Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Kelly Marie Tran has spoken out publicly for the first time since she disappeared from social media in June.
Many blamed Tran's exit from Instagram on internet trolls who had showered her with hateful messages following her breakout role in director Rian Johnson's 2017 Star Wars movie.
She doesn't share any specifics in a new essay published in the New York Times, opting instead to speak more broadly about society's latent racist tendencies and her own cultural erasure.
SEE ALSO:Leslie Jones offers Kelly Marie Tran some advice for dealing with internet trolls"It wasn't their words, it's that I started to believe them," she wrote.
"Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories."
Multiple times throughout the essay, Tran discusses how "their words" carried her back to her younger years, and to an internalized feeling that she didn't belong.
"That feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from," she wrote.
Over the course of the powerful essay, Tran describes various moments in her life when her existence in America as a non-white person left her feeling like a background player in civilized society. And how popular entertainment indirectly reinforced that feeling.
"Because the same society that taught some people they were heroes, saviors, inheritors of the Manifest Destiny ideal, taught me I existed only in the background of their stories, doing their nails, diagnosing their illnesses, supporting their love interests — and perhaps the most damaging — waiting for them to rescue me."
Over the course of the piece, Tran charts the various ways her own history with racism and the more insidious sense of "othering" have strengthened her present-day resolve to work toward a more inclusive world. The essay is, ultimately, a statement of intent.
"You might know me as Kelly," she wrote in the closing portion of the piece.
"I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie."
"I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair."
"My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."
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