On May 11th, PBS featured a fascinating story for its “Brief but Spectacular” segment that inspires thinking around (im)migration and identity. Jess X. Snow, a young first-generation Chinese-American artist illuminates her experiences as an immigrant, a child of immigrants, with force and insight:

Imagination is daring to love what is not in front of us. So what then, is immigration, if not imagination given a destination?

Jess describes the recounting of her family story as a young person with a stutter, an atypical way of being that produced unkind treatment by students around her. Jess found freedom in her poetry, in creating beauty in deep engagement with political philosophical questions related to what immigrant identity is under increasing surveillance as well as interrogating Westphalian notions of border drawing as “unnatural.” It’s not bravery that she exhibits, but rather honesty, loyalty to her family, her artistic community, and to her own vision, and the voice of a generation that asks important philosophical questions about political conservatism and nationalism through art and collective meaning-making.

Check out the artist’s work here.