I recently returned to my hometown for my 40th high school reunion. My trip to Charlottesville was sandwiched between speaking engagements about navigating political division, and I arrived in the midst of the contentious 2024 election season. Growing up in Charlottesville set the stage for my work on bridging divides. As a bi-racial, Chinese, Jewish child, in this college town surrounded by rural Virginia, I was exposed to people with a range of values, backgrounds, and experiences at the one public high school in the city.
Charlottesville is both the same town where I grew up and considerably transformed. After the events that took place there in 2017, Charlottesville became shorthand for conflict about statues of Civil War figures and violent White supremacists. I tried to capture my perspective on Charlottesville past and present in this spoken word piece that I performed in Santa Barbara, where I live now.
The reunion was wonderful. As senior class vice-president, I started convening Zoom calls several months prior to plan the weekend, although classmates closer to Charlottesville made it all happen. We attended a football game, toured the high school, and danced until late into the night.
Friday night football game 
Friday night football game 
Friday night football game 
Tour of the high school 
Tour of the high school 
Tour of the high school 
Flashback to taking the SATs in the library 
I did! 
Signs of the times 
The band room looks the same 
Finally made first chair! 
The theater 
Theater kids 
Theater kids in the yearbook 
How we all felt in the theater gang 
Class of 1984! 
That’s our team 
Reunion treats 
She made the reunion amazing! 
She keeps track of everyone and makes sure the reunions happen 
She was an amazing athlete! 
They took care of me 
We went to elementary school together 
I was Lucy to his Charlie Brown 
He still can’t get over my excellent grade in physics! 
She became a children’s author 
Always fun-loving 
Hanging with the girls, just like old times
The tour of the high school was a time travel back to my teen years – performing in the Black Box theater, taking SATs in the library, carpooling to school with friends. Change was evident in the gender neutral restrooms, diversity of the Homecoming court, and dedicated space for Muslim students to pray. The best part of the reunion was the people — some I knew since kindergarten, some I hadn’t seen in 40 years, some I got to know better from planning reunions with them over the years. These people helped make me who I am, and I feel so much affection for them all.
During my visit, I had the pleasure of talking with local media, including a reporter from the C’ville Review, who wrote this great story about political polarization.
When the local TV station asked me to pick the location for an interview, I knew immediately – the Gordon Avenue Library. Just up the street from my elementary school, this is where I got my first library card and checked out books. It’s also where I began my work on dialogue across political differences. In the 1990’s, I started a group to bring together pro-choice and pro-life people to talk with each other, and we held our dialogue meetings in the Gordon Avenue Library. This experience was transformational for me – it changed nothing about how I felt about reproductive rights, but it changed so much of how I understood people who disagreed with me on this issue. This experience set me on my path of bridging political divides.
Thank you, Charlottesville. You gave me a strong foundation for the person I am and the work I do.