“It takes only 10 seconds for a fireball to reach its maximum size, but the impacts span across generations.” The first words of sophomore Thora Schimmel’s performance, centered around the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ring throughout the room. She’s competing in Program Oral Interpretation, where speakers combine several texts and media around a single theme. Through this program in particular, Schimmel has the opportunity to convey her emphasis on self-expression while also highlighting her half-white, half-Japanese heritage.
Although she first moved to Iowa City two years ago, Schimmel thrives in the speech and art rooms of West High. She and her twin brother, white father and Japanese mother migrated twice from Grinnell, Iowa to Tokyo, Japan before she started high school. Between Grinnell, Japan and Iowa City, she finds Iowa City’s diversity unique.
“Grinnell was a very small town, and the people around me were very single-minded. They’d only ever experienced one kind of world, and it was the same in Japan,” Schimmel said. “Coming to West, which had a lot of cultures mixed together, it felt like the good in-between.”
Schimmel’s moves around the globe, combined with her mixed identity, have caused her to experience cultural profiling since childhood.
“[In the United States], when I tell somebody I’m Japanese, they’re like, ‘Do you watch anime?’ They don’t see my culture fully — only the pieces that they find fun or entertaining, when there’s so much more about me that I wish they would know,” Schimmel said. “A friend [from Grinnell] referred to me as his ‘weird Asian friend.’ It’s not as bad [as in Japan], since I can speak English better and express myself, but there is an extent of otherism or being excluded that is very subtle.”
While living in Tokyo, Schimmel continued to navigate the challenges of fixed cultural views, finding that she was sometimes misunderstood among Japanese people.
“There are people [in Japan] who will over-idolize American culture, and lots of people would put me on a pedestal because I knew English, or they would think I was stupid because I couldn’t speak at a higher level in their language. It made me feel as if being accepted by both sides wouldn’t be possible,” Schimmel said. “I didn’t feel like I could connect with people on a deeper level because I didn’t have the words to express myself. Even when I was able to properly communicate, it felt as if I was communicating it as a complete foreigner instead of somebody who was also part of their culture.”
As the daughter of a Japanese immigrant, Schimmel’s heritage is also reflected through her Japanese name, ‘Shimeru Sora.’ Her first name, ‘Sora,’ means sky, and her last name, ‘Shimeru,’ is approximately translated from English. The name ‘Shimeru Sora’ is converted using a rōmaji system, which phonetically writes Japanese characters in the English alphabet.
“My mom wanted to make my American name something with a th- [sound] in it, because there’s no th- [sound] in Japanese, and she wanted it to be unique. When they decided my name in English [would be] Thora, they were trying to think of a name that would be similar in Japanese, so they [picked] ‘Sora,’” Schimmel said.
Now, two years after returning to the United States, Schimmel reflects on her identity as someone both white and Japanese, finding that her experiences shape her views on diversity.
“[Being mixed] makes me more acute at recognizing judgment and microaggressions that I wouldn’t have noticed if I were just white or just Japanese,” Schimmel said. “I don’t like to make it super central to who I am, but growing up with such a mix of cultures and ideas, [especially about] how people should live, makes you more willing to accept ideas different from your own. People in Japan and in America should be more open to accepting other cultures, and live with a little bit of open-mindedness in their hearts.”
After her experiences with misperception, Schimmel heavily prioritizes inclusiveness. However, there are other aspects of her life that contribute to this, including her mental health.
“I’ve struggled with severe anxiety since I was 12. It’s made [life] really hard. I still have it now,” Schimmel said. “Having people be there for me was really big to me when I didn’t feel like I had anybody to turn to. It made me realize that being a nice person is the best kind of person you can be — it made me want to recognize everybody in a way where they feel seen for who they are.”
Schimmel’s close friends have witnessed her strive towards kindness firsthand. One of these friends is Amanda Anyaoha ’28, whom Schimmel met in the beginning of her freshman year.
“One of my favorite things about her is how she cares for others. She’s a very inclusive person; she tries to be kind to others around her,” Anyaoha said. “Thora has a very bright and bubbly personality, [yet] she’s not going to sugarcoat things for you. She’s smart, she’s very driven and she’s there when you need her.”
Despite the isolation that she faced, Schimmel was never alone in her struggle to be seen. Although she had difficulties with cultural expression in both the United States and Japan, her twin brother, Otto, was always by her side.
“My twin is literally my other half. Having somebody who’s lived a very similar life to me and seeing him have so many different views, hobbies and ideas is really unique,” Schimmel said. “It gave me a way to learn how to communicate from an earlier age. Anytime we’d have a problem, we’d sit down and talk about it, and it helped me develop a really healthy way of communicating.”
However, being a twin has also placed a unique burden on Schimmel, bringing familial pressure and unique social situations.
“The expectation is put on both of you that you will do equally as well. When one does better, it puts a strain on the other twin [that they’re] ‘not doing enough,’” Schimmel said. “There are also things socially — people would say, ‘[One of them] is the better twin.’ It creates an environment where the person you’re competing against is the person you love the most, and I wish people wouldn’t do that. It makes you feel like you aren’t anything without who the other person is and how you compare to them.”
Schimmel herself invests substantial time into outlets that allow her to express her own feelings. One of these is music — Schimmel has played flute since fifth grade. At West, she is in the band program and Cadenza, a student-organized music charity club. She recently played in the pit orchestra of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.”
“Music has a special place in my heart, it’s a way to express yourself. It’s really cool that you can choose to go either into having fun with music or competing in it and finding validation through it,” Schimmel said. “For me, personally, just like a sport, it’s a way to get your emotions out.”
Another way that she chooses to convey her feelings is protesting. With her family, Schimmel has attended No Kings protests in Iowa City as well as the student-organized “Melt ICE!” walkout Feb. 5.
“Activism to me, it’s not just big gestures. It’s in your everyday life, how you talk about things and how you choose to confront what’s happening in the world,” Schimmel said. “Kids will be put down, saying, ‘You don’t know enough about this world to know what’s right,’ or [they have] a feeling of powerlessness that comes with not having a right to vote. Giving people a voice or saying, ‘I’m willing to speak out about this because I care about this issue,’ convinces so many other people that it’s okay that they speak out.”
Schimmel is also a board member of the newly-founded Asian Student Union, helping to organize events like this year’s inaugural Lunar New Year Gala Feb. 15.
“ASU gives kids a sense of belonging. It helps other people in the community learn about cultures different than theirs, which I find really important because it makes people kinder and more tolerant to people different from them,” Schimmel said.
Apart from being outspoken through activities, Schimmel also finds expression through surrounding herself with others’ ideas. She is on the literary magazine Grapevine’s social media team to increase awareness for the publication, which annually releases a booklet with poems, stories, photos and art.
“I’m super big on self-expression, which is why I do so many creative activities. Grapevine is a really nice environment, you’re getting [your ideas] out into the world,” Schimmel said. “I recommend checking out the Banned Books Club. It might seem like a regular book discussion and you might [think], ‘What would I do in a club like that?’ But, it’s important to talk about what’s being erased by banning a whole book. Erasing a voice because it’s saying something explicit also erases all the other important things it could be saying.”
Apart from these commitments, most of her focus goes to researching and practicing for competitive speech. As a freshman, she qualified for and competed in POI at the National Speech and Debate Association’s national tournament and will attend again this year after double-qualifying in POI and Dramatic Interpretation.
“Speech gives people a space to express their opinions without the fear of being told that they ‘can’t say that,’” Schimmel said. “It’s helped me realize that I’m not the only one going through certain experiences. Even with people you might [initially judge], you watch them perform the story of who they are and it makes you realize that when you first look at somebody, all you’re seeing is the surface. You don’t know who they actually are.”
This season, Schimmel competed in Dramatic Interpretation for the first time — which involves performing part of a published work — along with her second POI, themed around the effects of the detonation of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She rehearses for tournaments with other members of the speech team, including assistant coach Kailey Mgrdichian.
“[POI] requires a ton of research, a really clear vision of what you want to do.” Mgrdichian said. “Thora is such a hard worker — she stays [at practice] longer than me, and I’m getting paid to be there.”
Schimmel hopes to expand West speech in the future to participate in the Iowa High School Speech Association’s contests as well as NSDA events, opening a new range of theatrical opportunities.
“At the moment, our speech and debate team is very focused on debate — I want speech to become just as big,” Schimmel said. “We’re trying to take on more opportunities and give [different people] an opportunity to take a step into speech.”
Mgrdichian has spent almost two years attending tournaments with Schimmel. The two have formed many special memories together and share a vision for the team’s future.
“[Thora will] do a great job of speech and recruitment — she wants to open up a branch of IHSSA, because she knows so many theater kids,” Mgrdichian said. “She’s super funny. She’s one of those people who can get along with anyone.”
Schimmel plans to use her expertise in speech coupled with her experience as a twin in her future. Both of those things and a drive to help others inspire her to treat those struggling with communication disorders as a speech-language pathologist.
“I centralize my life around being able to communicate directly and convey complex problems,” Schimmel said. “Having somebody be unable to do that for themselves is not a world I want to be in.”
During her freshman year, Schimmel took Community Music, a trimester class connecting students with disabilities to their peers. She cites that experience, along with her time in speech and her own experiences, as motivation for going into the field.
“I’ve been wanting to go into therapy and help people express themselves since around COVID, when I was going through a hard time mentally. Growing more into the speech community and getting to know people through Community Music made me realize how important I think it is to be able to speak what you want to say and to be able to convey what you want to feel.”
Speech has taken Schimmel across the Midwest and will continue to broaden her horizons as she competes at the national tournament this June in Richmond, Virginia. For Schimmel, the sky is the limit as she strives to widen perspectives and become her truest self.
“I’m a speech kid through and through. People find it a bit weird sometimes, but it’s okay,” Schimmel said. “‘Speech kid’ means you’re not afraid to be authentically you. It means that you are willing to be kind and accepting of everyone you come across. You make sure people stay true to themselves and have an open environment to express themselves without judgment.”
