Amanda has spent most of her life feeling like a question mark in spaces that prefer clear answers. Born to a Black father and a Japanese mother, she walks a path shaped by both heritages but often feels fully embraced by neither. Her life has been a series of negotiations: between cultures, between expectations, and between the desire to be understood and the instinct to protect herself. In this interview, Amanda opens up about what it means to be mixed in America and abroad, to be seen and unseen, and how she finds freedom through dance, community, and quiet resilience.
Growing up mixed-race in Japan and the U.S. means Amanda is used to questions no one else seems to get. “Are you sure your mom’s your mom?” “You don’t look Japanese.” These moments sting: not because Amanda isn’t proud of her heritage, but because they reduce her to a puzzle piece that never quite fits. “There’s no one way to look like and embody a race,” she says. And yet, she often finds herself hiding one side of her identity just to avoid confusion. “I navigate both races,” she says. “But sometimes, I disregard my Japanese side just to be legible to others.”
Even within the Mixed Race Student Union, an affinity space meant to uplift, Amanda feels like an outsider. “Most of them are Wasian. No one really looks like me,” she says with a shrug. “It just feels isolating.” Her voice is calm, not bitter, but it carries the quiet exhaustion of someone who’s had to answer too many questions that shouldn't be asked.
It’s not just classmates who misunderstand her. Teachers, too, she says, only seem to tune in when the conversation turns to race. “Then suddenly I’m the one they want to hear from,” Amanda explains. Her identity becomes a spotlight she never asked for, a burden to educate, explain, and represent. “I feel like I have to speak for Black and Asian people, two communities that both face discrimination. It’s stressful.”
When asked why she chooses to carry so much without opening up, her answer is striking in its vulnerability: “It feels selfish to open up. I’m already misunderstood. It’s hard to trust people will respond with empathy instead of judgment.”
Yet there is one place Amanda doesn’t feel like she has to explain who she is: the stage. In dance, Amanda steps into a persona that lets her shed the constant weight of expectation. “When I dance, I’m allowed to be someone I’m not,” she says. “It’s a release, letting go of stress physically, and mentally, I step into a freer version of myself.” Ironically, the structure of choreography gives her room to be fluid. She’s not boxed in by her identity, her race, or her past. She simply moves.
And when she moves, it’s as if every unspoken word finally finds a voice. Amanda placed top five out of 52 soloists in a recent competition. But it’s not about winning. “Dance gives me peace,” she says. In a world that constantly asks her to define herself, dance offers something simpler: the chance to just be.
Part of Amanda’s strength comes from necessity. Growing up a military kid meant she lived a life in motion: Japan, Virginia, California. Her father, often deployed, would leave without saying where he was going. “I didn’t know if he’d come back,” she recalls. “Sometimes I still don’t really know what’s going on in my life.” Her mother, always composed, raised Amanda to be the same: calm, polite, humble. But even as Amanda internalized those values, she started to wonder what it meant to always have to shrink herself. “People think being mixed is easy, like you get the best of both worlds,” she says. “But sometimes it feels like you’re too much and not enough, all at once.”
Despite it all, such as microaggressions, identity fatigue, and the pressure to perform strength, Amanda continues to lead with intention. She co-heads the school’s Wellness Committee, supports her peers through quiet check-ins, and advocates for mental health. She is the steady one, the person who notices when others are not okay and shows up without needing to be asked. She doesn’t seek applause. She simply moves through the world with care.
“I’ve always had to be the strong one,” she says. But her strength doesn’t come from needing to be loud; it comes from choosing to stay soft. “If there’s one thing I’d want people to take away,” she adds, “it’s to be kind. You never really know what someone’s carrying.”
And when asked what advice she’d offer to anyone feeling as uncertain as she sometimes does?
“Do it with fear,” she says. “You’re not alone. Even scared, you can still move forward.”
Amanda isn’t trying to be the voice for everyone. She’s just trying to be herself. And maybe that’s the hardest thing of all, to just stay whole in a world that wants to split you in half. Quiet, steady, and fiercely present, Amanda reminds us that strength isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it looks like showing up. Sometimes, it looks like dancing through fear. And sometimes, it just looks like being seen.