Minor Feelings in the Wake of the Atlanta Attack: How a Mom of Asian Descent Spent the First 100 hours in the Aftermath

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110199
Author(s):  
Pengfei Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
American Poet ◽  
Asian Descent ◽  
Chinese Descent ◽  
Mass Shooting

This autoethnographic writing documents how a family of Chinese descent spent their first 100 hours after the Atlanta Shooting on March 16, 2021, in which a White gunman killed eight people, including six Asian women. It bears witness to the rise of the anti-Asian racism in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic and offers a snapshot of the private life of a family of Asian descent in the dawn of the Stop Asian Hate Movement. Drawing on Korean American poet Cathy Park Hong’s term minor feelings, this essay explores how emotions, rooted in racialized lived experience and triggered by the mass shooting, evolved, shifted, and fueled the sentiments that gave rise to the Stop Asian Hate Movement. Compared with the more visible violence against Asians and Asian Americans displayed on social media, it interrogates the less visible traumatic experience that haunts Asian and Asian American communities.

Global China in 21st-Century Asian American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunny Xiang
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Chinese Descent

Contemporary English-language prose and poetry writers, primarily of Chinese descent, are employing a range of stylistic strategies and exploring increasingly diverse themes in their representations of China and Chineseness. Through these representations, these contemporary writers build on, adapt, and contest a historically complex relation between “global” and “China” within an American imaginary. Twenty-first-century literary novelists and poets raise many questions about this relationship. These literatures of and about “Global China” both extend from and depart from, a “Chinese American” literary tradition. For instance, writers such as Jenny Zhang, Sharlene Teo, and Wang Weike are reworking long-standing narrative tropes such as intergenerational strife and transforming conventionally ethnic genres such as the autobiography. Contemporary literary works also take more heterogeneous approaches to referencing the United States and even “the West” more generally. And, unlike a prior tradition of Chinese American literature, these works open us to consider multiple kinds of China that far exceed the putative origin point of Mainland China (the most famous instance is Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, which features Singaporeans of Chinese descent). On the flip side, representations of “Global China” may lack representations of identifiably “Chinese” characters (for instance, Rachel Khong’s Goodbye Vitamin). In other cases, Chinese characters may be relegated to a role, or Chineseness may be insignificant to a story’s plot. New themes and topics are emerging, most notably adoption, biraciality, mental health, and return-to-Asian journeys. Finally, the literatures of Global China include robust outgrowths of genre literature, ranging from speculative fiction to detective fiction. Writers of genre fiction include Ovidia Yu and Ted Chiang.

scholarly journals From Forever Foreigners to Model Minority: Asian American Men in Sports

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yomee Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
New York ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Male College ◽  
Asian American Men ◽  
Male College Students

AbstractDespite their long history in the United States, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Asian Americans and their lived experience in sports. The purpose of this study was to give voices to Asian American men by focusing on their experiences in sports. In particular, this study examined the experiences of East Asian and Southeast Asian American male college students who were often perceived as “foreign” and “pejoratively feminine” racialized minority yet participated in sports that were associated with dominant masculinity in the U.S. The setting of the study was as a predominately White institution located in Upstate New York where Asian Americans make up about one percent of the total student population. Qualitative research method was employed for the study. Six Asian American male students were recruited through snowball and purposeful sampling methods. In-depth interviews were conducted to reveal the rich stories of these Asian American men. The research showed that the stories of Asian American male college students were much nuanced and complicated. Specifically, this study revealed that Asian American men were constantly otherized as “forever foreigners” who did not have a legitimate citizenship in the United States. Also, Asian Americans faced unique ideas about their manhood that either highlighted emasculated and feminized masculinity or hyper-masculinity. In dealing with these situations, Asian American men employed unique cultural strategies to challenge and resist racial stereotypes through sports.

scholarly journals When Perceptions Are Fragile But Also Enduring: An Asian American Reflection on COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 604-610
Author(s):  
Grace S. Kim ◽  
Tanvi N. Shah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Descent ◽  
Shared Humanity ◽  
New Occurrences

With the increasing death tolls and economic downfall, COVID-19 has also unearthed anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in the United States and globally. In this article, we examine how the current anti-Asian sentiments are not new occurrences risen with COVID-19. Instead, the perceptions about people of Asian descent as foreign threats have become more visible due to the pandemic. As we grapple with and heal from the traumas of COVID-19, there is a great need to acknowledge not only the shared humanity and interconnectedness among people but also to note the legacies of racialization and inequity that affect the experiences of the current pandemic that are lived differently.

Racism and “Place” in American Catholic Experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 82-102
Author(s):  
Linh Hoang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Struggle For Recognition ◽  
The Church

Racism occurs in place. It is any place where human beings dwell such as a certain location, a house, or even a church. Racism is a lived experience that exposes the tragedy of hate and fear of the other. It pushes people into uncomfortable places. Asian Americans have built enclaves across the United States in order to maintain their cultural identity and help in resettlement. These ethnic enclaves have become, however, a way to silence and sideline Asians from the racial debates that has traditionally pitted blacks and whites for centuries. Asians have "assimilated" well into the dominant white culture but have not been completely accepted instead they continue to experience discrimination and prejudices. Even in the Church, Asian American Catholics struggle for recognition of their contribution and participation. The process of reconciliation that Robert J. Schreiter has elaborated provides an opportunity for Asian American Catholics to engage in the racial conversation while improving the Church's place in healing racism.   

scholarly journals Music as the Medicine of Trauma among Refugees in Arizona

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Austin Kigunda Muriithi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
The United States ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Snowball Sampling

This paper presents outcomes of a phenomenological study conducted to explore the lived experience of refugee musicians. Purposive and snowball sampling methods were used to identify six musicians who performed in the cities of Phoenix and Tucson and had been involved in music prior to entering the United States. The primary data gathering method was structured and unstructured interviews, but observations were made for the musicians who performed in public events during the study period. Audio and video recordings were made and photographs taken during these performances. Study outcomes show that the musicians have persisted in music performance as their primary method of healing trauma and negative emotions. Traumatic experience resulted in their fleeing from their homes and seeking refuge in other countries. After being resettled in the United States, they continue to suffer from the experience of loss, need to adapt and change, and struggle with trauma and negative emotions. Music is their method of healing trauma and facilitating integration. Music produces healing through 1) like a painkiller, enabling them to forget problems that result in distress, 2) being their means to communicate a message of hope, and 3) enabling integration, thus reducing isolation and loneliness.

Queering Family Trees

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Patton-Imani
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Asian American ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Queer Women ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
Family Trees

Queering Family Trees explores the lived experience of family-making among queer mothers in the United States between 1991 and 2015. While the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption has provided avenues toward equality for some couples, structural and economic barriers have meant that others—especially queer women of color who often have fewer financial resources—are not, in practice, able to avail themselves of supports necessary to create and sustain their families. This interdisciplinary ethnographic research draws on interviews with Indigenous, African American, Latina, Asian American, and white queer mothers living in a range of US states, considered in relation to news media, public law, and policy debates. I apply a reproductive justice analysis, critically exploring the ways intersections of race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation shape the experiences of families navigating social and legal contexts that define queer families as “illegitimate.” I explore these debates in relation to policy changes in adoption, welfare, and immigration, making evident how same-sex marriage furthers a neoliberal economic agenda. Little mainstream or scholarly attention has been given to the lives and families of lesbians of color. Indeed, the erasure of queers of color from these debates was crucial to maintaining a narrative equating marriage with equality. The family-making narratives of these mothers challenge the assimilation versus resistance framework that has shaped understandings of LGBTQ marriage debates. I argue that, contrary to public narratives celebrating equality through marriage, the federal legalization of same-sex marriage reinforces existing structures of inequality grounded in race, gender, sexuality, and class.

Practicing Ambivalence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela K. Ahlgren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rare Site ◽  
The Impact

The chapter uses autoethnography and personal interviews to illustrate the experiences of white and black women in taiko. Given that a majority of taiko players in the United States are Asian American, taiko is a rare site in which white bodies are seen not as normal but rather as remarkable. Some black women, however, are seen as more American than their Asian and Asian American groupmates. In addition to the impact of racial identity, white and black women also experience taiko as open to a range of gender expressions and as an empowering art form. The chapter examines the ways white, black, and Asian American performers are triangulated and how taiko players experience whiteness and blackness as embodied, lived experience. The chapter traces the history of Iris Shiraishi’s song “Torii” to suggest that taiko has potential to forge productive cross-racial intimacies.

scholarly journals Physicians on the Frontlines: Understanding the Lived Experience of Physicians Working in Communities That Experienced a Mass Casualty Shooting

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (S4) ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. O'Neill ◽  
Blake N. Shultz ◽  
Carolyn T. Lye ◽  
Megan L. Ranney ◽  
Gail D'Onofrio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mass Casualty ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Public Health Approach ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
The Media ◽  
Constant Comparative Analysis

This qualitative study describes the lived experience of physicians who work in communities that have experienced a public mass shooting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen physicians involved in eight separate mass casualty shooting incidents in the United States. Four major themes emerged from constant comparative analysis: (1) The psychological toll on physicians: “I wonder if I'm broken”; (2) the importance of and need for mass casualty shooting preparedness: “[We need to] recognize this as a public health concern and train physicians to manage it”; (3) massive media attention: “The media onslaught was unbelievable”; and (4) commitment to advocacy for a public health approach to firearm violence: “I want to do whatever I can to prevent some of these terrible events.”

North Korea in Asian American Literature and Culture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Hong
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
The Korean War

To the extent North Korea features within Asian American literature and culture, it primarily does so in a body of Korean American cultural production—memoirs, biographies, documentary films, oral histories, fiction, and multi-media political advocacy—that is distinctively post-9/11 but not-yet post-Korean War. The irresolution of the Korean War, a war that has yet to be ended by a peace treaty, serves as defining extraliterary context for representations of North Korea. Not reducible to historical setting, much less an event safely concluded in the past, the Korean War, as a contemporaneous structure of enmity between the United States and North Korea, conditions the significance of this cultural archive—its urgency, politics, and reception. Often markedly instrumental in nature, indeed defined by the antithetical political ends it wishes to foster, Asian (mainly Korean) American cultural production on North Korea falls into two broad camps: on the one hand, “axis of evil” accounts that advocate, at times explicitly, for US intervention against North Korea, and on the other, more emergent cultural expressions that seek to expose the human costs of unending US war with North Korea.

Representations of Foreign versus (Asian) American Identity in a Mass-Shooting Case

2012 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angie Chuang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Asian American ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Immigrant Services ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
Asian American Identity

Scholarship on media representations of Asian minority identity has established that historic constructions of the Other perpetuate a conflation of ethnic with foreign. Previous studies of Seung-Hui Cho and the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings concluded that though Cho was a South Korean national, news media overemphasized his foreign identity, despite his living in the United States most of his life. This study examines newspaper coverage of the 2009 mass shooting at an immigrant-services center in Binghamton, New York, and of perpetrator Jiverly Wong, who immigrated from Vietnam, had lived in the United States for two decades, and was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

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