Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics

by Lynn Fujiwara (Editor), Piya Chatterjee (Series Editor), Shireen Roshanravan (Editor)

Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics brings together groundbreaking essays that speak to the relationship between Asian American feminisms, feminist of color work, and transnational feminist scholarship. This collection, featuring work by both senior and rising scholars, considers topics including the politics of visibility, histories of Asian American participation in women of color political formations, accountability for Asian American "settler complicities" and cross-racial solidarities, and Asian American community-based strategies against state violence as shaped by and tied to women of color feminisms. Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics provides a deep conceptual intervention into the theoretical underpinnings of Asian American studies; ethnic studies; women's, gender, and sexual studies; as well as cultural studies in general.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Asian American, Race, Aapi, Feminist Theory, Academic

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2018

Reviews

[ak]

More than anything, it is affirming for me to learn about other Asian-Americans that are politically and civically engaged and/or at least a part of a larger political discourse in writing about it. This just hasn't really been my experience in my own peer groups. It's frustrating, but essay collections like this give me hope that I can find more like-minded people out there.

I loved the essays "Decolonizing API" and "Weaponizing Our (In)visibility". Decolonizing API shed a lot of light for me on the struggles of indigenous Pacific Islanders, especially in relation to their identities being conflated with Asian-Americans from these islands, particularly Hawai'i. Why is Hawai'i even a part of America and why don't more people talk about how fucked up it is?? Weaponizing Our (In)visibility really drove home the point that Asian-Americans need to build coalitions horizontally towards other marginalized groups (read: Black liberation) rather than vertically towards the state (read: white bullshit). This is what both Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs did in the 1960s - both focused on Black liberation, both badasses.

I do wish there were more South Asian perspectives in this collection- sometimes I feel like South Asians are left out of the larger Asian-American discourse. That being said, it was nice to read a couple of essays by Filipino/a-Americans in here! I guess it IS a little ambitious to have a collection of essays representing a huge continent.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fujiwara and Roshanravan bring together a set of essays that provides a space to reflect on how Asian American feminist thought has intersected with radical Black, Chicanx, and Latinx feminist theory and organizing and why we, as Asian American feminists, still need to continue to learn from Women of Color politics. While really academic (and thus sometimes not as readily accessible if you don't have certain theoretical backgrounds), I felt like the essays touched on many important themes within Asian American feminisms and guided me to a lot of further readings.

Was particularly interested in Stephanie Nohelani Teves and Maile Arvin's essay "Decolonizing API: Centering Indigenous Pacific Islander Feminism" on erasure of history and indigeneity of Pacific Islanders by ignorantly including the "PI" in API and Ma Vang's "The Language of Care" on Hmong refugee activism, as demonstrated by healthcare interpreters (largely women) who are not just able to translate language but also worldviews.

Would recommend to anyone who is interested in Asian American and/or gender studies.

[Cubierocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense but full of eye-opening analyses.

Faves essays:

"Decolonizing API: Centering Indigenous Pacific Islander Feminism" by Professors Stephanie Nohelani Teves and Maile Arvin

"Navigating Colonial Pitfalls: Race, Citizenship and the politics of 'South Asian Canadian' Feminism" by Professors Sunera Thobani

"Negotiating Legacies: The 'Traffic in Women' and the Politics of Filipino/o American Feminist Solidarity" by Gina Velasco

"Race, Reproductive Justice, and the Criminalization of Purvi Patel" by Professor Priya Kandaswamy

[Wenjing Fan · Rating 4 out of 5]

学术论文合集（有一篇男作），美籍亚裔女性的范围很广，夏威夷岛民、菲律宾裔、Hmong、穆斯林女性等，许多议题我都不太了解。我看来，整个对女性少数族裔的关注，主要时间节点是黑人运动、交叉性概念的诞生、Mohanty作品的“第三世界女性”和女性团结。 美籍亚裔总被认为是“模范少数族裔”，被描述为拥有良好品质、专业技能、不参与政治。这样对亚裔的褒奖，既是一种殖民化的策略，又让亚裔也参与到殖民和压迫黑人中。所以亚裔女权主义运动的策略，既要支持黑人运动，又要有属于自己的文化的讲述。 没有给五星主要是因为在论述本民族文化时，似乎过分强调了反对西方视角下的东方主义（如觉得华裔女性受到儒家文化的影响、穆斯林女性被迫戴头巾等），却没有提到这种西方视角在文化殖民之外的积极含义（和自我反思）。

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and well researched book -- but also can be very dense.

Overall, I think some of the sections and chapters were more readable and others that were quite academic. If I were taking a course in college about this and reading it for an in class discussion, I think I would have gotten more out of some of the more dense chapters. Others however were very engaging. Nonetheless, the analyses given was though provoking and successfully intersected different communities and issues.

This book was published in 2018 - I wonder how it would be added to today with more awareness for Asian-hate crimes and even more solidarity between the Asian and Black communities.

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I most enjoyed reading “Decolonizing API: Centering Indigenous Pacific Islander Feminism” and “Race, Reproductive Justice, and the Criminalization of Purvi Patel.” All of the essays in the book were dense for me, but these two communicated theory to me in a way that didn’t feel too academic. I also liked how concrete the proposals were for ways forward re: coalition and solidarity building that went along with the essays’ analyses.

[York · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent combination of essays on topics ranging from Asian-American involvement in Third World women's transnationalism to the settler colonialism of identifying Asians and Pacific Islanders as belonging to the same group- especially relevant in the context of Hawai'i, where Asians make a majority bloc. I especially appreciated the ability to self-critique even while discussing erasure, complicity, and white nationalism; blanket solidarity is its own set of problems.

[Sahel's · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the easiest to read collections of essays I have had the chance to read so far in my academic studies, Asian American Feminisms is a great source to study coalitional politics. Almost all the articles in this book begin with a story or a news piece that have inspired the author to write and analyze a social/political subject.

[Kylie S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books specifically for Asian American women to truly ground themselves in women of color politics -- recognizing the efforts of Black, indigenous, and brown women from many communities and the inherent interconnectedness of our liberation. This book centers the right communities and sequences the chapters with purpose.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super dense....but great analysis

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book saved my research project