Category: Papers

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ASD in Asian Diasporic Children

A practitioner assessing an Asian child for ASD must be culturally sensitive

Creator:
Rue Adler (she/they)

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a range of manifestations of neurodivergence, for which there seems to be a lot of cultural variability in terms of diagnostic and prevalence rates. While the reasons for this might be highly varied, one issue that warrants special attention is whether the diagnostic criteria for ASD are sufficiently culturally sensitive. In other words, the criteria for ASD were created in a Western cultural context, with particular cultural assumptions baked in; but those cultural assumptions might not hold in other cultures, like Asian cultures. Rue’s paper delves into some cultural issues that may pertain to the differential diagnostic rates of ASD, specifically involving Asian diaspora. What kinds of cultural differences do you think may interfere with current diagnostic efforts of ASD among Asian diasporic communities?

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Let’s Get Screened

Acknowledging that there tare cultural narratives around sex is critical

Creator:
Aysan Dehghani (she/hers)

One of the most important public health issues facing a country with a significant immigrant population is addressing sexual health among immigrant women, particularly those from more sexually conservative cultures. Such cultural conservatism, and an overarching cultural environment that treats public health in a culture-blind way, create access barriers for such immigrant women. This severely jeopardizes their sexual health specifically, and overall health more generally. Many cultures within Asian cultural spheres embody such forms of conservatism, which poses challenges for immigrant women from those cultures to have sufficient agency over their own health, especially when cultural perspectives significantly overlap with religious perspectives. Aysan takes on the specific issue of cervical screening and increasing health challenges facing Asian immigrant women in Canada by examining the cultural factors at play. If you were a medical healthcare worker, how might you try to help such patients address their concerns so they can have greater agency over their own health?

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Asian Girls in Western Worlds

“Ni hao”

Creator:
Rachel Leong (she/hers)

Growing up as racialized diaspora almost certainly means being subject to particular experiences, including not being assumed that you are born domestically (despite being a multi-generational Canadian), or having people assume that you speak Mandarin because you look Chinese (if your face is remotely East Asian-coded), among others. It is only in the recent decade that there has been a proliferation of media from Asian diasporic filmmakers who have been able to unironically poke fun at such racist tropes that Asian diaspora faces to a mainstream audience, not just camp movies that stay within diasporic communities. Rachel analyzes the film, White Elephant from filmmaker Andrew Chung, to discuss portrayals of constant “otheredness” that diaspora experience – a film that, as of the writing of this description, is featured on the mainstream platform CBC Gem. Are these experiences that you have had if you belong to a racialized diasporic group?

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Emotional Damage – EEAAO

The model minority myth adds another layer of complexity to our understanding of intergenerational trauma

Creator:
Meagan Ng 吳曦琳 (she/hers)

Media representation is an important factor for how people understand themselves – who they are, what their identity is, and how to think about their experiences. For cultural minorities in society, they are often left with stereotyped roles that both leave a small space within which individuals can imagine themselves, and never really accurately portray their cultural experiences. Throughout Asian Canadian/American history, few media productions have been able to do justice to Asian diasporic experiences; but Everything, Everywhere, All At Once shattered barriers and allowed the Asian diaspora to really see themselves and their experiences be portrayed effectively in Hollywood. In her paper, Meagan delves into how the movie deftly portrays the cultural nuances of sensitive themes like intergenerational trauma and mental health stigma. If you’ve watched the movie, how did you feel about the movie’s portrayal of cultural themes?

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Working in the Global North

[S]tructures like a capitalist and exploitative nation-state will only see people…as just bodies that need to contribute to empowering those in control even further, no matter the cost

Creator:
Divine Reyes

An important aspect of Asian diasporic discussion within a capitalist system is the intersection of labour politics, gender, and racialization. For a long time, the provision of care-taker labour in Canada, whether in terms of medical care or domestic care, has been disproportionately shouldered by racialized women and femmes…particularly those with more complex migration histories because of the broader economic relationship between the Global North and the Global South characterized by one-sided exploitation. In Divine’s interview, her mother speaks about her experience creating and living and exercising agency within a predatory economic system and the difficulties that all of that entails. Have you noticed this kind of intersectional breakdown of care-taker labour around you?

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Queerness and Multiculturalism

[T]hey can bridge the intersections of their identity to find self happiness.

Creator:
Shih-wei Wang 王詩薇

Whenever race is discussed, there is often an implicit heteronormativity that pervades those discussions. Shih-wei’s paper complements another paper in this collection (by Clover Lee) by centring the representation of queer Asians. Unlike Clover’s paper, however, Shih-wei focuses on the experiences of queer Asians as portrayed through literature. In doing so, she breaks down the social construction of a “queer Asian diasporic identity” by reflecting on all the different ways in which such an identity is constructed within the context of a Eurocentric and heteronormative hegemony. As you read through Shih-wei’s paper, if you embody a queer Asian diasporic identity, do her reflections resonate with you?

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Invisible Queerness

Being queer and Asian is “a very powerful identity.”

Creator:
Clover Lee (she/they)

Mainstream discussions around diversity and representation often revolve around culture/race/ethnicity; but it’s obvious that an intersectional approach is needed to better address and understand people’s experiences. What happens when race and queerness intersect? What kinds of experiences do they have that might be different from those who aren’t queer? In Clover’s paper, she explores the experiences of queer Asians in Vancouver to illustrate the power of such an intersectional identity, and also the challenges of embodying this intersectional identity while navigating an LGBTQIA+ space that is very White-centric, as well as domestic spaces that are very heteronormative. While it is challenging to have to navigate these spaces and deal with discrimination in multiple forms in numerous spaces, the people featured in Clover’s paper are resolute in their pride for their identity.

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Can’t Use What’s Not There

Can’t Use What’s Not There

Creator:
Ghoncheh Eijadi

When we think about racialized or diasporic individuals establishing a livelihood in Canada, the prototypical conceptualization is an immigrant; but there are many others who do not fall into that group despite also trying to establish a livelihood here. This includes refugees, who often have very different experiences and are subject to very different obstacles from immigrants. Discussions around diasporic health, then needs to include this as well. From this perspective, Ghoncheh writes about IRER groups (Immigrants, Refugees, Ethno-Cultural, and Racialized) and their need for better and more culturally appropriate mental health support. In particular, Ghoncheh tries to outline the issues regarding the underutilization of mental health services among IRER groups, and lays out policy recommendations for how to rectify this issue.

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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When What’s Available Isn’t Enough

This population of millions in Canada needs immediate attention with culturally-adept solutions to improve their mental health

Creator:
Harleen Kaur Hundal

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated families around the world; but such effects have disproportionately hit certain populations more than others. Internationally, this in differences can be seen in infection/hospitalization/fatality rates across the world. Nationally, this disparity across various social lines, most prominently based on ethnicity. As COVID-19 swept across Canada, each province and territory had to figure out how to best manage this virus, often shutting down who sectors of economic activity while relying on those performing essential services to keep the world running. Unfortunately, zooming into Greater Vancouver, many essential services are visibly and disproportionately reliant on racialized folks, whether this include grocery store workers, truckers, healthcare providers, laundry service providers, meat works, or many others. This places racialized folks at a much greater risk of becoming infected with, or dying from, COVID-19 – including South Asian diaspora. Read Harleen’s impassioned letter to her Member of Parliament, Hon. Carla Qualtrough, as she dissects the racialized impact of the pandemic, and what needs to be done to help the South Asian diasporic community. So what can be done beyond the generic colour-blind health interventions that are already available?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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“I don’t feel like I am desirable”

[G]ay Asian men must get their membership ‘approved’ when white gay men do not.

Author:
Nathan Bawaan

Nathan writes about the experiences of Asian Gay and Bisexual Men (GBM) and men who have sex with men (MSM), and the struggles that they often have to deal with – systemic racism within LGBTQ+ communities, the resulting internalized racism, and how both impact their mental health. As Nathan explains, Asian GBM and MSM exist in a system in which they sometimes reject their own ethnic identities and idealize Whiteness (and particularly White gayness), often out of a desire to fit into LGBTQ+ spaces. This piece dovetails nicely with Tiffany Ou’s animation about the stripping down of the fight for queer liberation into effectively a gay White man’s struggle. Nathan points out that this kind of self-loathing, to the point of not recognizing oneself as being desirable, presents particularly difficult mental health challenges for Asian GBM and MSM – with extremely concerning physical health implications, too. How, then, can Asian GBM MSM find community within LGBTQ+ spaces, or must they create their own?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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