“dear google”
sky yang’s follow up to breakthrough poetry short sunny
Sunny is Sky Yang’s first film, which he made in 2020. The film is about a Chinese boy who puts on a giant papier mache mask to hide himself in a world that tells him he should hate where he comes from. It was met with a huge response from the ESEA community and film festivals, and played at BFI Future Film Festival, CPIFF, South London Film Festival, and MilkTea Mixtape.
When Short Stuff asked Yang if he wanted to share some reflections on Sunny, he went above and beyond our expectations. Dear Google is his deeply emotive, moving and narrative response which he has created in written, video and audio formats.
We recommend watching Sunny first, and then reading or listening to Dear Google. You’ll find the full poem below, both in written and audio format. You’ll also find the Dear Google short film, which is an excerpt from the full poem.
1 October 2025 | Short Stuff & Sky Yang
DEAR GOOGLE
short film
DEAR GOOGLE
full essay audio
A note from Sky Yang
A while ago, I wrote a poem called Sunny while in the shower. What started as a mantra to wash away unwanted feelings ended up as a short film by the same name.
Sunny is about a kid growing up ashamed of his East Asian heritage. He dons a mask to hide from the world, but inevitably the mask becomes Sunny’s cage, trapping him in a skin of solitude and shame. I uploaded the video online and now, five years later, people are still finding a strange short film about a boy in a yellow papier-mâché mask. I scribbled more words on napkins and newspapers.
By the time Short Stuff asked me to respond to Sunny, the napkins were stained with new experiences, and the newspapers had grown louder. I stitched together a few things which had stuck in my head. What remained was Dear Google.
A young boy's internet search history is an intimate and humiliating place. With Dear Google, I wanted to examine what Sunny's relationship to his racial identity is through the records of his Google searches. It felt like a digital portal into that awkward and humiliating period of adolescence we all go through. And those absurd situations that arise from having a mixed-race Chinese face and balancing on the tightrope of a predominantly white environment.
Growing up online, you don’t notice how the rise of the internet has started to supplant parents. Why ask your mum embarrassing shit when you can Google it? Mum doesn’t have a six pack. WikiHow can tell me how to be a good kisser. But there are some things that Google, and even parents, don’t have answers for. As cyberspace expands, you can now bypass every form of meaningful human connection through a digital surrogate. This becomes especially true when confronting topics of race, identity, and sexuality within the brutal battlefield of school.
Just as Sunny once donned the mask, he now retreats behind the veil of a computer screen and confides in the only companion who could possibly understand him: Google.