Sisters’ bakery raises money to combat rising anti-Asian hate
Khamla Vorasane and Chan Graham understand all too well what it’s like to feel like “the other.”
As the daughters of immigrants from Laos, they were some of the only Asian people in their Texas town. Khamla remembers other students mocking her lunches — lovingly packed by her mother — and saying the food smelled bad. A college classmate asked if her eyes were slanted because her ancestors worked in fields, squinting at the sun.
Chan remembers going to ESL classes when she arrived in America, where teachers taught them how to paint fingernails instead of focusing on English lessons.
The sisters, now co-owners of BouNom Bakery in Avon, watched the news in horror on March 16, after a gunman killed eight people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors, including six Asian women. Feeling a deep need to do something, they quickly planned a fundraiser on March 28, donating 100 percent of their Sunday sales to three organizations working toward ending violence and discrimination against members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
“We felt it was so important to raise awareness of what’s going on in the Asian community,” Vorasane said. “Sometimes you can be in a bubble, in Avon and Simsbury, because you don’t see that. You don’t see the increased Asian hate crimes that you do in New York or San Francisco. And we just wanted to kind of highlight and raise awareness about what’s going on the rest of the country.”
On the day of the fundraiser, customers streamed into the French-inspired bakery for croissants, cakes, muffins, scones, breads and other pastries handcrafted by Graham. The event brought in $3,700 for the sisters’ chosen organizations: Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the UConn Foundation’s Fund for Asian American Studies.
A customer wanted to get the total to $4,000, Vorasane said, and opted to donate $150 each to the UConn Foundation Fund and the AALD fund.
The sisters have been watching anti-Asian sentiments and violent incidents escalate over the past year during the pandemic, Vorasane said, particularly with political rhetoric and vitriol blaming China for COVID-19.
President Donald Trump was criticized in 2020 for his use of racist and offensive terms like “kung flu” to describe the virus, along with “China virus” and “China plague.”
“You are seen as the cause of this virus,” she said. “When you have a [former] President perpetuate the idea that the virus came from China, and it’s the ‘kung flu’ virus... everyone has been hurt by this COVID shutdown. People have lost their jobs. If your ex-president says it long enough, and people are repeating it ... you see this perpetual increase in violence toward AsianAmericans. They’re being blamed for the COVID shutdown.”
In Avon, Vorasane said, the fundraiser opened up good conversations with their customers. Some weren’t fully aware of the discrimination that Asian-Americans often face, she said, and were grateful to learn about it. Other customers of Asian heritage shared their experiences with racial stereotypes and microaggressions: a woman whose Filipina mother was mistaken for a live-in housekeeper; another who was told her aptitude for math and science was because of her ethnicity.
For Vorasane, the uncomfortable racial comments didn’t end after college. Before opening the bakery with her sister in February 2020, she was an insurance executive, and said she would often be in meetings where people would comment on her accent-free English.
“In their mind, they were giving me a compliment,” she said. “But by saying that, you constantly see me as ‘other’ or ‘foreigner.’” She said she never felt comfortable speaking up, particularly as a woman in a male-dominated setting.
She talks of casual racism leading to active racism and in some cases, violence, referencing to the Atlanta shootings. As she and her sister watched coverage of the slayings, she noted that a police spokesperson said the gunman’s motive may have been tied to sex addiction rather than a racial motivation.
The explanation didn’t soothe her, she said, because of stereotypes that often portray Asian women working at massage parlors as sex workers.
“When he said that, people automatically assume that those parlors were sexually involved, there was prostitution, nefarious things were going on,” she said. “That’s what I mean by casual racism.”
Other restaurant owners in Connecticut have spoken out about the troubling increase in discrimination and violence against the AAPI community. In a March 22 Instagram post, owners of Junzi Kitchen, a small restaurant group specializing in Northern Chinese cuisine with locations in New Haven and New York City, urged customers to “love our people like you love our food.”
“When we first built Junzi, we dreamed of a place where we could share what we loved most about Chinese food: a place where everyone can feel welcomed and supported,” they wrote. “We believe that the best place for understanding someone’s culture is over a meal.”
In an impassioned Instagram post Sunday, Matt Storch, owner of Match Restaurant in South Norwalk and Match Burger Lobster in Westport, shared a photo of his family. His wife and his twin sons are Asian.
“Casually speaking with my wife the other day I asked her current comfort level,” he wrote. “She is nervous and wouldn’t travel to the city like she’s done thousands of times over, ‘especially at night.’ I don’t blame her, to tell you the truth I would be nervous as well. I just can’t believe it. I am so disgusted that my fellow Americans continue to hurt one another for just being visually different. I’m disgusted that ignorant blame is placed on an entire race of people.”
Vorasane said she and Graham intend to keep talking about the issues, and may host more fundraisers or events to keep the dialogue open.
“We’re just getting started, to be honest,” she said. “We’re looking at other things we can do to raise awareness. One fundraiser is good, but keeping the conversation going is important.”