In the last few years, the AAPI community in the United States has been front and center because of acts of anti-Asian violence, while the affirmative action debates have given new life to the model minority myth. This workshop, titled “Unfinished Stories about Asian American Identity,” seeks to continue the community storytelling begun in the 2023 AALS Clinical Conference workshop entitled “The Importance of Being Earnestly Asian and American: Does it Matter?” We will seek to draw upon our collective stories and our families’ migration histories to forge intergenerational connections with each other and explore how we can be resistant and resilient amid the backlash faced by AAPI communities as well as other communities of color at this moment.
This moment of inflection has us asking: how do we reclaim AAPI narratives found in social movements and public policy debates? The AAPI narratives underpinning social developments, such as #StopAsianHate and the challenge to affirmative action, are either not written or directed by the AAPI community or fail to reflect the wide array of AAPI perspectives on an issue. Should our clinic dockets do more to support AAPI counternarratives and AAPI clients? How do AAPI clinicians fit into the larger resistance to racial inequality in Black and Brown communities?
As AAPI clinicians, this workshop is also a space to help us form our own clinical community and allow us to reflect on the unique positionality of AAPI clinicians. How can we develop community and support AAPI clinicians in their careers, and what would that look like? How do we build an intergenerational community of AAPI clinicians while figuring out ways to support one another throughout the year?