Woman Warriors: Stories & Solidarities

The murderer, a white man, admitted to targeting Asian sex workers because of his own shame and guilt around “sex addiction,” at odds with with the anti-sex beliefs of his conservative Christian upbringing. While March 16, 2021 is framed as a horrific one-time tragedy caused by a “lone gunman,” it is difficult to separate these events from the ways Asian spas and massage parlors remain systematic targets of patriarchal violence, whether from anti-prostitution police stings under the guise of white saviorism or anti-trafficking organizations that frame all workers as victims.

The Atlanta shootings shattered the illusion many in this country have about Asian women’s model minority status by prompting a recognition of Asian women who are working-class migrant sex workers, fetishized and victimized by white patriarchy. Personally, Asian femmes like myself have understood that our place in the American imagination since the foundation of this country has been informed by the ways American soldiers treat Asian women abroad at military bases and during wartime; how migrant Asian workers are treated here in the United States; how Asian femmes are depicted in U.S. media and movies; and even how we are written into law. To the American imagination, we are the Lotus Blossoms, Dragon Ladies, and Yellow Peril, all in need of saving and extinguishing. Disposable. Read more on The Margins

In the aftermath of the horrific murders in Atlanta, GA, we offer this space as one for grieving, healing, and empowering.

On April 8, 2021, we presented Women Warriors, a marathon reading featuring a powerhouse collective of Asian American women. During a time marked by tragedy, anger, and loss, we look to our artistry to find and celebrate the resilience and brilliance of each and every woman warrior.

One year later, we reach for each other in healing, in solidarity. For Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we offer an archive of events and readings to empower and mobilize us as a community toward safety and care.

The United States Supreme Court is currently poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that protected the right to abortion for birthing people across the country. Advocates know both that gutting Roe will leave the most marginalized in our communities in peril—a truth recognized by those organizing around a reproductive justice framework in the fight to defend abortion as essential healthcare—and that the ruling’s application had always left out many of the most vulnerable. In order to fully understand what’s at stake and how we arrived here, it’s important to learn about the roots and foundations of this ground-breaking, feminist of color–led movement.

A group of Black women first coined the term “reproductive justice” while organizing to expand the scope of the Clinton administration’s Health Security Act in the summer of 1994. Activists and organizers working within the reproductive health movement birthed this new framework during their time at a conference in Chicago. Rooted in the struggles they had personally encountered or witnessed within their communities, reproductive justice pushed the boundaries of the staid debates about abortion that dominated white feminist spaces and around what healthcare access could mean. Following the conference, the group named themselves the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice and organized a series of actions to draw attention to how normative healthcare policies, even those touted as expansive or progressive, continued to deny poor women access to vital reproductive health services, including abortion.

These foremothers of the Reproductive Justice Movement had been organizing in tandem with a range of women of color groups that had been working throughout the 1980s to expand the conversation around reproductive health to include questions of poverty, race, and gender oppression. (Loretta Ross reminds us that ‘women of color’ is a political designation rooted in solidarities towards racial and economic justice.) Collectively, these groups advanced innovative ways of raising public awareness around critical issues while continuing to center the voices of those most directly affected by these harms. They foregrounded the personal experiences of the individuals within the movement to broaden policy conversations, insisting that meaningful change required a holistic approach to reproduction, justice, and equity. In 1997, many of the groups working towards these goals organized under the umbrella of the SisterSong Collective. The collective, which had many member organizations, worked to build coalitions among groups, across geographies—equipping countless activists to engage in vital movement building. Read more on The Margins.

In collaboration with Wing on Wo for the second event in their Womxn Writers at W.O.W. Series, showcasing Asian American writers' voices and stories, this event entitled M/other featured readings by poets and writers Tina Chang, T Kira Madden, and Sahar Muradi centering the theme of mothers and motherhood.

We, Black Women Radicals (BWR) and the Asian American Feminist Collective (AAFC), are committed to practicing solidarity, deepening coalitional relationships, and continuing to build together with intention as Black and Asian American feminist activists and organizers.

In April 2020, in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic, Jaimee Swift, the creator of BWR, reached out to AAFC: “I believe that we need each other and need to learn from one another now more than ever.” This simple act of reaching out with an invitation to engage in dialogue allowed us to come together and begin building a relationship. Later that month, BWR and AAFC co-hosted a conversation, “Siblings in the Struggle,” about how COVID-19 was sparking anti-Asian racism and at the same time disproportionately impacting Black communities. The discussion was an opportunity to put the feminist praxis of solidarity to work and reflect on our interconnected paths to liberation. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, prison abolitionist and Black feminist theorist, talks about crisis as an instability that can bring about radical change through developing new relationships and alignments towards political struggle. The recent resurgence of Black Lives Matter uprisings across the country added urgency to much-needed cross-racial feminist coalition building.

We aren’t the first ones to arrive here. It is imperative we continue to construct a radical Black and Asian -American feminist worldview, while noting we are but an iteration of feminists within a long transnational tradition of Black and Asian feminist movement building.

We pay homage to radical Black and Asian American feminists who, throughout history, have fought alongside one another for collective liberation: Audre Lorde, Grace Lee Boggs, Fran Beal, Gwen Patton, Yuri Kochiyama, Loretta Ross, Pat Sumi, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, and countless others. These were organizers and movement builders who formed revolutionary coalitions and solidarities and were deeply involved in community-based struggles for welfare rights, labor protections, and civil rights in service of liberation.

It is easy to write a statement of solidarity. However, what is not easy is the daily internal interrogation that is required of us to remain dedicated to the collaborative work of building together.

And as Black and Asian American feminists who truly believe a new world is possible, this is the responsibility we are committed to upholding. These are our collective visions and commitments:

• We are united in the fight to dismantle oppressive systems such as colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism.
• We honor and center Black and Indigenous queer, femme, and trans experiences, including those who identify as Asian as well.
• We continue to build on this project of solidarity — creating space for our separate and overlapping identities and experiences.


Signed,
Black Women Radicals
Asian American Feminist Collective

Read more on The Margins

Watch Tamara Nopper's lecture examining the alarm and growing discourse regarding “anti-Asian violence,” currently circulating in mainstream and social media among pundits, celebrities, and Asian American community organizers across the country. The lecture will examine the merging of fighting “anti-Asian violence” with the promotion of “Black-Asian solidarity” in the context of COVID-19.

We do not come from America.


The Americans taught me that I come from a dead people. That children of war—especially daughters of war—are the perennial victims (of “authoritarian dictatorships”/of our own people’s liberation wars) who need to become rehabilitated as Americans to be worthy of life. The American liberals will teach you that you come from a pitiful people deserving survival at best. But, war child, your people’s foremothers also came from revolution. Your foremothers were not American.

The daughter of war, who forgets her place in this war, waits for U.S. imperialism to strike at home and forgets the ways it is already here. You(r people) are still at war, child. When they tell you the history of how your people died, they try to teach away your rage, sever you from the story of how you were coerced/forced here. Make you believe America is your country too, that the American settler-colonial project is yours too, that their governance is capable of reform with your hands too. Read more on The Margins.

A poem by Monica Sok