Aya Tasaki was 5 when she first moved from Tokyo to Illinois. The details of that departure are still etched in her mind. Her father had already gone ahead of the family to take up a job in the United States, and Tasaki's grandparents and aunt had come to the airport to see her and her mother off.
"I do remember thinking, 'Oh something major is happening,'" Tasaki said by phone from New York, where she's been based since 2009. Earlier this year she joined Womankind, a nonprofit that supports survivors of gender-based violence — particularly survivors from the greater Asian community.
"I got on the plane and thought it was disgusting. I still remember the smell of it, it was kind of like burned coffee, a weird smell. I still wasn't even used to riding cars at that time, so getting on an airplane made me super sick," Tasaki says.