Asian Diaspora “Storywork”

• In Event: Asian Diaspora Inquiries: Decolonizing and Deimperializing Theoretical and Methodological Traditions

Abstract

The trajectories of Asian diaspora storywork (Archibald, 2000; Archibald, Xiiem, Lee-Morgan, & Santolo, 2019) I have been engaged in are evolving with my diaspora experience in a wide array of areas such as: cross-cultural narrative inquiry; creating a composite auto/biographical narrative method to study diasporic experience; representing bilingual and bicultural diaspora lives and identities; using metaphors to identify research themes and to understand and express diaspora experiences; tales in words and tales on canvas-telling stories through arts and poetry; using life based literary narratives in diaspora teacher education; research on the education of Asian diaspora students in schools, families, and communities; research on the education of Asian diasporas in Hong Kong and Mainland China; exile pedagogy, exile curriculum, and teaching in-between; diaspora curriculum theorizing including conceptions of diasporas, the breadth, diversity, and complexity of diasporas, diaspora consciousness, diasporic space, and the in-betweenness of diasporas, exile and diaspora epistemology, exile pedagogy, exile curriculum, decolonizing diasporas, and Asian diasporic imaginaries and futurities.

The cartographies of Asian diaspora storywork can be traced to such works on decolonization as Asia as method (Chen, 2010), AsianCrit (Chang, 1993; Iftikar & Museu, 2018; Museus & Iftikar, 2013; also An, 2016, 2017a, 2017b; Kim & Hsieh, 2022; Liu, 2009; Park & Liu, 2014; Poon & Segoshi, 2018; Rodríguez, 2018, 2019; Rodríguez & Kim, 2018, 2019), decolonization and globalization (Lin & Martin, 2005), decolonizing methodologies and Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999/2012; Tuhiwai Smith, Tuck, & Yang, 2019; also Chilisa, 2012; Kovach, 2009/2012; Oliveira & Wright, 2016), decolonizing educational research (Patel, 2016), decolonizing research/indigenous storywork (Archibald, 2000; Archibald, Xiiem, Lee-Morgan, & Santolo, 2019), endarkened storywork (Toliver, 2022), testimonios, theory in the flesh, and third world women’s writing as self-preservation and revolution (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1981/1983), creative/critical perspectives by women of color (Anzaldúa, 1987, 1990), critical race/LatCrit methodology and counter-storytelling (Delgado, 1989; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001, 2002, 2009; Yosso, 2006), personal-passionate~participatory into social justice in education (He & Phillion, 2008), cross-cultural narrative inquiry (He, 2009, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), and methodology of the oppressed (Sandoval, 2000).

Drawing upon above-mentioned decolonizing and deimperializing methodological traditions, Asian diaspora storywork purposefully works against orientalized, imperialized, racialized, gendered, classed, and other intersected oppressions. Drawing upon three distinctive qualities of personal~passionate~participatory (He & Phillion, 2008) social justice research, Asian diaspora inquirers “[connect] the personal with the political, the theoretical with the practical, and research with social and educational change” (He & Phillion, 2008, p. 1). Asian diaspora storywork allows participants to name their predicaments, tell their stories, ask hard questions, and contest deficit narratives that further marginalize their existence. With unfaltering commitment to humility, solidarity, and justice, Asian diaspora storywork troubles theoretical and methodological traditions and challenges imperialized and colonized ways of engaging in, interpreting, and writing about research. Asian diaspora storywork enables Asian diaspora individuals and groups to transgress (hook, 1994) orthodoxies, protest against supremacies, and thrive upon the forces of oppression on the life in schools, neighborhoods, communities, spaces, and places where Asian diasporas live their lives.

Author

• Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University