This past Tuesday October 29, 2024, I greatly enjoyed paying a virtual visit to a class at Colgate University to share about my recently published book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State. I was invited by Dr. Anna Ríos-Rojas, an Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Colgate University and one of my former colleagues at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where we overlapped during the 2019-20 academic year. It was an absolute delight to reconnect with Dr. Ríos-Rojas and engage in robust conversation with her and her students.

Dr. Ríos-Rojas' course, titled "Globalization's Children: The Education of 'New' Immigrants in the U.S.," considers the ideological, legal, historical, and social systems of power that structure the lived experiences of migrants in the United States. To align with the course's investigation of US policies, attitudes, and narratives about im/migration, I discussed findings from my third book chapter, which examines how Helena María Viramontes' seminal work of environmental justice literature, Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), narrates the experiences of Latinx migrant farmworkers in order to indict the toxic abuses of the US security state-backed agricultural industry. In this chapter, I argue that Viramontes' novel challenges an ideology that I call nativist environmentalism, which falsely equates protecting the United States' natural environment with defending the US-Mexico border against unwanted immigrants and which is fueled by the US security state's racist and xenophobic criminalization of migrants.

I was deeply impressed by the thoughtful questions that Dr. Ríos-Rojas' students asked following my talk, which included the following:

• Are there any unintended consequences that might result from using a care-based approach to risk management? Couldn’t the state problematically appropriate or exploit the care-based practices of communities of color?
• Why does our nation believe that immigrants are toxic and bad? What is the basis of this myth? How does it endure?
• How and why is risk imagined as embodied? How might protest manifest through the body? Why does the body often become a site of resistance against the state, or a site through which the state enacts its policies?
• Is literature the "best" form of protest? What makes it so effective as a form of protest?

Not surprisingly, these questions prompted a rich and provocative discussion, which filled me with new thoughts, questions, and much excitement. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Ríos-Rojas and her students for welcoming me into their vibrant  community.

This past Friday October 25, 2024, I delivered a lecture at Menlo College about my recently published book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State. I was invited to come to campus by Dr. Melissa Eriko Poulsen, an Assistant Professor of English at Menlo College and fellow scholar of critical mixed race studies and Asian American literary studies with whom I have collaborated at research conferences in the past. My lecture was delivered as part of Menlo College's 2024-25 Common Book program, in which first-year students have been reading, discussing, and reflecting on Isabel Wilkerson's 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. My book's argument that US security practices are rooted in a longstanding history of protecting white lives at the expense of communities of color is well supported by Wilkerson's groundbreaking analysis of the racial caste system that has dictated US sociopolitical structures since nation formation.
​
After I delivered my talk to a full auditorium of Menlo College students, faculty, and staff, Dr. Poulsen facilitated a stimulating Q&A. During the ensuing conversation, I acknowledged the limitations and possibilities of using care as a mode of resistance against the harm of the security state, shared a recommended reading list for students who want to learn more about how to engage care as a response to risk, and discussed how we might be able to advocate for social justice despite a polarized political climate that makes it risky to speak up (for fear of being doxxed, canceled, etc.). I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to share about my research with the Menlo College community and hope to visit again soon.

On Thursday October 17, 2024, I had the great pleasure of delivering a talk at Stanford University about my recently published book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State. Held in the conference room of Stanford's Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), the event was a great success, attracting an audience of nearly 50 people attending both in person and virtually.

After giving a high-level overview of the book's argument and methodology, I illustrated the book's central queries by providing a close reading of Japanese American internee Miné Okubo's 1946 graphic memoir Citizen 13660. My talk was followed by a robust Q&A moderated by Dr. Paula Moya, CCSRE Director and Professor of English at Stanford. During this conversation, attendees asked me a range of provocative questions, such as why I chose to take a comparative analytical approach by examining differing literary genres and ethno-racial groups, if I could unpack further examples from the book of how I theorize literary resistance against the state's harmful racialization of risk management, and how we might challenge repressive security regimes when the very act of speaking truth to power can place us at risk of punishment. Following this robust conversation, I enjoyed mingling with attendees and signing copies of the book supplied by the Stanford University Bookstore.

This event would not have been possible without the support of many in the Stanford community. I extend deep gratitude to the event's three co-sponsors, the CCSRE, the Asian American Research Center at Stanford (AARCS), and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR). In addition, special thanks goes to AARCS Program Associate Chali Lee, who helped with organizing and publicity, my PWR colleague Jennifer Stonaker, who was instrumental in running and moderating the Zoom, and the Stanford University Bookstore, which managed book sales during the event.

Below is the Zoom recording of the full talk and Q&A.

I am grateful to have been nominated and selected for the 2024 Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in a Learning Environment (IDEAL) Honor Roll at Stanford University. The IDEAL Honor Roll recognizes Stanford staff members who have demonstrated a significant commitment to advancing inclusion, diversity, equity and access efforts at Stanford University through leadership, practices, processes, actions and/or initiatives.

Here is the summary of my nomination provided by Stanford Office for IDEAL Advancement: "Roberta, a dedicated Program Committee member of the Stanford Asian Staff Forum, plays a pivotal role in connecting Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) staff through supporting and executing events. She leads the annual Book Club, showcasing AAPI writers, and notably secured author Grace Li for the capstone event. Roberta's enthusiasm and advocacy for AAPI stories are evident in her leading of thought-provoking discussions. Her resilient and confident demeanor has provided a strong foundation for the Program Committee, and she has shown innovation in finding new ways to engage AAPI virtually."

To view the full list of staff members selected for the 2024 IDEAL Honor Roll, please click here.​

You are enthusiastically invited to hear me talk about my new book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State, on October 17, 2024 from 3:30-5:00 pm PST!

Co-sponsored by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford (CCSRE), the Asian American Research Center at Stanford (AARCS), and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), this event will take place both in person at the CCSRE Conference Room in Building 360 on the Stanford campus and virtually via Zoom, so even if you aren't local to Stanford, you can still come join us. I am delighted that Dr. Paula Moya will be moderating the Q&A after the talk, as I was greatly inspired by her research on schemas, racial literacy, and socioformal literary criticism during the writing of my book. After the talk, I'll be signing copies of the book, which you'll be able to purchase at the event or ahead of time by ordering from the publisher (use the discount code WOLFSON for 30% off and free shipping).

To RSVP (and receive Zoom details for virtual attendees), please click here. I hope to see you there!

The day has finally come! I am thrilled to announce that my book Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State was officially published today by The Ohio State University Press. Words cannot fully express how humbled, excited, and thrilled I feel to know that my manuscript, a culmination of over a decade of researching, writing, and revising, is finally out in the world.  

This day would not have been possible without the support of so many people, including my inspiring colleagues, my dear family, and my cherished friends. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your endless love and encouragement.
​
Please click here to learn more about my book and order a copy. From now until July 2025, you can get a 30% discount and free shipping with the code WOLFSON.

I am thrilled to share that the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford published a feature article on me in its most recent newsletter that came out earlier this month. In preparation for this article, my colleague Kevin C. Moore interviewed me to learn about my pedagogy and research, particularly the development of my forthcoming book Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State (coming out in July 2024 by The Ohio State University Press). I am delighted by how much care Kevin put into describing my book's arguments and journey from first conception to final publication. In the article, Kevin conscientiously outlines my writing process and narrates how my scholarly research informs my teaching. Above all, I'm grateful to be surrounded by such a generous community of colleagues here at PWR and feel very supported in my identity as a teacher, scholar, and writer. Click here to check out the article in full. 

Last week, on June 13-15, 2024, I attended the 2024 conference meeting of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association, a scholarly and activist community that meets biennially to critically explore racial formations through a multiracial lens. The theme for the conference meeting was "More than Betwixt and Between: Solidarity and Liberation in Beloved Communities." The conference convened both in person at The Ohio State University and virtually, allowing hundreds of community organizers, artists, scholars, and activists to come together from all over the world. 

I presented twice during the conference. On Friday June 14th, I joined a roundtable conversation on "The Multiracial Pasts and Futures of Asian American Speculative Fiction," with Cynthia Zhang (University of Southern California), Dr. Melissa Erika Poulsen (Menlo College), and Dr. Nancy Carranza (Riverside City College). During this roundtable discussion, I analyzed the vignette "Machine Love" from Greg Pak's film ​Robot Stories​ (2003), which I taught during my fall 2023 Stanford course on ethnofuturist rhetorics. "Machine Love" tells the story of an android robot (a "Sprout G9 iPerson") that is subjected to dehumanization while performing menial computing work in a corporate office setting. Envisioning a future in which humans and AI robots are inextricably intertwined (a vision that is not too far from our current reality), "Machine Love" raises questions about the ethics of developing humanoid intelligence only to sell it on the mass market purely for human exploitation. We might ask ourselves: What happens if we allow this technology to develop without critically interrogating our current society’s racial, gendered logics? The answer to this question, I suggest, lies in thinking about the racialization of the Sprout G9 iPersons as mixed race Asians, which I argue is not incidental, but rather reflective of two longstanding problematic tropes in the US popular imaginary: first, the belief that Asians are inherently "other," and second, the myth that mixed race people represent the promise of a postracial future. My fellow panelists offered exciting readings of other works of Asian American speculative fiction that feature multiracial characters or perspectives, such as Lois Ann Yamanaka's Behold the Many, Violet Kupersmith's Build Your House Around My Body, Marjorie Liu's Monstress, and Ling Ma's Severance.

On Saturday, June 15th, I presented on a second panel called "What is the 'Critical' in Critical Mixed Race Studies?: Theorizing Mixedness through Structural, Geo/political, and Contextual Analytics of Power" alongside Alma Villanueva (Independent Scholar), Dr. Anna Storti (Duke University), and Jasmine Kelekay (UC Berkeley). In my talk, "'I'm Not the Person You Think I Am': Familial Loss and Multiracial Identity Erasure in Danzy Senna's New People," I explored how the experience of racial imposter syndrome can be heightened when racially ambiguous multiracial individuals lose a family member who represents a critical connection to their minoritized ancestry. By way of answering this question, I analyzed Danzy Senna's most recent novel New People (2017), which narrates the emotional breakdown of a white-presenting twenty-seven-year-old woman of remote Black ancestry named Maria after she suffers the death of her adopted mother Gloria, a monoracial Black woman. I greatly appreciated having a supportive scholarly forum to articulate this argument, which is rooted in my own personal inquiries as a mixed race person who has suffered the loss of beloved grandparents in recent years.

Overall, it was a rewarding and fulfilling experience to participate in this conference for the second time (see my previous post about attending the 2022 CMRSA conference). I can't wait to bring what I learned into future versions of my Stanford PWR 2 course on mixed race identity, as well as into my future research projects. 

If you had the power to imagine the future of race, what would it look like? This is the central question that I sought to explore with students enrolled in my new advanced course this fall quarter, "Ethnofuturist Rhetorics: Imagining the Future of Race." Having just wrapped up the course, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the experience.

Cross-listed in both the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford, this course offered an in-depth study of ethnofuturism, a rhetorical movement to envision the future of race relations. I was inspired to teach this course because I have long been an admirer of speculative/science fiction, which has a unique ability to get me to reflect on present-day issues in ways that other genres cannot. Darko Suvin famously explained this phenomenon when he theorized in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) that science fiction produces “cognitive estrangement,” thus allowing us to notice the constructedness of our current reality and interrogate the status quo. I wanted to design a class where I could explore this phenomenon with my students.

As a teacher and researcher who specializes in antiracist rhetoric and critical race studies, I sought to actively disrupt the traditional canon of science fiction, which tends to be written by, for, and about white/cis/hetero men. Too often, canonical science fiction erases people of color from the future or problematically whitens them to feed a post-racial fantasy. And there is a long history in the United States of using speculation about the future as a rhetorical tool to reinforce capitalist, white supremacist, fascist ideologies. In designing this course, I sought to decenter whiteness in speculative fiction and present ethnofuturist speculative rhetorics as an important corrective to the white popular imaginary’s insistence on characterizing people of color as frozen in time, technologically stunted, or pushed to the margins.​

We started the course by examining examples of speculative ethnofuturist rhetoric (such as films, stories, comics, visual artwork, music albums, and visual reality projects) produced by Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native writers and artists, assessing how they envision the future consequences of existing racial systems and imagine alternative possibilities for societal race relations. ​I carefully designed my syllabus to showcase a variety of genres produced by authors of different racial identities, so that students could see how ethnofuturism serves as a powerful liberatory rhetorical framework for all communities impacted by white supremacy, as well as take inspiration from different genres when designing their own ethnofuturist texts later in the term. Despite their many differences, these texts all share a commitment to envisioning what it could mean for people of color not just to survive but also to thrive in the future. 

In the second part of the course, students followed in the footsteps of these ethnofuturist rhetors by selecting a racial justice issue that they wanted to learn more about and creating their own work of ethnofuturism designed to consider the future of this issue. Many chose to work in more conventional narrative forms by writing short stories and poetry collections. Others took on more unconventional forms, including a play, a virtual reality project, and a work of interactive fiction. I am so impressed with how these projects are able to do so much at once, including address a contemporary racial justice issue, effectively incorporate an ethnofuturist framework (like dystopia, magical realism, historical revisionism, alternative timelines, etc.), and appropriately engage the rhetorical conventions required of their chosen genre. In one project, a student sought to address the lack of mental health support for Black people suffering from racial trauma by creating a virtual reality experience that allows users to enter a wellness center where they can undergo healing not only by using contemporary therapeutic methods, but also by being transported into the past (where they can experience a personal history free of racial injury) and the future (where they can imagine what their future might look like without racial injury). Other final projects were similarly moving and compelling, with some offering dystopian visions (such as by imagining how technological advancements will only exacerbate the violent militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border) and others imagining utopias based on racial liberation (such as a future in which the prison industrial complex has been eradicated). 

​It was especially exciting to be joined by two guest speakers this quarter. The first speaker was one of the authors represented on the course syllabus, Walidah Imarisha, an Afrofuturist writer/researcher and Assistant Professor in Black Studies at Oregon State University. She joined us via Zoom to talk about her research and writings, and the students greatly appreciated having the opportunity to ask her questions about her short story “Black Angel,” her craft, and the anthology of social justice-oriented speculative fiction called Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements that she co-edited with adrienne maree brown. She also offered some valuable advice to my students, who were embarking on creating their own ethnofuturist texts. For example, she reminded them that ethnofuturist writing (what she has termed "visionary fiction") is "fundamentally hopeful." In addition, she encouraged them to keep a central question in mind as they designed their visions: "How can we have the kind of society where everyone's needs are met?" 

It was a true honor to be able to teach this class to such a dedicated group of Stanford students. I am grateful to the Program in Writing and Rhetoric for making this teaching opportunity possible and for spotlighting the class in the program's latest newsletter. I hope I am able to offer this course many more times in the future!

This past Tuesday, October 10th, I had the great pleasure of facilitating a conversation with best-selling author Grace Li in an event hosted by the Asian Staff Forum (ASF) at Stanford. This conversation was the culminating event of ASF's 2023 book club, in which we read Li's debut novel Portrait of a Thief. (For a brief history of how I helped launch the ASF book club in 2021 as a member of the ASF board, check out this previous blog post.) After enjoying several engaging conversations with other ASF members about the book throughout May to September 2023, it was a real treat to get a chance to talk with the author herself about the book's themes and messaging.

During our conversation, Li offered many compelling insights about the origins of the novel, the development of her characters, and her writing process. Describing this novel as an "identity story disguised as a heist story," she shared that writing this book was very healing for her, as it allowed her to reflect on her own search for belonging as a Chinese American. Rather than worry about the audience for this book or limit her imagination based on white-centric norms in U.S. literary culture, she developed a cast of five Chinese American protagonists inspired by her own personal history, experiences, and interactions. 

In addition to recently launching her literary career, Li is currently studying full-time as a Stanford medical student. In fact, she joined our virtual conversation in between rounds during one of her hospital rotations. Given her impressive ability to balance so many different commitments, it was particularly valuable to hear her insights about how to navigate a busy routine while also maintaining a consistent writing practice. She gave us some helpful writing productivity tips: to protect your writing time, to establish a daily word count goal, and to "focus on what is important, not what is urgent." Above all, she recommended "tapping into joy" throughout the writing process. Clearly, Li's strategies are working for her, as she is currently working with a production team to turn Portrait of a Thief into a Netflix adaptation, and her next book, Anatomy of a Betrayal, is already slated to be published in June 2024.

To watch a full recording of the conversation and read ASF's recap of the event, click here.

In a previous blog post, I wrote about my experience presenting at the 6th biennial meeting of the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) Association, which was held virtually from February 24-26, 2022. Over 400 scholars, artists, and activists convened under the conference theme "Ancestral Futurisms: Embodying Multiracialities Past, Present, and Future." I am pleased to share that my research essay, "Rewriting the Mixed Self: Narrative Resistance against the White Monoracial Imagination," was recently published in the conference proceedings for this meeting. To read my essay along with many other compelling articles about mixed race identity and experiences, you can download the 2022 conference proceedings from the CMRS Association website. 

On Saturday April 1st, I had the great pleasure of participating in a roundtable discussion on "College Writing: What It Is and What It's Not" hosted by the San Jose Area Writing Project as part of their Super Saturdays series of pedagogy-building workshops for high school teachers. The goal of this event was to bring high school teachers and college instructors together to dispel myths about college writing and break down what actual college writing looks like (i.e. what skills are emphasized, what types of writing are expected, what work is actually assigned).
​
I co-facilitated this discussion with Hillary Walker, an adjunct professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the College of Alameda and the Director of the Bay Area Writing Project at the Berkeley School of Education. We opened the conversation by first providing an overview of how we design and teach our college writing classes. I greatly enjoyed hearing how our teaching priorities converge (for example, we both center critical race studies in our classrooms and design curricula that prioritize student agency and individual progress). It was also useful and informative to learn how our pedagogy differs given our different institutional contexts and resources. 

We then opened up the conversation to the high school teachers in attendance, offering the following questions to guide us:

1. What types of writing do you assign to your students? How do these assignments seek to ready your students for college-level writing?
2. How do you adjust your pedagogy over time in response to student needs related to writing?
3. How do you organize your writing instruction given the amount of time you have to build relationships with your students?
4. How do you evaluate/grade your students’ writing? How do you deliver feedback to your students? Do you comment on the final versions of assignments and/or do you offer feedback on scaffolding assignments?

​In the rich conversation that ensued, participants discussed these questions and raised additional questions relevant to their specific concerns. At one point, the conversation focused on whether teaching the novel in the English high school classroom is still a relevant practice, or whether it has become outdated given that many college writing programs de-prioritize literary analysis. At another point, the discussion centered on exploring the role of scaffolding activities in helping students grow as writers over time. A major highlight of the conversation was when we began discussing the important question of how we writing instructors can stop perpetuating white language supremacy, such as by implementing innovative curricular design and alternative evaluation methods. Everyone in attendance expressed a commitment to meeting this objective by honoring their students' diverse home languages and unique forms of expression. However, several participants also acknowledged that they face several constraints in achieving this goal. For example, they might be compelled by district-wide requirements to assign texts from the Western literary canon when designing their curricula. Or they might feel pressured to teach writing skills that are rewarded on college-entrance and college-readiness standardized tests (like the SAT and AP Literature exam). Or they might have limited time as instructors to evaluate forms of writing that deviate from non-traditional Western forms. It was highly encouraging to brainstorm strategies for overcoming these challenges so as to affirm the various language uses and habits of our diverse student bodies.

Overall, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be in community with fellow writing educators and learn about the rewards and challenges that come with working in educational settings that differ from my own. It was inspiring to know that despite our differences, we all share a passion for helping students develop their unique voices.

I'm thrilled to announce that today is the official publication date for Latino Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students (edited by Christina Soto van der Plas and Lacie Rae Buckwalter Cunningham, published by ABC-Clio), a new resource that provides an essential overview of the major literary works produced by Latinx authors alongside related thematic concepts. I contributed an entry to this encyclopedia in which I discuss the life and works of Los Angeles-based Chicano author/activist Luis Javier Rodriguez, whose memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (1993) was the focus of my first essay of literary criticism. If you would like to read more about how Rodriguez uses his writings (which include memoirs, poetry collections, and short stories) to reduce gang violence, build Chicanx community and identity, and support at-risk youth, click here to download the full copy of my entry.

I am thrilled to announce that my latest article has been published in the winter 2023 edition of College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies. I first presented the initial ideas for this essay at the 2018 American Literature Association Convention during a panel sponsored by the Circle of Asian American Literary Studies on "Refugee Counternarratives." It is particularly gratifying for me to see this article in print after spending many years developing and fine-tuning its central argument.

Titled "'A Man of Two Faces and Two Minds': Just Memory and Metatextuality in The Sympathizer's Rewriting of the Vietnam War," this essay considers how Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Sympathizer (2015) represents the history of the Vietnam War from an inclusive lens of remembrance that the author terms "just memory" in his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, which was published shortly after The Sympathizer in 2016 and can be read as a scholarly companion to the novel. I argue that The Sympathizer employs several metatextual rhetorical techniques (such as characterizing the narrator as a figure of duality, featuring a nested narrative form, and self-referentially exploring the performativity of writing) in order to denounce the self-serving, one-sided rhetoric of "unjust memory." I show how the novel instead advocates for practicing a more ethical approach to the other that is rooted in recognizing the possibilities and limitations of narrative representation. You can read the abstract and download the full article with institutional access here.

I am delighted to share that my latest article has been published in the The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020, which was recently published by Wiley-Blackwell. In this article, I provide an overview of the works of Celeste Ng, the author of bestselling novels Everything I Never Told You (2015) and Little Fires Everywhere (2017). I illustrate how throughout her literary career, Ng has sought to understand the motivations behind human behavior and how such behaviors are informed by intersecting systems of oppression like racism, sexism, and classism. You can read the abstract and download the full article with institutional access here.

This past week, I had the great pleasure of attending the latest meeting of the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) Association, which took place from February 24th to 26th. This conference revolved around the theme "Ancestral Futurisms: Embodying Multiracialities Past, Present, and Future." Over 400 scholars, educators, activists, and artists who think, teach, and organize around multiraciality gathered together virtually from all around the world to reflect on the question of time in relation to mixed race studies, challenge past conceptions of multiraciality dictated by white supremacy, and imagine new forms of multiraciality rooted in decolonization and radical hope.

Panels and workshops covered a range of exciting topics, such as the importance of connecting multiracial identity with ancestral knowledge,  how to effectively support mixed race students at both the K-12 and university levels, challenges and rewards related to parenting multiracial children, and representations of multiraciality in popular media like speculative fiction, superhero comics, and television and theatrical productions. Educator, singer, and "RAPtivist" (rap activist) Aisha Fukushima delivered the keynote presentation, which powerfully integrated music, speech, and storytelling. 

​The conference theme was beautifully captured by the design pictured below, "Transition," which was created by Favianna Rodriguez, an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and social justice activist based in Oakland, CA. To see more of her art, please visit www.favianna.com.

On the second day of the conference, I presented on a panel titled "Toward a More 'Critical' Mixed Race Studies: Troubling Representations of Race and Gender" alongside fellow scholars Dr. Anna Storti (Duke University), Ph.D. candidate Alma Villanueva (Texas A&M University) and Dr. Corinne Collins (University of Southern California). Attracting over 80 attendees, our panel examined popular representations of multiraciality in media, narrative, and visual culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with the goal of problematizing how progress narratives are often attached to mixed race bodies. 

Over the past few months, I have had the great pleasure of helping launch and facilitate an inaugural book club hosted by the Asian Staff Forum (ASF), an organization for which I have been serving as a board volunteer since I began working at Stanford in September 2020. The goal of the book club is to create a space for members of our community to come together and discuss great works that are written by Asian American authors and/or feature themes related to Asian American histories, identities, and experiences. We designed the book club to feature two books a year, with meetings to discuss the first book taking place throughout the fall and winter quarters and meetings to discuss the second book spanning the spring and summer quarters. 

We debuted our book club by reading and discussing award-winning author Chang-Rae Lee's most recent novel My Year Abroad (2021). From October 2021 to January 2022, we held three meetings to discuss the novel, which attracted a variety of interested parties, including Stanford faculty, staff, and community members. Discussions were consistently lively, with topics ranging from character development to the Cultural Revolution in China to representations of race and gender.

​Our book club concluded with a capstone event that took place on January 31, 2022, a conversation about the novel with the author himself, which was facilitated by Dr. Rona Hu, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford Hospital and active ASF member. Before the conversation began, I was asked to provide a brief synopsis of the novel for attendees. During the discussion, Lee shared many insights about the creation of the novel, such as how he came up with the ideas for his principle characters, why he chose to interject tragic moments with humor, and what motivated him to give the protagonist partial rather than full Asian ancestry. I was particularly struck by his comment at one point that first-person narration is "the language of the soul" and thus does not have to reflect the actual way that a character might speak in real conversations. Overall, the illuminating conversation served as the perfect ending to a highly successful first book club series.  

The next book that the ASF book club will read is Chanel Miller's memoir Know My Name (2019), and meetings will take place throughout the 2022 spring and summer quarters.

​