Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities: A Reading List

 
Images: Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent; Third World Women’s Alliance; Azalea: A Magazine for Third World Lesbians; inaugural Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Cairo, Dec 1957, and This Bridge Called My Back. Background…

Images: Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent; Third World Women’s Alliance; Azalea: A Magazine for Third World Lesbians; inaugural Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Cairo, Dec 1957, and This Bridge Called My Back. Background: Review of the Asian-African Conference, May 1955. Photo Credit: Asian American Feminist Collective.

By Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective

Check out this reading list from Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective’s Instagram Live event, “Sisters and Siblings in the Struggle: COVID-19 + Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities.”


On Thursday, April 30th, Black Women Radicals and the Asian-American Feminist Collective (AAFC) co-hosted the Instagram Live event, ”“Sisters and Siblings in the Struggle: COVID-19 + Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities.” If you missed the event, you can watch it below or here on our YouTube channel.

About this event: The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has impacted thousands around the world. Between the histories of xenophobic racism; medical experimentation and surveillance; prejudice in (and out) of the public health system; the violence of white capitalist heteronormative patriarchal supremacy and more, Black and Asian-American communities are disproportionately experiencing the detrimental impacts of the virus. In New York and across the nation, there is an increase of xenophobic racism and violence against Asian-Americans. Reports have shown that in states and cities such as Louisiana, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Michigan that the majority of those who are infected and dying from the coronavirus are Black.

While there are well-documented tensions between Black and Asian-American communities, there is an equally long history of Black and Asian solidarities and community building both in the United States and abroad. How can Asian-American feminists and Black feminists engage in a critical dialogue on the impacts of COVID-19 in their respective communities? What can we learn from the long history of solidarity between Black and Asian-American feminists? More importantly, how can we continue to create transnational Black and Asian feminist solidarities in the United States and beyond?

Black Women Radicals and the Asian-American Feminist Collective had a critical discussion on these topics in efforts to continue to build cross-racial feminist solidarities.

Panelists from the Asian-American Feminist Collective included: Rachel Kuo (@_kuolabear), Salonee Bhaman (@salonee), Tiffany Diane Tso (@tiffanydian), Julie Kim (@jakets), Senti Sojwal (@senti_naro). Below is the reading list from the event!



Why is it important for us as radical feminists to look back at our formidable history of cross-racial solidarities and movement building?

Historical Solidarities and Organizing Between Black and Asian Feminists

Conferences, Organizations, Statements, and Journals  

  • The Conference of the Women of Asia (1949).

  • The Bandung Conference (also known as the Afro-Asian Conference) (1955).

  • The Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Conference (1957)

  • The Afro-Asian Women's Conference in Cairo, Egypt (1961).

  • The Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO). 

  • The Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee (SKSSAA).

  • The First Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Conference in Havana, Cuba (1966). 

  • Audre Lorde traveling to Auckland, New Zealand to build solidarities between Maori and Pacific Island women. 

  • “Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggles, and Liberation” (A Documentary). 

  • The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD).  

  • The Blasian Project

How are we seeing anti-Blackness perpetuated in Asian-American communities right now? How are we seeing this tied to a historical and systematic thread? How can Asian people address anti-Blackness? How do we move past hurt in order to build together?

How have historical and current racial and economic disparities in general and the lack of public health and access to healthcare specifically exacerbate the oppressive and fatal encounters of COVID-19? What’s important about historical specificity?  

What are you seeing on the ground and from community groups around COVID? How can feminist politics be used in our analysis of COVID-19?

What are ways to continue to build Black and Asian-American feminist solidarities?