“Outcasted” is how Angelene Superable describes the subtle sense of alienation she felt growing up in Pearland, Texas, a town outside Houston.

While her best friend was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty — a sort of Texas ideal — Superable was the daughter of Filipino immigrants who had arrived in the US with just $200. She found herself wincing at the slights suffered by her parents, with their heavily-accented English, and the regular reminders that they were outsiders even as they were living a version of the American dream. They built careers in the medical industry and managed to eventually buy a home with a swimming pool. When she arrived at the University of California Berkeley, Superable longed to join a mostly white sorority. “I was like, ‘I want to be the token Asian!’” she says.

But no longer. By the end of her studies, Superable had come to grips with her roots and her identity. After graduating, she joined an initiative sponsored by the office of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to register disenfranchised voters, many of them Asian-American immigrants.