Lessons from the Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee What is a meaningful politics for Asian Pacific Americans (or APAs) at this historical conjuncture? Put another way, when APAs experience anti-Chinese racism under COVID, in a time of murderous racial violence by the police against Black people, what is to be done? For . . .
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Today I want to ask us to consider how discourse on university campuses—both highly visible statements at the center of social media storms and far more routine communications—reinforces the enduring prejudice in the US that sees China as fundamentally alien and disconnected from “us.” And I want to ask, how would a . . .
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Richard Chu The anti-Asian xenophobia we are experiencing today is not the first instance of anti-Asian discrimination. We have seen in history several cases of such xenophobia: the exclusion of the Chinese in 1882; race riots against Filipino farm workers in the 1920s; the barring of Japanese, Korean, and other Asian immigrants . . .
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Read Part 8 here “Now we are back to normal” Munich agreed, peace in our time promised, and September done and dusted, MacNeice can settle back to work. The fall term is beginning and MacNeice must “return to work, lecturing, coaching, / As impresario of the Ancient Greeks.” Finally, after sections saturated . . .
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Read Part Seven here (Station platform in London. The Independent: Getty Photo) “Save my skin and damn my conscience.”Remember when the sun shone easy, say eight years ago, about this time of year? Remember when life was comfortable, life was fine? Sure, plenty remained undone, but we’d come out of the worst . . .
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Read Part Six here “a howling radio for our paraclete” As September winds to a close, leaves beginning to turn color and fall, warm days washed out by rains moving from west to east or up the coast, protests continue in parks and public squares. The cooling air is charged with tension . . .
Read MoreRead Part Five here. “And I remember Spain” It is, I think, no accident that MacNeice concludes section V of Autumn Journal with “the day is to-day” and then spends section VI remembering Spain, but the juxtaposition requires some explanation. The connection is neither chronologically nor narratively obvious. The poem’s present moment . . .
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Literature is, and has always been, a social endeavor. As such, it is also an ethical endeavor, for it has to do with how humans imagine, know, and recognize ourselves and each other. We co-inhabit a searingly unequal world, yet we are also surrounded by awesome beauty, creativity, and possibility. It is . . .
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It’s fascinating that Kazim’s response to the question of a South Asian American “canon” is to consider poetic careers cut short, truncated. The untimely deaths of Agha Shahid Ali and Reetika Vazirani deprived younger South Asian American writers of figures who might now be considered eminences within the field. For Kazim, Ali and Vazirani . . .
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Thank you to CAALS, especially Mai-Linh and Caroline, for inviting me to speak, and thanks, also, to Bryan who wrote such a thoughtful address. In my response, I’ll return to a few major points from Bryan’s address and end with a thought or two of my own. And, I’m really looking forward . . .
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