A collaboration with the Journal of Asian American Studies.
When it comes to how rape culture is enabled, made mundane, what are the hard questions we have not yet posed? When it comes to how we learn to fashion self and seek others inside rape culture’s gravity, what are the answers we have not dared frame? What differences does model minority racialization (however well or ill it fits) make to any of this?
The first collection to provide language and theory for lived-experiences of sexual violence in what is usually dismissed as privileged, unafflicted model-minority life. Wrenching and beautiful, these pieces are theory in the flesh, embodiments of the yet-to-be-spoken.
Edited by erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan. Artwork by Catalina Ouyang.
What histories and discourses are inscribed on the body?
She, like the others, could only slightly feel the edge of some thoughts, and some memories. It was better that way, they all agreed.
Through the radio speakers / I hear a woman shivering. I think of my friend, newly pregnant, / also on her way to work, how she’ll twist a ring off her swollen finger.
Even though you didn’t say “no” in what you’ve been told is the “right” way to say no, you were saying no.
Sometimes I’m mad at you for never teaching me how to get away. / Sometimes I’m mad at myself for opening a door I could not close.
Sometimes it is easier to call the truth a story or a song. / What some deem repression, I name reflections.
Not upon, over, at, or near, rape is not adjacent to anything. It is the thing.
When it comes to how rape culture is enabled, made mundane, what are the hard questions we have not yet posed?
Asian American Writers’ Workshop
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