Cultivating Relationships With Asian Nonbinary and Women Organizers, Artists, and Community Educators

• In Event: Toward Answerability in Our Work With and Study of Families and Communities of Color

Abstract

Purpose
Today, we are experiencing a rise in anti-Asian violence in response to the systemic ways Asian folks and communities are targeted by white supremacy. Yet, Asian communities in the United States continue to resist oppressive forces and refuse inclusion into a white supremacist and settler colonial school structures by passing down sociopolitical wisdom and experiential knowledge in community learning spaces. This paper centers relationship building and maintenance with Asian non-binary and women organizers, artists, and community educators in Seattle. With these 13 community collaborators, I sought to learn about their pedagogies and values regarding the futurity of critical Asian youth education and collective liberation. I discuss the mentorship in preparing for this community-based research, recruitment methods, the practices I carried out during interviews and focus group discussions, and the iterative reflexive process throughout the entirety of the research.

Theoretical Framework
I utilized Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris, 2012) to frame my approach to collaborating with community participants. These frameworks honor community participants as experts in their own lives who hold strengths in their communities that are often erased and invisibilized under white supremacy. Lastly, I operate from an Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit) lens (Museus & Iftikar, 2014; Curammeng, Buenavista, & Cariaga, 2017) which informed how I structured interview and focus group sessions.

Methods & Data Sources
I reflected on the support of my advisor and peers in preparing and carrying out this research. Further, I conducted one-on-one interviews with community collaborators, hosted focus group sessions, and spent time outside of the formal research with community collaborators. I analyzed personal text messages and voice memos, recruitment DMs and emails, video and audio recordings of interviews and focus group sessions, and social media posts to illustrate the relational ways of connecting and building lasting relationships outside of the confines of institutional research.

Findings
From reflections on being in relation with community collaborators in and outside of the formal research, three major themes emerged. The first major theme is the importance of honoring community collaborators’ whole selves, beyond their organizing work. The second theme recognizes the need for ongoing acknowledgement of their labor, expertise, time, and commitment to the research project and their respective community work. The third theme is the need for on-going consent practices to cultivate spaces where community collaborators can feel safer from white cisheteropatriarchy.

Significance
Much scholarship on Asian American social justice education centers school settings (e.g. Li, Lin, & Wang, 2014; Uy, 2018; Yee et al., 2021). Yet, as Yosso (2005), Paris (2012), and Sánchez Carmen et al. (2015) explain, lived experiences, interpersonal relationships, and communities hold expertise into the legacies of resistance against white supremacy and are largely underdiscussed in academia as it relates to Asian anti-imperialist non-binary and women organizers, artists, and community educators. Building relationships with these community collaborators allow for the honoring of their stories and perspectives to engage in culturally sustaining teaching and learning.

Authors

• Kayla Mendoza Chui, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Henedina Tavares, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author