Hail and well met, ‘Finders!
Paizo is proud to celebrate the Asian, Native Hawaii’an, and Pacific Islander members of our community during National AAPI Heritage Month! Since 1990, the month of May has been dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of Asian and Pacific Islanders and their contributions to American history and culture.
This year’s theme is “Power in Unity: Strengthening Communities Together,” and its focus is on community building, collective strength, and shared stories.
The books and games we make here at Paizo would not be the same without our diverse community of authors, artists, designers, developers, and players. To celebrate our AAPI community, we invited some of our contributors to share their stories with us, and we’d like to invite you all to share your own in the forum!
Anonymous Contributor
I was born in a small town to my American father and Japanese mother, so I consider myself first generation. Or I do now—I didn’t at the time. My mother made a point to find other half Asian families to be around, and then when I was 10 my family moved us to Hong Kong. There, I truly did not feel any different. Everyone I knew was mixed, all my friends. It wasn’t until I moved back to the US for college that I was approached to join the “women of color” group. I didn’t understand it; my roommate had to explain it to me. Now, I embrace it. After I graduated, I worked in the video game industry and was proud to break the stigma that “women can’t game.” I loved working on Pokémon and meeting the heads of the creative department when they visited Nintendo and being able to converse and feel my Japanese side with them and be proud of it. I still brag about having met Shigeru Miyamoto, and now I’m proud to work at a company that makes sure to embrace diversity in all aspects. I can be me.
Rue Dickey (they/he/xe)
I’ve had a lot of internal difficulty embracing “Asian” as an identity. As a person of mixed white, Indigenous, and Romani heritage, the Romani bit falls into the nebulous “Other Asian” category on most forms; plus, we haven’t had a physical place to call home since migrating over from the north of the Indian subcontinent hundreds of years ago. But, through working with multicultural associations through university, I started building a bridge to that side of myself. It was through the love, support, and gentle pressure of my friends and colleagues that I found community, and I am eternally grateful to each and every one of them. I am grateful, also, to have found my place in the TTRPG sphere, where I can celebrate every facet of myself and share space with other people who look like me.
Thank you to the members of our AAPI community—Paizo’s games wouldn’t be the same without you!