Fighting For Our Existence: Talanoas of Survival and Resistance at SF State

• In Event: Surviving to Thriving: Pathways Toward Renewal for Asian American and Pacific Islander K-20 Women Leaders

Abstract

Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders (AA&PI) comprise 22% of San Francisco State University's student body (SF State, 2023) and boast one of the largest Asian American Studies Departments in the nation. Despite this, AA&PI communities continue to fight for our existence within higher education. This paper examines our responses as campus leaders to the global pandemic, anti-Asian racism, and our solidarity efforts for a free Palestine. Grounded in the legacy of Ethnic Studies and Community Responsive Pedagogy, we utilize Critical Race Methodology through counterstorytelling (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) and the Talanoa Research Method (Tecun, 2018; Vaioleti, 2013) to center our experiences.

We are the inaugural leadership team that developed SF State's first Asian American and Pacific Islander Student Services and fiercely advocated for visibility, access, relevance, community and liberatory education. Drawing Critical Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) and philosophies, approaches, and practices of Indigenous and contemporary Ethnic Studies understandings and scholarship (Meyer, 2003; Strobel, 2001) CRP is "[A]n equity-centered approach to education that is responsive to the material conditions that are particular to a student’s lived experience in a community and the histories that created that experience." (Tintiangco-Cubales & Duncan-Andrade, 2021, 8-9).

Grounding our leadership in Ethnic Studies not only improves our response to our challenges but also our self- determination, and civic and community engagement as students, staff, and faculty. Liberatory education focuses on the development of critical consciousness, which enables us to recognize connections between our individual problems and experiences and the social contexts in which they are embedded (Freire, 1972). Cultivating empathy is a key factor to research, remedy, repair, and renewal as critical leaders working towards freedom and liberation. Empathy is foundational to building courage, humanization, and healing. Lopez, Desai, & Tintiangco-Cubales further expressed, “In the face of these conditions, to maintain critical hope requires audacity. It insists that we stand boldly in solidarity with our communities, sharing the burden of their undeserved suffering as a humanizing hope in our collective capacity for healing” (Lopez, Desai, & Tintiangco-Cubales 2020, 76). It is crucial to understand the historical oppression of the challenges we face and to contextualize how our mind, body and souls are affected when we step into work, the classroom, or in the boardroom.

Talanoa Research Method (TRM) is a methodology aligned with Pacific worldviews (Vaioleti, 2013, 191). The concept of Talanoa is rooted in oral tradition. Intersecting Talanoas and Critical Race Theory (CRT) methodology of Counter- Storytelling (Solarzano & Yosso, 2002) centers our experiential knowledge and draws on the strength of the lived experiences of people of color. It is imperative we counter the “master-narrative” that is reproduced and continues to violently oppress, marginalize, and silence Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Telling our stories and counternarratives as women of color leaders is a strategy of survival and a means of resistance. This paper shares our Talanoas as critical women of color leaders who faced repercussions of standing in solidarity with our communities which involved strategies of censoring, interrogation, and ultimatums to defund our programming.

Authors

• Arlene S. Daus-Magbual, San Francisco State University

• Levalasi Loi-On, San Francisco State University