Category: Papers

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It’s Not One-Size-Fits-All

Everyone in Canada deserves to have the same access to healthcare.

Creator:
Samantha Wong 黃千殷 (She/her)

Mental health is a challenging concept to grasp at best, and downright seemingly intractable when considering the different layers of issues that can further complicate one’s experience with mental health. Too often, racialized individuals attempting to access mental health support are left with options and practitioners who do not share their cultural backgrounds, views, or practices. Without taking into consideration the numerous ways in which a client forms their identities (whether it’s gender identity or cultural identity), mental health supports simply cannot effectively address the unique needs of those clients. As Samantha details in her letter to her Member of Parliament, it is clear that the current state of mental health support is most effective at providing support for those who belong to the cultural mainstream, leaving racialized (and other marginalized) populations in a worse position to handle their mental health struggles. If it were up to you, what would and equitable mental health care system look like, and what challenges have you seen within the existing mental health care system?

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Make Health Care Accessible to All

Everyone in Canada deserves to have the same access to healthcare.

Creator:
Claire H.

Despite the ideals behind the Canadian healthcare system – that it is universal and accessibile to all, the reality reveals a slightly different scenario. This occurs for numerous reasons, including language barriers and geographical distribution of medical services. This is further complicated by the labyrinthine intersections of local, provincial, and federal approaches to health care provision, which means that any potential solutions will undoubtedly have to be difficult, multi-faceted, and subject to the partnership of all three levels of government despite potentially wildly different political perspectives and goals. In this letter to her Member of Parliament, Claire lays out her perspective of what lie at the heart of inequity in access to health care in Canada, and what may be done about it. Have you, or those around you, experienced difficulty in accessing health care, and how might that be related to people’s varying identities?

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On Asian Canadian Queer Activism

They compel me to fight a little harder for justice – for others like me, and even for myself.

Creator:
Anonymous

One of the most notable aspects about academia in a Western context is in its lack of diversity in terms of the “object” of academic inquiry, such as the lack of discourse around the experiences of various cultural/ethnic communities. This lack of diversity is pervades through various domains of academic study, including that of queerness in Canada. While plenty of work exists to articulate the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals within the cultural mainstream, the same cannot be said of those among cultural/ethnic minorities. This dovetails with the activism scene as well, where queer activism has long been seen as representing and benefiting queer White folks, with racialized queer folks feeling increasingly left out of activism spaces. It is then left to racialized queer media to highlight the work of racialized queer activists to showcase the history of work that has been done, and the work that continues to happen. In this paper, the anonymous writer profiles Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians, a documentary by Richard Fung, and showcases the struggles, efforts, and resilience that the racialized queer community demonstrated (continues to demonstrate) in Canada. What do you think queer liberation should look like if it were to achieve true equality, and how would queer spaces look different if that were the case?

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Depression & Suicide

“[K]eep it in the family”

Creators:
Reeva Bhandal ਰੀਵਾ (she/hers)
Tracy Ngo 吴雯娜 (she/hers)

It is not a secret that Asian diaspora face particular challenges when it comes to mental health, particularly dealing with depression and suicide – both from within their cultures, and outside their cultures. From outside their cultures, they have to deal with a lot of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Within their cultures, there is also a lot of conservatism and misunderstanding about mental health that prevents effective usage of mental health support. These complex problems require multi-faceted solutions – solutions that can greatly benefit from enough State-level financial support. In this letter to their Member of Parliament, Reeva and Tracy lay out the problems in detail, followed by impressively in-depth and well-researched solutions that they request from the government. Are there any other solutions not on the list that you’d like to see – whether from the government or from Asian diasporic communities?

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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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