Uplifted: Journeys of Abundance, Community, and Identity

A book of 21 Asian American entrepreneurs’ life stories commissioned by Asian Hustle Network and funded on Kickstarter in August 2021.

Asian Hustle Network commissioned me to write Uplifted over the course of 1 year. The process consisted of:

1. Interviewing: I got on 90-minute Zoom calls with pre-selected members of their community and conducted interviews centering around a core question: how did their upbringing and sense of identity shape their journeys into entrepreneurship?

2. Story Development: I went to sleep after each interview and put my pen to a blank sheet of paper in the morning. In a few, short sentences going down the page, what was the story my heart remembered from the night before?

3. Ghostwriting: I would assume the voice and character of the subject as I remembered it (with generous replays of our interview) and write their story in their own words—from their recollections of childhood to the present. Not always chronological.

4. Editing: I rewrote the book 4 times with the help of an incredible storytelling coach, Joel ben Izzy. This process was invaluable and I will write about it separately, sometime soon.

5. Design & Production: I worked with the incredible Gentle Oriental (Gabrielle Widjaja) to bring the cover and layout designs to life. We worked with a team at Prolific Group in Canada to prototype and print the book.

6. Marketing Assets: Photographers Reinhardt Kenneth and Priscilla Chung and film director Matthew Freiheit applied their unique visions to produce a set of creatives for marketing the book. I created our Kickstarter campaign graphics and copy and a 30-day social media content calendar.

7. Bonus PR: I also published a personal essay about the process of writing the book, which caught the notice of an editor and landed Asian Hustle Network a feature interview in South China Morning Post.

While I’m not actively involved with the project, you can purchase copies on upliftedbook.com or its Amazon page.