On March 16, 2021, a series of mass shootings occurred at three spas in the

metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Eight people were killed, six of whom were Asian women, and one other person was wounded. A 21-year old white man was taken into custody later that day. According to police, Long said he was motivated by a sexual addiction that was at odds with his religious beliefs. He had previously spent time in an evangelical treatment clinic for sex addiction. After the shootings, he was charged with four counts of murder by the Atlanta Police Department (APD), and four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault by the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. 

The research released by Stop AAPI Hate at this time revealed nearly 3,800 incidents were reported over the course of roughly a year during the pandemic. These six women added to the count:

Soon Chung (Julie) Park, 박순정, 74

Suncha Kim, 김선자, 69

Yong Ae Yue, 유영애, 63

Hyun Jung Kim Grant, 김현정, 51

Xiaojie (Emily) Tan, 谭⼩洁, 49

Daoyou Feng, 冯道友, 44

Anti-Asian racism has long been a part of U.S. American history from immigration exclusion acts targeting Chinese women to displays of Filipinos at world fairs to the persecution of the Japanese during WWII. The model minority myth and perpetual foreigner syndrome emerge in particular ways as they are projected onto Asian women in America creating a violence of its own genre rooted in hypersexualization, exoticization, and objectification. It is impossible to stay silent. Our tears, our grief have long been hidden and erased from this world. 

To that end we are providing a syllabus. It’s not simply a list of books and resources but a demonstration of the blood and sweat poured out by Asian women in a variety of spheres across the world on topics that address Asian women’s experiences in America.

This will invariably gesture more towards the broad category of Asian Americans, and so we acknowledge the ways the tendency to subsume Pacific Islander, Hawaiian, South and Desi American can be its own erasure. We hope this critical awareness can help shape and sharpen these conversations. We also firmly believe there is no way to move through this world without a transnational/transpacific orientation, and so we stand in solidarity

with oppressed women, femme, and female-identifying sisters all around the world. At the end of the document there is a list of resources where one might begin to educate oneself on other vectors of identity.

We must express an indebtedness to Black studies and Black people/civil rights. Activist Grace Lee Boggs reminds us:

It was only after the Black Power movement and the Black rebellions inspired a new pride in all people of color that we repudiated the stereotype of ourselves as the “model minority” and created our new identity as Asian Americans to announce our resentment of racial discrimination and our refusal to accept the “divide and rule” policies of the power structure. The term “Asian American” bristled with the defiance inherent in rebellion. 

Our lives are entangled with each other. One thread through the lives of these women’s stories, and so many of our mothers, cousins, aunties, grandmothers, our women ancestors is love and rage. It’s the key to our survival, it keeps us moving, it nourishes us and this work. Together we can build a better world.