Youth Produced

Arts & Life

My uncle has experienced homelessness for decades. He still comes to family dinner at my house.

My mom and her older brother had an extremely difficult childhood. But they always had each other.

Arts & Life

My grandfather was a paper son under the Chinese Exclusion Act. He created an iron legacy.

Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, people had to create false papers to immigrate. My grandfather, who came here in 1937, had to pretend he belonged to another family. It took him decades to build his own family.

Arts & Life

I didn't know my mom was non-binary until I started to question my gender identity

When my mom was young, at the age of five, she started thinking about herself as a boy. My mother was assigned female at birth, but when she was little, she had the classic childhood experiences of a transgender boy. It was almost stereotypical. She thought about being a boy before she was even in kindergarten.

Arts & Life

Sober for 27 years. Now her son is experimenting with drugs

Arts & Life

How one transgender dancer challenges the Bollywood binary

Everyone longs to be their truest self. But what if being your true self means you have to give up the thing you love most?

Education

Why this Boeing test pilot keeps a flute in her toolbox

I go to a special high school with a focus on aviation. Although I love my school, sometimes I feel like I don't get to explore my creative side. So I started asking questions: What role should art play in STEM education? And how can creativity help us to be better scientists or engineers?

Race & Identity

Black students, white teachers: How this affects Seattle teens

"I began to think, maybe what they're saying is true. Maybe my people don't do good."

Health

Attack of the angry colon: How I deal with my chronic illness

The bathroom is a universal experience, right? Well, not for me. Instead, I am one of the very lucky 1.5 million with an inflammatory bowel disease.

Government

A Rohingya teen escaped genocide in Myanmar. This is how he ended up on Mercer Island.

Government

How my 90-year-old neighbor, a Holocaust survivor, sees America today

One of the world's biggest cities was once a safe haven for Jewish refugees. During World War II, more than 18,000 Jews sought refuge in Shanghai. They witnessed the war from a perspective that often goes unheard. My neighbor Werner Glass is one of them.