My parents both immigrated from Asia.
They worked so hard just to have enough money.
My dad really, really emphasized that to be financially stable, we had to be well-educated.
I think that was why, when I was about eight, I decided I wanted to be a doctor.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
When I eight years old, I started a newsletter about current events.
I liked how telling stories could make people connect.
When I was in high school, I was a football player, as well as a wrestler.
I wanna be a military officer. I want to make an impact being a great leader.
When I got to Harvard, I thought the sciences were where I would end up.
I didn’t realize that there was a wider world in terms of what you could study
and what those fields allowed you to experience.
I saw this one course, English 192: Political Theatre and the Structure of Drama.
I had no idea what political theatre meant, but I decided to take it anyway.
This really transformative moment happened when we were talking about a play by Bertolt Brecht,
“The Good Person of Szechwan”.
The play is really about how someone can be good.
And this lightbulb just went off in my head. And I just started scribbling frantically.
My notes went from being about the play to just being about the nature of goodness.
And I had this revelation: studying English was teaching me how to be a better doctor
because I was becoming a more empathetic and more deeply understanding human being.
Part of the thing that I’ve learned is, to engage in a culture, you need to be a proactive participant in it.
What better way to engage in Argentine culture than Tango?
On Wednesdays, I’m in fatigues during my tango class because
right after tango, I go immediately to my ROTC class.
When I began taking the tango class, I couldn’t even fathom the idea that I actually decided to take it
because I was a terrible dancer.
I would stand on a dance floor and want to run away.
Thanks to tango, I know I have the ability to tackle being uncomfortable
and then learn to actually thrive in it.
I was a co-president of the Harvard African Students Association
and we had a speaker series on conflict in Africa.
We invited a former child soldier from Uganda.
Her talk was just amazing.
It was one of these moments where something goes off in your head.
And over Thanksgiving break, I just wrote manically.
The feedback I got on that made me think, "Maybe I can write, maybe this is a longer project."
That’s what then became “Beasts of No Nation”.
It was translated into fourteen languages.
And then it was made into a film that was seen by over 3 million people.
Having professors that were so invested in your exploration of things
that you wanted to know has influenced my life profoundly.
I have always been interested in telling stories in a way that
could affect social justice or political issues.
But when I got here, I thought that I should be studying the titans at Harvard:
government, economics, I even tried a statistics class.
In my American History and Literature tutorial, I had this idea for a paper
about Jay Z, hip-hop, commodification and commercialization.
I was very surprised that it was received so well.
My tutor sent me scholarly articles and really engaged with me on
a level that really valued what I was thinking about.
My journey here was discovering that what I felt passionate about would be supported and encouraged.
The study of the Humanities is really a study of us as a culture.
Every moment that is spent studying us as a culture is a moment that isn’t wasted.
When we study these topics, we are escorted into completely new ways of thinking
about everything in the world around us,
every problem, every injustice, everything beautiful.
The Arts and Humanities focus on the really big questions that never completely get answered,
but in pursuit of which, we become better people.
Part of what it is to make art is to find ways to do impossible things.
That’s what creativity is about, it’s what the imagination is for. That’s what makes us human.
I came into Harvard with this little itch that I wanted to study English.
When we neglect those little itches we have, we can lose a lot of what actually makes us happy.
There’s so many different paths into whatever career you’re gonna end up at.
And that’s something I didn’t understand coming into Harvard.
I thought that my interest in English was just gonna be a hobby.
And now it’s become so much more and I’m so much better for it.