PDA Event: The Making of the AAPI Identity: Understanding the Past to Advocate in the Present

The Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community is culturally and linguistically diverse but is often racialized to be a homogenous group of “model minorities.” The model minority myth has been used as a political tool to exploit AAPIs while further oppressing other communities of color. Members of the AAPI community are often positioned at the contentious intersection between invisibility and hyper visibility, between being the assimilated model minority and the perpetual foreigner. This workshop will examine the creation of the Asian American identity, explore the history of Asian American racialization, and make critical connections between this history and the present positioning of Asians and Pacific Islanders within the United States. This workshop will provide the context necessary for strategies on creating more inclusive, equitable, and liberatory spaces for AAPIs in institutions and communities.

Shengxiao Yu, often known by her nickname Sole, is a speaker, facilitator, writer, and social justice educator. She is the creator of Nectar, a space for life-affirming experiences for liberation. Sole combines her storytelling and facilitation experiences to ground her social justice education practice in abolitionist and transformative justice principles. Sole has lived in Latin America and worked with grassroots communities and NGOs in Peru and Costa Rica. She has been an advocate for immigrant rights through providing legal services to unaccompanied immigrant children from Central America, Asia, and beyond. As a generation 1.5 Asian American, Sole is also working to build community among her fellow Asian Americans in order to increase socio-political power and to lift up her lineage. Sole is inspired by BIPOC activists, grassroots community leaders, and all the intersectional movement ancestors who have paved the way.

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Sponsored by BLC