4/24/22
APIA Futures: A Semester in Reflection
This Wednesday 4/27 @ 6:30-8:30 PM, ED91b: APIA Studies & Pedagogies is collaborating with ORAA to host APIA Futures: Reiminaging Learning Communities.
Please RSVP for our workshop here.
As I was scrolling through the spring courses catalog near the end of fall semester, I found myself in a similar situation to the prior year: I was flipping back and forth between the English and Educational Studies courses because a) Asian American (AsAm)-related courses were being offered by the English department and b) I had to fulfill my ed studies major and teacher certification requirements. There wasn’t quite a course that matched exactly what I was looking for though– something being taught at the intersection of APIA Studies and abolitionist pedagogy. I wanted to make sense of what abolitionist teaching meant for a low-income, Korean American immigrant, queer femme, daughter of a dis/abled parent, and soon-to-be the first in a blood-line of resisters and survivors of the Western imperialist war machine to graduate from a PWI.
Since doing my very first school field placements last semester, I’d developed a habit of paying close attention to the pedagogical decisions made by all whom I was learning from. Part of doing this meant learning to trust the visceral reactions of my body, when they’d tell me that it wasn’t worth it to trek over to my classes, that I deserved an extra day of rest, that I could not sit without fidgeting in the chairs that propped my body up in awkward positions for far too long; I listened closely to my body’s racing heartbeat, the beads of sweat from stress that would pry out of my pores, the ways in which my nails would pierce the lines that make my palm mine because I’d unknowingly been clenching my hands into fists. Your body is imprinted with secrets that have been deliberately erased, the stories of our ancestors woven into the pieces of dead skin and hair we thoughtlessly shed in the spaces we are forced into, transgress into, belong to. Our seeds are constantly being scattered into what often feels like a chilling abyss, but our roots continue to grow and expand.
Getting to lead this student-run course was something I genuinely never thought I’d ever do. I’m used to staying quiet for fear of making others uncomfortable with the words I’ve only ever scribbled down into my personal journal, spoken aloud when I knew no one else was near. Classes here were not built to withstand the confusion, the trauma, the remorse, and the rage that is stamped onto our bodies as a result of the deprivation, alienation, and violence towards our communities. We are not real.
This course was an exploration into creating a space and community that witnessed and honored knowledge from our very own members, an homage to the traditions of freedom schooling that birthed the AsAm Studies movement. Every week, we prepared sources of nourishment in advance of our meetings (readings, viewings, food, smaller prep/ hype gatherings), as well as activities that would help us guide one another in making sense of lived experience and theory. We also sought to challenge what it means to be an educator- activist through a slow and tender process of collective nurturing of our critical and political consciousness. We wrestled with the contradictions of our material realities by asking questions like “Could we survive and thrive here? Is there something like APIA futures in sight?”
It brings me so much joy when those I’ve been in community with recognize that I don’t aspire to be a teacher because I know more than them, but because I want to get better at asking thoughtful questions, even if that means never being able to sit complacently for too long. We’re all constantly learning and teaching each other because this is how we survive. Some of my friends have reached out to me asking if we’ll be continuing this movement into the future. If we are to truly honor the traditions of our ancestors, it is imperative that we share and propagate the garden we’ve sown here. Our semester together will culminate in a workshop open to the college community, where we’ll showcase and lead some of the passages we took to sustain ourselves and our movement. For those unable to make it, we are working on a public blog site with all the activities, resources, and other documentation that will be accessible for any and all interested in what we raised together.
As the semester comes to an end, I recognize that APIA joy is inherently tied to the futures of all of us; it’s something that we’ll carry into new and often daunting realms. I just hope that we’ll always choose to remember, to hold each other tightly, to love fiercely and loudly, to stay true to ourselves and to each other, and to consistently demand a reimagination of education as a means in which we move forward, liberate ourselves and each other, and ultimately, thrive.
by Anna <3