Audrey Navin

¨I expected it to come because of COVID[-19], and I expected it to happen. I’m adopted, and my parents didn’t really expect this to happen. On the bus, I was bullied, called a Chinese slave, a c****. [Students] pulled their eyes back, they would say that I’m not loved because I am Asian and adopted, and that I look like a Chinese boy. This was when I was in fourth and fifth grade. In grocery stores, when I started to go out, due to the pandemic, people would look at me in a disgusted way at Safeway and Harris Teeter. Like the people would stop what they were doing and look at me. Then I had to go to the Food Lion by myself, and this lady told me to go back to my country and said that this is my fault for the pandemic. In middle school, I was the only Asian student and I got an A- on a test. My teacher told me to do better because I was Asian. He also assumed that I was Buddist, and he would say that I looked like Mulan. Also, he would tell me to go back to China, before the coronavirus. When he was hosting a Jeopardy game at school before things were shutting down, he said, ‘What is this animal that came from the Coronavirus that I bet Audrey eats?’”