Stephanie Hsu, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in last year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once and starred this year in the comedy Joy Ride, admitted that she found it difficult to find something to toast to tonight because “the world feels like it is an absolute shambles, and the shambles feel like they’re all somehow made by our own human doing.” The actress did not point to one specific tragedy, but noted that during the pandemic, she found comfort in the words of her favorite authors.
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00:00 I want to just admit that it was a little difficult to come up with something to toast to tonight.
00:05 The world feels like it is in absolute shambles and the shambles feel like they're all somehow
00:12 made by our own human doing. And when I look down between my thumb tips, everyone seems to just be
00:18 screaming at each other and everyone seems to know everything about how everyone else is doing it
00:24 wrong. And then when I find myself in spaces where it feels like there's actually time and space to
00:29 have conversations about what's happening in the world in a thoughtful way, no one seems to know
00:35 how to talk about anything. Which I totally understand and have such complete compassion for.
00:42 I too feel so confused, heartbroken, devastated. I feel rage. I feel deeply, deeply sad.
00:54 I want to do everything to help and I feel just as equally helpless. I remember early in the
01:00 pandemic this same feeling of panic and overwhelm started to bubble up and I began to spiral because
01:05 I'm a spiraler and I was thinking about all the millions of other things I should be doing in my
01:10 life to be a little bit more helpful. Like okay, is it too late to become a nurse or a biochemist?
01:17 Yes, brilliant, maybe now me, actor, academy award nominee, should be a biochemist. That feels right.
01:24 Yeah, I found myself in front of my bookshelf looking for clues and comfort and as I was
01:30 scanning the spines, these books, desperately searching for answers inside somebody else's
01:36 words, out of nowhere I all of a sudden just started weeping. Out of nowhere I just started
01:43 sobbing because in that very moment I had this profound realization that all of these authors,
01:51 all of these people, these human beings over the course of so many tragedies had taken the time
01:58 to do the work, to turn their ideas, their feelings, their heartbreak into an offering,
02:05 a book, to protect us at a time of devastation they didn't even know would come.
02:12 In her book, No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein says that it is not enough to merely resist,
02:19 to say no. Our historical moment demands more, a credible and inspiring yes,
02:27 one that sets a bold course for winning the fair and caring world we want and need.
02:34 Writers are yes makers, artists yes makers, educators, doctors, parents, children, biochemists,
02:42 astro-nuts, physicians, we are in a room full of yes makers and I too have to remember that I am
02:50 one in a world of many many more. I love this, that collectively imagining a yes we can build
02:58 towards is not only our responsibility but necessary for our survival. So in the spirit
03:05 of this I'd like to share with you all one of my favorite yeses. I think about it in moments like
03:12 this, a moment like we're in now when the overwhelmed can tip into helplessness or paralysis.
03:19 It's something one of my favorite authors and activists Adrienne Marie Brown once said
03:25 at a talk back when I asked her through tears, I'm always crying because I'm an actor,
03:30 I asked her what do you do when you feel like the change you want to make won't happen fast enough
03:38 or that you can't keep up with the speed in which destruction and tragedy is happening?
03:44 And she said, because she's brilliant, she said I have exactly the perfect antidote for you.
03:53 She said I think of Harriet Tubman, I think of this woman who brought enslaved people to freedom
04:03 from the south to the north over and over simply just by walking. Harriet who simply walked,
04:11 one woman who in the dark of the woods had nothing, only the light of the stars to guide her,
04:19 walked simply because she knew her people had to be free. So tonight I would like to raise a toast
04:28 to walking or moving forward however you are able into and through uncertainty.
04:36 I'd like to raise a toast to time and to the time it takes to have the deep courage to imagine and
04:45 believe there must be another way and then to move towards it, whether it to be the moon or
04:52 to writing the first or last page of a book or to the other side of freedom, to do something
04:58 towards collective justice and joy even if we are completely in the dark of what the outcome may be.
05:04 We are in a room full of beautiful, beautiful people with the imagination of a million yeses
05:13 or definitely at least 100 and I cheers to that, to you all, to what's next and when in doubt
05:23 I hope we can look to each other, look to the sky. Thank you so deeply for doing what you're doing.
05:31 I feel honored to be moving towards yes alongside of you all.