Read the essay about learning English that won her a place at every single Ivy

Yesterday Cassandra Hsiao heard the news that she made it into not just one but all eight schools of the Ivy League. With offers to study at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Penn, she now has to choose which world class institution she’ll join in the Class of 2021. A writer, journalist, and one-time rapper (in front of Lin-Manuel Miranda), Cassandra explained how she nailed her applications – and shared her common app essay that helped get her there.

Cassandra Hsiao

How does it feel to get into every single school in the Ivy League? 

I’m still processing it. It’s not something you expect when you open these college messages on your portal. I saw a yes and a yes, a congratulations after a congratulations. It’s totally surreal. It’s still sinking in. I had a moment to myself yesterday where I was just sobbing. I celebrated with my parents. This is quite the honor, to have these fantastic institutions accept me. It’s really something.

Your parents must be super proud.

Oh yeah! They’re over the moon. They’re a huge part of why I was able to accomplish this really. You can’t do it without the support of your parents. They believed in me and encouraged me to follow my passions along with my teachers, my friends, mentors, life mentors, industry mentors – these are the people who I really owe a lot to. God opened a lot of doors for me and put these people in my life who were able to see something in me and nourish me. There’s no way I would have been able to do this without them. This thing is really a group effort. So thanks to all the people in that group.

What did you focus on in your common app essay?

My parents are immigrants – my mom was born in Malaysia, my dad was born in Taiwan. When I was about five we moved here. English is not their strength and it was interesting to me growing up in a house of immigrants, how we interact with language. Words that don’t translate will seep into our own – the way I talk at home is very different from the way I talk outside of home. Sometimes when I was growing up people laughed at me for things I said that sounded completely normal to me but were not to them. So I wrote about that experience.

Read Cassandra’s essay in full

In our house, English is not English. Not in the phonetic sense, like short a is for apple, but rather in the pronunciation – in our house, snake is snack. Words do not roll off our tongues correctly – yet I, who was pulled out of class to meet with language specialists, and my mother from Malaysia, who pronounces film as flim, understand each other perfectly.

In our house, there is no difference between cast and cash, which was why at a church retreat, people made fun of me for “cashing out demons.” I did not realize the glaring difference between the two Englishes until my teacher corrected my pronunciations of hammock, ladle, and siphon. Classmates laughed because I pronounce accept as except, success as sussess. I was in the Creative Writing conservatory, and yet words failed me when I needed them most.

Suddenly, understanding flower is flour wasn’t enough. I rejected the English that had never seemed broken before, a language that had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Everybody else’s parents spoke with accents smarting of Ph.D.s and university teaching positions. So why couldn’t mine?

My mother spread her sunbaked hands and said, “This is where I came from,” spinning a tale with the English she had taught herself.

When my mother moved from her village to a town in Malaysia, she had to learn a brand new language in middle school: English. In a time when humiliation was encouraged, my mother was defenseless against the cruel words spewing from the teacher, who criticized her paper in front of the class. When she began to cry, the class president stood up and said, “That’s enough.”

“Be like that class president,” my mother said with tears in her eyes. The class president took her under her wing and patiently mended my mother’s strands of language. “She stood up for the weak and used her words to fight back.”

We were both crying now. My mother asked me to teach her proper English so old white ladies at Target wouldn’t laugh at her pronunciation. It has not been easy. There is a measure of guilt when I sew her letters together. Long vowels, double consonants — I am still learning myself. Sometimes I let the brokenness slide to spare her pride but perhaps I have hurt her more to spare mine.

As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English. Through performing poetry in front of 3000 at my school’s Season Finale event, interviewing people from all walks of life, and writing stories for the stage, I stand against ignorance and become a voice for the homeless, the refugees, the ignored. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York subway. My mother’s eyes are reflected in underprivileged ESL children who have so many stories to tell but do not know how. I fill them with words as they take needle and thread to make a tapestry.

In our house, there is beauty in the way we speak to each other. In our house, language is not broken but rather bursting with emotion. We have built a house out of words. There are friendly snakes in the cupboard and snacks in the tank. It is a crooked house. It is a little messy. But this is where we have made our home.

@hshukman

Interview with Cassandra Hsiao, winner of California Young Playwrights Contest 2016

Playwrights Project will produce its 32nd annual festival of Plays by Young Writers, sponsored by the Sheila and Jeffrey Lipinsky Family Fund, at The Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in the Conrad Prebys Theatre Center at The Old Globe on January 19 – January 29, 2017. The festival will feature winning scripts from its California Young Playwrights Contest for ages 18 and under.

Contest winners were selected from 365 plays submitted by students from across the state. Four scripts will receive full professional productions, and two scripts will receive staged readings in this highly regarded festival of new voices.

Supermarket of Lost

By Cassandra Hsiao

Age 16, Walnut

Directed by George Yé

Cassandra Hsiao is a junior in the Creative Writing conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts. She is an editor of her school’s award-winning art and literary magazine, Inkblot, and has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as well as the National Student Poets Program. Cassandra conducts print and on-camera interviews as a teen reporter and Movie Editor for Crixit.com, Fanlala.com and BYOU Magazine. She is also a journalist for the Los Angeles Times’ High School Insider. Her winning play, Supermarket of Lost, was originally produced in June 2016 by The Blank Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles, CA.

How did you first get involved with writing?
I started writing in elementary school, thanks to teachers who saw my work, believed in me and told me that I could become a storyteller. I have always been an avid reader and I immersed myself in various fictional worlds. I started creating my own worlds to live in–characters to befriend, love, trust, and adventure with. Now I study Creative Writing at my high school, the Orange County School of the Arts where I dabble in all genres.

Specifically for playwriting, in freshman year I was placed in a 10-minute playwriting class by chance. I was introduced to a whole new format and fell in love immediately thanks to my dramaturg Tira Palmquist. Since then I’ve explored many different types of plays, from two-handers to avant-garde.

I understand that your play Supermarket of Lost has won numerous other awards, congratulations! How have these accomplishments shaped the play as it is today and what have you enjoyed about the revisions you’re working on for this production?Thank you so much! This play has grown so much since its initial student-directed, student-acted production at my high school. That said, every production holds a special place in my heart. It is an indescribable joy and privilege for me to see my words come to life through different actors and interpretations. There’s nothing more gratifying than watching my characters leap off the page.

This production’s revisions have been a wonderful challenge for me to tackle. I have more time and space to develop my characters and lengthen the play to where it needs to be. I truly enjoy diving into what I’ve written and simply let the characters speak for themselves.

How did you come up with the idea for your script?
In school, I was given a prompt “Lost and Found.” Immediately I started to wonder where all the lost items go, and before I knew it, the Supermarket of Lost was born. From there it was a matter of refining the rules of this cosmic warehouse and fleshing out the characters.

What themes are involved in your piece?
I love writing that has a magical quality about it–the Supermarket of Lost certainly is a magical place, to say the least. I love exploring a place where I could create the rules and where the possibilities were endless.

On a deeper level, Supermarket of Lost deals with themes of memory, loss, grief, and what it means to exuberantly live despite the time constraints the world has placed on us. It’s about friendship and strangers all at once. Supermarket of Lost brings up questions of what it means to lose something and to let go of something.

What is the message you hope the audience takes away with them?
I  hope audience members can experience the magic, hope and melancholy of the Supermarket along with my characters Austin, Violet, and Hailee. I hope audiences will come away moved and empowered to live to the fullest.

Do you plan to continue writing?
Absolutely! I have no plans to stop writing!

What are your career goals and/or aspirations?
In Hamilton, Aaron Burr calls Alexander Hamilton “non-stop” in his writing prowess and prolificness. I aspire to be a “non-stop” storyteller to tell the stories that need to be told, whether it is through journalism, TV, film, theater, or the written word.

What advice would you give to a peer as they embark on writing their first play?
Go for it. Give it your all. Pay attention to everyday dialogue. Take a notebook with you and people-watch/listen wherever you go. Don’t worry about formatting–that comes later. Ask yourself, what is the heart of this play? What is the conflict? Conflict drives a story, and before you know it, you’ll have your very first play in your hands.

Are you currently working to develop any other plays?
Yes! I am constantly writing/thinking about my ideas for one-act plays as well as full-length plays. I am often inspired by articles and feature stories I come across with an emotional heartbeat.

Supermarket of  Lost can be seen during Program A of Plays by Young Writers, on Saturday Jan. 28th at 7:30 PM and Sunday Jan. 29th at 2:00 PM. You may purchase tickets for Jan. 28 at 7:30 PM here, and Jan. 29 at 2:00 PM here.

For more information, please contact Playwrights Project at (858) 384-2970 or write@. Visit http://www./productions/pbyw/. 

*Photo courtesy of Geri Goodale of Reminisce Photography.

--------------------------------------