Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan - Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics

DECOLONIZING FEMINISMS

Piya Chatterjee, Series Editor

ASIAN AMERICAN FEMINISMS AND WOMEN OF COLOR POLITICS

EDITED BY

LYNN FUJIWARA ANDSHIREEN ROSHANRAVAN

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

Seattle

Copyright 2018 by the University of Washington Press

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Design by Katrina Noble

Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

www.washington.edu/uwpress

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Fujiwara, Lynn, 1964 editor. | Roshanravan, Shireen, editor.

Title: Asian American feminisms and women of color politics / edited by Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan.

Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2018] | Series: Decolonizing feminisms | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018011126 (print) | LCCN 2018012662 (ebook) | ISBN 9780295744377 (ebook) | ISBN 9780295744360 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780295744353 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : FeminismUnited States. | Asian American womenPolitical activity. | Minority womenPolitical activityUnited States.

Classification: LCC HQ1421 (ebook) | LCC HQ1421 .A85 2018 (print) | DDC 305.420973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/201801116

Cover illustration Vesna Asanovic

Cover design by Katrina Noble

This book is dedicated to:

Thomas Akira Fujiwara and Yetsuko Sakamoto Fujiwara, may your journey be peaceful

Melisa and Leo, for the faithful witnessing and the love that makes transformation possible

CONTENTS

Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan

Asian American Genealogies in the Emergence of Women of Color Formations

GRACE KYUNGWON HONG

JUDY TZU-CHUN WU

Epistemologies of Asian American Sexual Politics

ERIN KHU NINH

THOMAS XAVIER SARMIENTO

Centering Indigeneity and Orienting against Settler Complicities

STEPHANIE NOHELANI TEVES AND MAILE ARVIN

TAMSIN KIMOTO

SUNERA THOBANI

Organizing against State and Interpersonal Violence

MA VANG

GINA VELASCO

PRIYA KANDASWAMY

Theorizing an Asian American Feminist Praxis

LYNN FUJIWARA

SHIREEN ROSHANRAVAN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to our friends, colleagues, and institutions who supported this project. Our greatest appreciation goes to our contributors for their fine work, politically engaging conversations, and willingness to be part of this collection. We are indebted to the scholars who generously participated in roundtable discussions at the Association for Asian American Studies conferences: Alice Kim, Sharmili Majumdar, Juliana Pegues, Judy Wu, Lani Teves, Kimberly McKee, Angie Chung, Tom Sarmiento.

Special thanks to the Department of Ethnic Studies (especially Donella Elizabeth-Alston and Amy Thomas), the Center on Diversity and Community in the Division of Equity and Inclusion, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the Women of Color Project at the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon. We are eternally grateful to Larin McLaughlin and Piya Chatterjee for their unwavering encouragement and support from start to finish and to the rest of the amazing team at the University of Washington Press for bringing this book to life. Also thanks to David Martinez for our index.

We could not have done this without the love and support of our dear friends who gave us support and feedback along the way. Special thanks to Michael Hames-Garca, Ernesto Martnez, Shari Huhndorf, Priscilla Pena Ovalle, Laura Pulido, Sharon Luk, Alai Reyes-Santos, Charise Cheney, Dan HoSang, Lani Teves, Dana Takagi, Deborah Vargas, Monisha Das Gupta, Patti Duncan, Martin Summers, Karl Mundt, Melisa Posey, Isabel Milln, Norma Valenzuela, April Petillo, Rabab Abdulhadi.

We wish to thank our families for their patience and cheerleading.

Lynn: The years we worked on this book were shaped by enormous personal change and growth. I am so grateful to the Morozumi family for their love and support. I express my deepest gratitude to my siblings (Mitch, Mark, and Melissa), cousins, and aunties who shared a deep connection in the past year caring for our mother. My parents passing bookends the beginning and completion of this collection, and the love of my family, Steve, Kyra, Joanna, and Martin held me throughout.

Shireen: I want to thank Mara Lugones for encouraging me to explore what it means to identify politically as an Asian American and a Woman of Color feminist, Lisa Yun for introducing me to Asian American studies, and Joshua M. Price for shaping the interdisciplinary conversations that connected me with Jen-Feng Kuodear friend, collaborator, and thinking partner on Asian American feminist methodologies at the intersection of Women of Color and transnational feminisms. Nelima Gaonkar and Liz Philipose accompanied and guided me to trust my capacities during some of my lowest lows. Melisa Posey, thank you for the sustaining conversations, laughter, and commitment to living a radical Asian American politics that is also always in solidarity with Women of Color feminisms. Finally, I thank Leo Tyree for all of their love and support.

Most of all, our thanks to each otherShireen Roshanravan and Lynn Fujiwara. Together, this process was kind, caring, supportive, empowering, and politically motivating. Collaboration is not always easy, but this was truly a collaboration of love and friendship.

INTRODUCTION

LYNN FUJIWARA AND SHIREEN ROSHANRAVAN

As feminists whose intellectual and political development emerged through Women of Color feminisms, our own connections and experiences with Asian American feminist work have been inspiring, informative, and hopeful. Important contributions by Asian American feminists (Mitsuye Yamada, Genny Lim, Nellie Wong) in the first edition of This Bridge Called My Back (1981) established an Asian American feminist voice among Women of Color feminists challenging white feminist hegemony and heteropatriarchal nationalisms. Since This Bridge , critical publications focused on Asian American womens histories, experiences, and feminist perspectives have appeared in collections like Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women (1989), The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Womens Anthology (1989), Making More Waves (1997), Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire (1999), Asian / Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology (2003), and Asian American Women: The Frontiers Reader (2004). For those of us searching for company in the gap between hetero-masculine Asian American and white racist feminist studies, these anthologies provide important ground for claiming and making sense of the specific impact of racialized gender oppressions on the lives of Asian American women and our communities. We found in them articulations of potential intellectual and political communities from which to teach and engage the concerns specific to Asian Americans with a growing feminist and antiracist consciousness.

The very possibility of imagining and generating this collection thus emerges from the Asian American feminist work of so many who offer analytics that enable us to think how race, gender, sexuality, class, and citizenship have shaped Asian American communities and politics. Historians such as Shirley Hune, Judy Yung, and Valerie Matsumoto provide us with a gendered lens through which to make sense of the role and presence of Asian American women in first wave Asian immigrant histories. Influential scholarship by Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Yn L Espiritu, Rhacel Salazar Parreas, and Linda Trinh Vo historically and contemporaneously examine the global economy of racialized gendered labor, family, and citizenship. Literary and cultural studies scholars such as Lisa Lowe, Elaine Kim, Chandra Mohanty, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Gayatri Gopinath, Candace Fujikane, Jasbir Puar, Grace Hong, and Laura Kang forged analytics that gave us the language to name and examine racialized gender dynamics of Asian American negotiations of multiple oppressions. We honor these and the many more Asian American feminist scholars who have left indelible marks on the emergence and advancement of the intellectual and political ground for an Asian American feminism.