Hello community,

Forwarding information about a series of events for Asian Pacific American Heritage month put on by the local literary non-profit, CityLit Project (AAAFAC member-at-large Aditya Desai is on the CityLit board).

The event, The Invisible Invincible Asian American: Telling Our Stories, is a virtual celebration of Asian American writers, poets, playwrights, and graphic storytellers, including two Zoom panels and an online showcase. Both panels are FREE but Registration is required to get a link.

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Tuesday, May 18th: A craft panel titled Re-Imagining Our Histories, with AAPI writers whose work builds on the literary and real histories of Asian America, and/or our ancestral homelands, asking questions such as: How do you see your writing in conversation with these histories? And how does your work re-contextualize the Asian American narrative in the present and posit its future? Audience Q&A to follow. 

Featuring Anjali Enjeti, Lisa Ko, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, and Paisley Rekdal. Moderated by Aditya Desai.

Live on Zoom, 7:00 - 8:30 PM EDT. REGISTER HERE.

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Wednesday, May 19th: A publishing panel titled Publishing Asian Voices, where published AAPI writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction who also serve in editorial roles at literary journals, discuss their considerations as a writer when submitting your own work for publication, versus their considerations as an editor when deciding what work to publish. Audience Q&A to follow.

Featuring Hannah Bae, Jennifer Chang, James Han Mattson, and Hasanthika Sirisena. Moderated by Jung Yun.

Live on Zoom, 7:00 - 8:30 PM. REGISTER HERE.

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All Month: Our online Baltimore AAPI Spotlight, a series of interviews with local AAPI writers and artists that will be promoted on CityLit’s YouTube, and social media channels throughout the month.

Follow @CityLitProject on all Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Featuring local talent including, Ryan Artes, Rajani Gudlavalleti, Nancy Nguyen, Nguyen Khoi Nguyen, Sunmi, Lyra Yang,  and more!

Dear AAAFSC members:

Please vote by April 19th at 5pm to fill our executive board vacancies for vice chair and member(s) at large by using this google form. 

Candidate bios can be found here [link].

Voting will take a minute or less; please help us to repopulate our board to full capacity!

If you would like to review our by-laws to read about the roles and responsibilities for these positions, you can find that here  [link]. 

Please note: In the event that our vice chair position is filled by our current board member, Soonhee Lee, who is running for that position, their vacated position as member at large will be filled in order of most votes received by the other candidates who have indicated their willingness to serve as members at large.

Many thanks,

The AAAFSC board: Tamara Bhalla (chair), Aditya Desai (member at large), Soonhee Lee (member at large), Shuyan Sun, (member at large), Fan Yang (secretary)

Dear AAAFSC members:

We have two vacancies on our board for vice chair and member at large. Now more than ever, we need a dynamic and engaged AAAFSC board, and invite you to please consider running for the vacant positions of either vice chair or member-at-large.

Please review our by-laws and roles and responsibilities to ensure that you are able to fulfill the responsibilities of the role [link]. All positions are compensated with a stipend from the provost's office.

One member of our board, Soonhee Lee, has already expressed interest in running for vice chair. Please note that the vice-chair will have to step in for the chair in some duties for fall 2021 while she is on leave.

If you are interested in running for either of these positions, please send an email to tbhalla@umbc.edu with 1) your name, 2) board position preferences, and 3) brief bio expressing your interest in serving on the board, by Monday, April 12 at 5pm. 

To clarify on #2 above: Please indicate when you email if you would be willing to serve as a member-at-large, in Soonhee’s former position, if she was to be elected. That is, please indicate which position or positions you are open to serving in or have preferences for: ie, write, “I’m open to serving as: a vice-chair and/or member at large.”

We will send out the ballot via google form on April 13 and keep the ballot open until April 19.  

Many thanks,

The AAAFSC board: Tamara Bhalla (chair), Aditya Desai (member at large), Soonhee Lee (member at large), Shuyan Sun, (member at large), Fan Yang (secretary)

Dear Asian and Asian American Faculty and Staff Members and Community Allies:

The AAAFSC board would like to extend our gratitude for your support at the March 22, 2021 event “An Open Dialogue on Anti-Asian Racism.” We appreciated the candid and heartfelt comments shared by community members that allowed us to process our collective grief and the allyship that so many of you expressed.

We are heartbroken over the murders of 8 people in Atlanta over the past week, 6 of whom were women of Asian and Asian American descent: Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue.

We see this violence as the latest in a surge in similar acts towards Asian and Asian American communities over the past year, and also part of a longer history of violence and discrimination against Asian and Asian American communities. Furthermore, we recognize these acts are the result of systemic white supremacy, and we stand in solidarity with other minoritized communities in our campus and beyond to condemn white supremacy, hateful violence, and discrimination in all of its forms. 

Taking a cue from our discussion on March 22 and the Association of Asian American Studies statement in response to the Atlanta murders, we have collated some resources below to gather the “collective knowledge and feeling” of the many Asian American scholars, activists, journalists, mental health professionals, writers, and individuals who have released statements and written opinion pieces to provide historical, political and emotional context for the effects of these murders.  

In addition to the list of resources that we sent out last week and a list of resources compiled by the Women’s Center, below we have gathered additional readings and responses that address some of what came up in our discussion yesterday: themes of building cross-racial solidarity, Asian American invisibility/hypervisibility, the model minority paradigm, intersections of racism and misogyny, increased education on Asian American history, and intergenerational trauma and relationships. 

We hope that these sources will help you process the events of this past week and year.

In solidarity and support,

The AAAFSC board: Tamara Bhalla (chair), Aditya Desai (member at large), Soonhee Lee (member at large), Shuyan Sun, (member at large), Fan Yang (secretary)

READ:

Pawan Dhingra, The Most Effective Way to Fight Back Against Anti-Asian Hate, CNN, 3.21.2021

“In order to effect lasting and meaningful change, we need an educational campaign starting in K-12 schools that reveals the strength and complexity of Asian Americans.”

Jennifer Ho, To Be an Asian Woman in America, CNN, 3.17.2021 

“To be an Asian woman in America means you can't just be what you are: a fully enfranchised human being. It means you are a blank screen on which others project their stories, especially, too often, their sexualized fantasies -- because US culture has long presented Asian women as sexualized objects for White male enjoyment.”

Milliann Kang, Why Are Perpetrators’ Motives Given More Importance Than the Lives They Take?, Ms.Magazine, 3.22.2021 

“This racialized sexualization of Asian women has deep roots in U.S. society and culture, making them vulnerable targets for harassment and violence, motivated simultaneously by misogyny, xenophobia and anti-Asian racism. But these points seem to be lost on those who refuse to recognize this as a hate crime, simply because the perpetrator said it wasn’t.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen and Janelle Wong, Bipartisan political rhetoric about Asia leads to anti-Asian violence here, The Washington Post, 3.19,2021 

“The experience of racial discrimination does not happen for any group in isolation; white supremacy depends on pitting people of color against one another so they do not see their shared cause. Racial profiling does not stem from the same stereotypes for Asian Americans, Black people, Muslims and other groups, but it serves a common purpose — to define who is essential and who belongs to the nation.”

Jerusalem Demsas and Rachel Ramirez, The history of tensions — and solidarity — between Black and Asian American communities, explained.Vox, 3.16.2021

“Ultimately, there is a failure to remember what got America to this place of racial hierarchies and lingering Black-Asian tensions: white supremacy....And for Black and Asian American communities to move forward, it is important to remember the root cause and fight together against it.”

A List of Asian American Books and Memoirs compiled by the LA Times

WATCH:

PBS’s Asian Americans (2020)

Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded (2011, Deborah Gee)

Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987, Renee Tajima-Peña, Christine Choy, Nancy Tong)

ACT:

Support community efforts in Atlanta, Georgia: AAPI Community Resources Offerings Form (mutual aid intake form), sign on to a community-centered response against anti-Asian violence, & donate to support families of the victims, Atlanta Action Card

Call your elected officials to support community centered policies for addressing hate violence

Protect AAPI workers at your workplace or union with these APALA Guidelines.

Join a vigil, read statements by Atlanta-based AAPI organizations & sign-on letters

DONATE:

Red Canary Song

Advancing Justice Atlanta Victim and Family Support Fund.