and you don’t know what’s affecting what”. I respond by
saying that that’s what you call “intersectionality” and she responds by saying “thank
you, yes, that’s the word”. This was one of the best examples of active listening in the
entire interview. (Top Audio)
Because our interview was audio only, we could only pick up on nonverbal cues.

2

�During one part of the conversation, when talking about the differences between
Chinese and American cultures, Mrs. Wang talks about how Asian Americans appear
less confident than European Americans because of some of the cultural differences
between the East and West. She explains that this appearance isn't so much a
product of Asian Americans actual being less confident than other people, but rather
a display of humility that is more prevalent in Asian cultures. For a brief instance she
talks from the perspective of someone who mischaracterizes Asian people. From the
way that she talks during this part of the interview, it was clear to me that she doesn't
appreciate people who do this. The tone that she uses expresses a genuine sort of
contempt for these attitudes. (Bottom Audio)

2

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�What is your interviewee’s mission or goals in life and how is she/he fulfilling this?
How does her/his mission or goals relate to women’s roles in US-Asian relations?
What did you learn from the interviewee that 1) reinforced things we learned in class
and 2) provided new information?
-

Nancy Yao Maasbach is the president of Museum of Chinese in America
(MOCA) and her goals in life is to bridge the gap between Chinese Americans
and Americans by providing the platform for individuals who struggles with
fitting into his/her communities to explore their imaginations. Nancy struggled
with expressing herself as she felt confined by social norms and expectations
to do certain things in certain ways. Nancy shared with us her immense
passion for theater, in which she was a theater minor when she attended
Occidental College.

-

Nancy had spent all her “hong bao” money from Chinese new year on Yale’s
application fee for their theater program, but only to be turned away with a
rejection letter. She thought she wasn’t good enough. Luckily, Nancy was able
to redeem herself through other areas of work when she received her masters
in business administration and gained a job as an investment banker overseas
at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. Recruiters thought Nancy, ‘China hire’
where people expected her to have connections with the China market. She
struggled for a long time to redeem herself through hard work to show that
even though she was not a China hire, she was still capable for the job. It was

�this job that challenged her to work to her full potential and eventually come to
the realization that she wanted to help others who struggle with expressing
themselves like her.
-

Nancy’s role as the president opened up doors for her to help those who
struggle with being confined to certain ideas and stand for themselves.
Programs at the museum allow people in the community to better understand
the historical background of the Chinese communities in America and some of
the struggles they faced. Nancy’s goals relates to women’s roles in US-Asian
relations because Nancy was able to overcome the barriers that confined her
thoughts and constantly trying to improve her role as a woman, which can
really motivate other women in U.S-Asian Relations to follow the same path.
Even though she still struggle with how to be a good mother, good wife, and
good daughter, Nancy allowed us to see what it takes to be a woman in her
position. Nancy shared similar goals as many other women we have learned
about from our class, which is to take actions on matters that we value on.
Just like the missionary women who went oversea to spread Christianity,
Nancy was able to raise awareness in understanding one’s culture or identity
before confining them to a certain specific norms. We were able to learn the
importance of self-exploration and perseverance from Nancy. She allowed us
to realize how important it is to speak up for ourselves and go with our
intuitions when we are pursuing our interests. The process is what matters the
most because what we learn from the process will be major factors that
determine what we would like to do in the future in life.

�How did the questions you asked your interviewee influence the type of information
you received? If working in a team, explain your approach and provide an example of
your active listening. Also, what were some of the verbal and non-verbal cues? Refer
to the “How to Conduct an Interview” discussed in class.
We asked Miss Nancy a variety of questions ranging from her ethnicity, childhood
growing up in Flushing, Queens, her college and work experiences, and about her
current position as the president of Museum of Chinese in America. The questions
that my partner, Melissa, and I asked definitely influenced the type of information we
received. For instance, in this one minute video, we ask Miss Nancy about her work
experience in Hong Kong after leaving Goldman Sachs, and the challenges she
encountered while making the transition. When questioning about her experiences,
Miss Nancy answers saying that while living abroad, “you have a lot more time by
yourself...to observe and process” things. After discussing about the “alone time” that
Miss Nancy had while working in Hong Kong, Miss Nancy connected it back to her
time working in Goldman Sachs where she felt like she had to “prove” herself.
Moreover, she wished that she was more mature at the time. This response
influenced the course of our interview and the follow up questions that we asked after.
Before interviewing Miss Nancy, Melissa and I (Tenzin) had decided to equally split
the questions that we were going to ask. Thus, Melissa asked the first 8 questions
and I asked the remaining 7 questions on our list. Miss Nancy was able to provide

�answers to questions that were asked, and also gave additional information which
answered some of our other questions. This prompted us to actively listen and
formulate new follow-up questions on the spot. These follow-up questions enabled us
to move our conversation forward, and Melissa and I were both able to add our
remarks in between conversations to avoid any awkward silence. While talking to
Miss Nancy, her tone helped give meaning to her spoken message. When discussing
about her childhood experiences growing up in Flushing, Queens she sounded very
enthusiastic and happy to reminisce and talk about her past. This cue was expressed
in a “Rate” way. However she also expressed her regrets and sorrow while in Hunter
high school. She felt mediocre and not at the same level as the other kids because of
her test scores and her GPA. During this conversation, we could tell that her tone and
pitch of her voice was decreasing. We could also tell that her high school experience
was not as great as she hoped it would be, which became increasingly evident
through her facial expressions, eye behavior, and posture. Her face looked more
serious, eyes were down, and her posture was not as straight. These were a few
among many of the verbal and nonverbal cues we captured.
Overall, this approach proved to be very effective and we were able to have a very
interesting and enriching interview with Miss Nancy. The Interview lasted for an hour
and 3 minutes.

�</text>
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                    <text>Melissa Yanfen Huang &amp; Tenzin Kunsel
AAS 307 Final project
05/01/18
SECTION ONE (5 points)
Person interviewed: Nancy Yao Maasbach
Interviewee’s title or position: President of Museum of Chinese American (MOCA)
Date, time, and length of interview: April 10, 2018 at 2:00 PM. Length of interview: 1 hr 3
minutes.
Your objective in conducting this interview: To learn and understand the role of Nancy Yao
Maasbach as an influential woman in the U.S-Asian relations and how her enriched experience
in different Chinese communities shaped her goals as the president of MOCA.
SECTION TWO (10 points)
Description of the pre-interview research (What did you find out prior to the interview about
the person and/or place with which she is affiliated? How did you prepare for the interview?)
List your interview questions.
Before the interview, we searched the name ‘Nancy Yao Maasbach’ on Google, in hopes
of finding out more information about her. We read her biography on the MOCA website, which
gave us a general idea about her accomplishments in life and experiences she had prior taking the
role as the president of MOCA. We learned that she was the perfect representation of the U.SAsian relations as she had many years of experience both living and working in Chinese
communities. Then, we moved on to her linkedin account to see her education background and
professional experience. We found out that she had attended Hunter College High School and
moved on to Occidental College where she earned her Bachelor's in Diplomacy and World

�Affairs. Then, she moved onto Yale University where she received her Master of Business
Administration from the Yale School of Management. During her undergraduate years, she was
involved in research in China studies, which most likely gave her the exposure to the field that
she was truly interested in. She moved on to working overseas where she was constantly
involved in different Asian communities. After this in depth pre-interview research, we could not
wait to find out more about her and how her experiences shaped her as the influential woman she
is today.
In order to prepare for the interview, Melissa and I decided to first check if our laptop
was functioning properly to avoid any technical difficulties while conducting the interview. After
checking, we agreed to equally split the questions that we were going to ask. Thus, Melissa
asked the first 8 questions and I asked the remaining 7 questions on our list. After splitting the
questions, we practiced our own parts on our own. Later, we came together and did a quick
rundown of what our actual interview would run like. While doing the rundown, there were
times where Melissa and I would pause and not know what to say. During those moments, we
agreed to exchange encouraging words to prevent awkward silence when conducting the
interview. This strategy allowed for our actual interview to run smoothly without any confusion
among us, and the interviewee.
Interview questions:
1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Ethnicity, education, languages you can speak,
hobbies,etc.
2. How was your childhood like growing up in New York City as Asian American?
3. Did your childhood have an impact on your professional career?
4. Were you the first one ever to attend college in your family?

�5. How was your college experience?
6. How did your college experience shape you into who you are today?
7. Do you believe your major/minor played an important role in becoming the President of
MOCA?
8. Why did you want to take that major/minor?
9. Was there ever a time where you were in denial of your Asian ethnicity?
10. Have you ever been treated differently as a woman with Asian background in the
professional field?
11. Did this apply into some of your professional pursuits you’ve taken such as in Goldman
Sachs?
12. Can you describe your experience working in Hong Kong after you left Goldman Sachs?
13. What were some of the challenges you faced while transitioning?
14. Now that you are the President of MOCA, what are some future goals that you would like
to accomplish for MOCA and the greater Asian community?
15. Is there anything else that you would like to add?
SECTION THREE (10 points; 2 points each)
1.

Did you get complete answers to your questions? Explain
We got complete answers to most of our questions. We started off the interview Skype

call by asking her to “Tell us a little bit about yourself, including your ethnicity, education”,
which was an open ended question. From this question, she gave us a very thorough response.
She told us about growing up in NYC where she faced racism as a young girl and went on to
other topics from there. Since she was very well spoken and provided us with a lot of
information, she even answered some of the questions we had on our question list as she was

�telling us about her experiences growing up. There was one question that we felt she did not fully
understand, which was when we asked her “Have you ever been treated differently as a woman
with Asian background in the professional field?”. In the process of answering this question, she
had to pause a few times to think. She told us about some of the story of her ‘cheating the
system’ by not paying for metrocard fare when she would go on the subway with her father. She
felt that it was wrong and confronted her father about it, but her father saw it as her being
rebellious because “no one was looking” anyways. We felt that her story related to another
question we asked her earlier, which was related to her being in denial because of her Asian
ethnicity. Though she did carry on to tell us that there were circumstances where men would tell
her inappropriate things at the professional workfield, we were looking forward to find out if she
faced any discriminties working as an Asian American woman. We felt that she could add on
more information to it.
2.

Was your interview structured, unstructured, or mixed? Explain
Before conducting the interview, Melissa and I thought the interview would

be

structured since we had practiced earlier before the interview. However after interviewing Miss
Nancy, the the interview turned out to be a mixed interview. Melissa and I agreed that it was a
mixed interview because Miss Nancy was able to provide answers to questions that were asked,
and also gave additional information which answered some of our other questions that were yet
to be asked. This prompted us to formulate and ask follow-up questions on spot, and also
actively listen. These follow up questions paved the way for the next set of questions that were
yet to be answered, and it also helped guide our conversation.
3.

What probing questions did you use? Explain

�Many probing question ranging from Miss Nancy’s ethnicity, childhood growing up in
Flushing, Queens, her college and work experiences, to her current position as the president of
Museum of Chinese in America were asked. Of them, we asked Miss Nancy, “Can you describe
your experience working in Hong Kong after you left Goldman Sachs? What were some of the
challenges you faced while transitioning?”. When asked about her experience in Hong Kong
working for Goldman Sachs, and the challenges she encountered after quitting her job and
making the new transition, Miss Nancy answered saying that while living abroad, “you have a lot
more time by yourself...to observe and process” things. After discussing about the “alone time”
that Miss Nancy had while working in Hong Kong, Miss Nancy connected it back to her time
working in Goldman Sachs where she felt like she had to “prove” herself. Moreover, she wished
that she was more mature at the time. These were good probing questions to ask because we
were able to truly understand her motive behind why she decided to quit her job at Goldman
Sachs, and how she was able to recover and find herself during the “alone time” she had.
Overall, her intriguing responses truly influenced the course of our interview and the follow up
questions that we asked after.
4.

Explain your team approach. That is, who did what?
Our team approach was by splitting up the work into half between Tenzin and Melissa.

Melissa met with Professor Christoff to obtain interviewee’s contact information and confirmed
the interview letter that was sent to the interviewee afterward. Then, Melissa reached out to
Nancy Yao Maasbach and maintained communication with the interviewee via email while
Tenzin sent out email reminders to the interviewee before our official interview on 4/10/18. For
the list of questions we asked Nancy Yao Maasbach, Melissa came up with the first 8 questions,
meanwhile Tenzin came up with the remaining 7 questions to finish up the Skype Call interview.

�When the interview was done, Melissa typed the transcripts for the first half of the interview,
meanwhile Tenzin typed the other half of the transcript. In preparation for the presentation slides,
Melissa uploaded the complete interview video to her google drive and shared it with Tenzin so
each of us can find specific clip from the interview that answer the question to each of our slides.
Melissa was responsible for the ‘Content’ slide and Tenzin was responsible for the ‘Process’
slide. Lastly, for the final report, Melissa and Tenzin split up the questions evenly again. This
time, Melissa answered the questions relating to the contents meanwhile Tenzin answered the
questions relating to the process of the interview/presentation.
5.

Did the interviewee give you any documents or references to articles to read, or did she

mention other people for you to talk to (or research)? Explain
The interviewee did not provide us with any articles to read, but she did mention at the
end of the Skype Call that if we ever needed another woman to have an interview on, she would
be happy to provide us with the names and contact information upon request.
SECTION FOUR (30 points)
Insert your interview notes/write up here. Remember to be accurate and concise. Consider what
was said, any emerging trends your interviewee mentioned, different interpretations, and
recommendations for follow up interviews.

Interview Notes
Nancy grew up in Flushing, NY, in a bilingual family. Nancy speaks mandarin, she is
Shanghainese &amp; Chongqing descent. She felt that she had the “Soft image”, but she did not want
to let her soft looks deceive others and take advantage of her. There was a time when her
classmates on the school bus randomly made fun of her for being Chinese, she fought back by

�cursing them out with the ‘F’ word. This was her very first encounter of racism.That was when
she realized the power in her, that she is not willing to settle and let boundaries confine her.” She
also mentioned how people would group her with other Asians in her class, and said how
“Kenny Lee was destined to be with her.”

She Went to Hunter college high school, president of student body, soft ball player, had a role in
theater (got the script she wanted) but she had to give it up because her priority to get into a
prestigious college like Harvard. However, she got rejected from Harvard. Rejection from
Harvard allowed her to realize that she was not mature enough.

At Hunter, she felt mediocre because she was not performing well academically. In middle
school, it was easy for Nancy to get good grades which is why she said that her middle school
didn’t prepare her enough because she had to compete with people who were not first generation
immigrants.

At Occidental College, her English professor pulled her out and asked her if Chinese was her
second language. She felt targeted and unintelligent. She said this was due to reason that Hunter
didn’t educate them on grammar. That’s why she felt like she wasn’t able to write at a college
level, and often time she finds herself messing up her grammar while talking. However, she
corrects herself when this happens.

At Occidental, she minored in theater. She said that mentorship from an early age would’ve
helped her to discover her career path in theater. This is why she truly encourages Asian
Americans to have this relationship because it is important to get guidance and find what you are

�passionate about. Moreover, she wants to inspire Asian Americans born in the U.S. and Asia to
pursue careers that they want to pursue.

When applying for jobs, Nancy was looking for a company that was well known and had
prestige. That was Goldman Sachs. Nancy said getting accepted to work in Goldman Sachs was
sort of like a redemption to get back at not getting accepted to Harvard.
When they hired her, they thought she was a “China Hire”, but she had to confront them that she
was not from China. Even though she was fluent in Chinese, she was not from China and thus
did not have any relationships with other investment bankers in Shanghai or Beijing that will
help promote the company. Her encounter with a coworker at G.S. made her realize that she
doesn’t want to work there. Also, Nancy felt like she was a minority when working in Goldman
Sachs.
Nancy’s father worked for the first airplane company “Pan American” that gave them free tickets
for international travel. This gave nancy the exposure to international relation from a young age.
This also allowed Nancy to enjoy travelling and enjoy the process. Nancy’s mom went to college
in Taiwan for a year, but never finished, and came to U.S went to bilingual school in New York.
She remembers helping her mom with her college essays when she was 7 years old, and told her
mother to improve her English. Thus, she did by subscribing to a magazine that had essays, and
her mom would read it and translate it.

Nancy used all her Chinese new year red pocket money ($60) and applied to Yale theater
program, but did not get accepted. She realized she did not try hard enough, and said she
“winged it” without enough practice, and was not mature enough for the program. She also

�talked about the disadvantages being an Asian women. For instance, there were a lot of
uncertainties about her potential, and inappropriate jokes were made in the international relations
field that she was pursuing.

Nancy briefly talked about the modesty of Asians and Asian Americans through her parents
experience when they attended her 2nd grade parent teacher conference. She can resonate with
this modesty when people praise her for her accomplishments. When people compliment her, she
finds herself being modest with the compliments. Thus, her husband encourages her to accept the
compliments when people compliment her. Furthermore, Nancy mentioned that she puts the
museum first and cares more about building a positive reputation for MOCA than receiving an
award for her service. As a result, she finds it hard to balance being a good wife and a good
mother, and often feels like her professional and personal persona are different.
“In China’s development, the markets were really beginning to form and I love the macro, the
macroeconomic, the macro political components of living it and breathing it. I mean before I
worked there in Hong Kong was Goldman starting in 1999, and I had worked there in 96’ and
97’ in two instances with CNN. I had followed the pre hand over and then the handover coverage
for CNN. I love it. I was such an observer in that space...If you meet me in person, people are
always like “oh” you’re so outgoing and all this, but I think in the core I really do like to research
and study what is happening in the dynamics. Like I’ve had a lot of time alone. When you live
abroad in international settings you have a lot more time by yourself and that's something I’ve
learned to appreciate and I do appreciate. There’s a lot of that time on the plane, when you’re by
yourself. There’s a lot of that down time when your family is not living with you because you’re
10,000 miles away that you’re by yourself and you’re having a cup of coffee by yourself. And

�there’s a lot of that time in Hong Kong when you’re an expat or whatever you want to call it
where you have a lot of time to observe and take down things so because I’ve had that very
international sort of random places, I just feel like I’ve had a lot more time to observe and
process some of those experiences. And it was good It was a very good time I did theater on the
side as well there And it was difficult I felt like I had to prove myself In a somewhat tricky
environment where There were assumptions about me. I felt like they hired me because they
thought I was the China hire and I kept like saying Look I'm from Flushing, Queens Like born
and raised. I speak Mandarin But I'm not your China hire I don't know anyone in Shanghai. I
don't know anyone in Beijing And I mean my Mandarin is good but i'm not a native speaker. I’m
catching up with myself a lot and my professional career, I kind of always feel like there are
pockets of things I didn’t get exposed to. I feel like I wish I was a little bit more mature when I
was working at Goldman. There weren’t a lot of people I knew who were investment bankers at
Goldman and so I was really trying to figure out a lot of that by myself and also as a woman.
You think about some of the people you may know. There are like generations of bankers, and
some of them are White Anglo Saxons or they’re Jewish Americans and their parents and their
grandparents are all bankers or their uncle was a banker. I really didn’t have anyone I knew who
was a banker. I had to trial and error a lot of stuff.”
“Everything after [Goldman] seemed easy after that. I wanted to leave Goldman because to be
honest I felt that you know I paid back my loans that was a big part of my comfort level. And I
kind of felt like my personality was changing a little bit, and I didn’t like that about myself. That
was one thing. You know I’m Christian. My parents aren’t but I am. I went to church on my own
from a very young age and I think fundamentally I was always seeking how I could be a more
loving person. And I think for some reason and I’m not blaming Goldman. I don’t think it’s a

�Goldman culture persay because certainly there are people who are god fearing good people
working at Goldman, but for some reason the culture was affecting me in a way that I felt like I
wasn’t being the best person I could be, and so like the moment sort of woke up to that and I
think it was some interaction I had with a stranger where I wasn’t too sure. I was unhappy with
myself in just that interaction, and it gave me a quick wake up call and I thought maybe my time
is done in this institution. Then, getting myself right with who I am and how I want to interact
with people on a daily basis regardless of where I worked. I think that was really important for
me to sort of understand and recapture that. Everything else after I feel like it’s been pretty
straight forward and really wonderful and special.”
“ I was trying to redeem myself in a lot of ways… Goldman was a little bit of my redemption
path. I’m good enough and I’m gonna look for the most difficult job that is the most competitive
at the best firm. I felt satisfaction from getting it… it was something that I needed to accomplish
to… it was making up time for something that I have not accomplish or didn’t live up to my
potential.”
SECTION FIVE (25 points)
Your analysis: What aspects of the interview did you find to be particularly meaningful? What
aspects were not useful? What more would you like to know? What other in-class presentations
did you find particularly useful? Explain
My partner and I found the actual interviewing aspect of the interview, being able to see
her emotions through the videochat to be particularly meaningful. When our interviewee, Nancy
Yao Maasbach, talked about growing up being pushed into certain roles because of her gender
and the constant pressure to be a successful woman, we could see that it was a time of
uncertainties for her. There was a lot of pauses when she thought back to this part of her memory

�and all the things she could have done to pursue acting. Preparing a bunch of questions for the
interviewee to answer was not useful because she answered most of the questions as she talk
about her childhood, education, professional agendas and family relations. I would like to see the
different roles she has in her daily life. I would like to know more about how Yao Maasbach’s
days goes in a work day as the president of the museum and how she spends the remaining time
with her family as a wife and mother. From the many excellent in-class presentations, I found the
presentation on Sarah Park to be particularly useful because it portrays the life of a traditional
Asian woman. The in person interview at Ms.Park’s laundromat makes the whole interview more
realistic and relatable. At some point when Ms.Park mentioned about saving up money for her
children’s education by not having a cellphone, it was very touching to see how much a mother
can give up to contribute for her family. When she describes her strong devotion for God, I see a
similarity between the missionary women we learned about earlier in class and their great
dedications to missions motivated by their religion. Overall, the class itself and the readings
provided us an in depth analysis on women and their international relations. We learn to
appreciate and understand the works of women more than before.

�</text>
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                <text>Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries.</text>
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                <text>Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies.</text>
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