Amy Wong, a student at the California State University at Northridge (CSUN), is the new Miss Deaf America. Amy was born in the far away country of Indonesia. She is the first Miss Deaf America to be a member of a racial or cultural minority group.

"There are over 13,500 islands in Indonesia," said Amy, in an E-mail interview with World Around You. "It has high mountains and deep tropical rain forests. Three hundred different groups of people live there."

Although there are many different languages, Indonesian is the official language. Amy's mother is Indonesian and her father is from Hong Kong. They use both Indonesian and Chinese languages in their home. They use English, too. Amy learned all three languages. She also learned American Sign Language (ASL).

"I am sure the Indonesian deaf people have their own sign language," she said. "But I never learned it. When I was nine years old, my mother decided it was time for us to learn ASL. She took me to a tutor and I had weekly lessons. My mother predicted I would use ASL!"

Now as the ambassador for the National Association of the Deaf and a CSUN student who plans to study fine arts in graduate school, Amy uses ASL every day.

"Deaf people in Indonesia do not have the same educational opportunities as do deaf people in the United States," she said. "My parents were quite frustrated. No matter where they went, no matter how hard they searched, they had a difficult time finding a school for me."

When she was 14 years old, Amy moved to Quebec, in Canada, to attend school there. While there, she lived with relatives.

"They welcomed me into their home," she remembered. "I lived there for two years."

Then she came to the United States.

Indonesia, the country she left behind, is a land of beautiful art, rickshaws, rich rainforests, and cultural diversity, she said. Still Amy was glad to come to America.

"I love living here," she said. "Americans have so many opportunities-TTYs, closed captioned TV, captioned movies, excellent schools in every state, and a varied job market. I feel free here to choose a career that fits my talents and interests.

"My platform in the competition was literacy," she said. "I want to stress the importance of education in our lives. I want to tell teens that they have only one chance to be young and learn literature, math, science-and art, too!"

Her message doesn't stop there.

"When I meet deaf adults, I stress that learning does not stop when one finishes school," she said.

"There is always something new to be discovered."