Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity

Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi are authors and activists who met in 2014 as high school sophomores in Princeton, New Jersey. Guo is Chinese American, and Vulchi is Indian American, exemplifying the role of women of color in social justice activism and education. Guo graduated from Harvard in 2022, and Vulchi graduated from Princeton in 2022.

Guo and Vulchi gave a TED Talk, “What It Takes to Be Racially Literate,” in 2018 and are the youngest TED Talk speakers. They have also spoken at TEDWomen, the United Nations’ Girl Up Conference, and various schools. Guo and Vulchi published a now out-of-print racial literacy textbook, The Classroom Index, during their junior year of high school. Jointly sponsored by the Princeton University Department of African American Studies and the Princeton Education Foundation, the book was meant for K-12 educators and contained stories from interviewees in the Northeast US, a racial literacy toolbox, and a reference guide. The book was aimed at educators wanting to add to their lesson plans and facilitate classroom discussions about race. Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture & Identity builds off The Classroom Index by adding stories from people across the US, as well as research, statistics, quotes, and definitions of terms and concepts.

In an interview with Teen Vogue about The Classroom Index, Guo and Vulchi explain their philosophy of racial literacy and the motivation for writing the book, which also spurred them to write Tell Me Who You Are:

Why we thought it was important for kids our own age and especially younger than us to start developing racial literacy is because it’s equipping students to have contact with the world beyond the classroom […] It enables students to enact change, it inspires activists so students leave the classroom not only equipped with other literacy such as math, reading, and science to make a difference in the world, but they are equipped now with a will and a fight in them for social justice (Vulchi, Priya. “High School Students Write Racial Literacy Textbook.” Interview by Keah Brown. Teen Vogue, 2017).

In 2014, Guo and Vulchi continued their work by founding the online nonprofit organization CHOOSE, which also emphasizes racial literacy for educators; the goal is to kickstart a cycle of Acknowledging Systemic Inequities and Privilege in which such teachers teach racial literacy to young generations. They created the CHOOSE Champions: Educator Fellowship in 2019, which allows educators from the US to provide racial literacy curricula for all K-12 subjects on the CHOOSE website. Guo and Vulchi emphasize that its goal is to integrate racial and intersectional literacy into classroom curriculum so that youth gain a better understanding of who they—and those around them—are.