Unforgetting Multiple Histories and Imagining Multiple Futures of Asian(American) Im/migrant Literacies

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium centers the justice-oriented, translinguistic, and transnational literacies of Asian (im)migrant children, youth, and adults across diverse educational contexts. Drawing on transnational, multimodal, racial literacy, AsianCrit, and culturally sustaining pedagogy, five presenters explore how participants resist racialized tropes and navigate xenophobia, civic exclusion, and linguistic marginalization. Studies span dual-language classrooms, virtual YPAR spaces, book clubs, familial context, and autoethnographic reflections, highlighting Vietnamese, Chinese, South Asian, and Asian American learners as active agents of knowledge-making. Together, we challenge dominant narratives surrounding Asian Americans—particularly the model minority myth and East Asian dominance—while envisioning equitable futures shaped by plural histories and literacies. This session invites scholars to engage deeply with the multiplicity and vitality of Asian im/migrant literacies and lifeworlds.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chairs

• Tairan Qiu, Stanford University

• Wenyu Guo, University of South Florida

Papers

• Countering Erasure: Vietnamese American Bilingual Children Learning Wars, Armed Conflicts, and Genocide Through Multilingual Literacies - Alisha Nguyen, Lesley University

• Chinese American Children Interrogating Race Through AsianCrit-Informed Racial Literacy in a Community-Based Book Club - Wenyu Guo, University of South Florida; Yuechen Sun, University of South Carolina

• Tracing Asian American Youths’ Transnational Civic Literacies through Youth Participatory Action Research - Ankhi Guha Thakurta, Boston College

• Unforgetting Care as Family History: The Intergenerational and Transnational Relational Literacies of a Chinese Transnational Family - Tairan Qiu, Stanford University

• Photo Essay as Autoethnographic Multimodal Ensembles: Learning from the Compositional Practices of Two South Asian American University Students - Mohit P. Mehta, Texas State University

Session Organizer

• Wenyu Guo, University of South Florida

Discussant

• Guofang Li, University of British Columbia