2022 – ACAM 320B student submissions

April 30, 2022April 30, 2022

“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?

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April 30, 2022May 5, 2022

Dear Hon. David Eby

Cultural competence is an essential asset for healthcare providers

Author:
Elisha Fu 傅羽佳

When your community is faced with a problem, it can be hard to know how to even begin to address and tackle it. Leveraging her own experiences, Elisha decided to take on the issue of the underutilization of mental health support services among Asian Canadian communities with this draft letter to her Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), the Honourable David Eby. In this letter, Elisha discusses the scope of the problem at hand, and the devastating impact it can have on Asian disapora in Canada. Through her research, she proposes several important recommendations that the government should consider to ensure that there is sufficient culturally safe mental health resources that Asian diasporic communities can feel comfortable accessing. If you are faced with a similar problem affecting your community, what would you say to your MLA or Member of Parliament?

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)

April 30, 2022July 11, 2022

Intersectionality Matters!

Both Asian Canadians and LGBTQ+ Canadians are facing increasing rates of discrimination and violence

Author:
Tsuba Shima (she/her)

Health is a huge issue when it comes to the Asian diaspora for numerous reasons – cultural barriers, traditional systems of medicine, discrimination, and other factors all play an important role. The discussion that needs to take place with greater prominence is understanding how racialization, gender, and sexual orientation all intersect with each other to better explain and account for variability in health. Tsuba conducts a comprehensive review to examine whether or not such intersectionality matters when examining health disparities. In particular, do conventional health trends regarding racialized settlers in Canada replicate for racialized LGBTQ+ folks, and what implications does this have for future research involving this topic?

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)

April 29, 2022April 30, 2022

Filipino Media Representation and Colonial Mentality

“Most of us are expatriates right here in our own land. America is our heartland whether we get to go there or not.” – Conrado de Quiros

Author:
Gabrielle Abando

The Philippines is an infinitely diverse country with a rich precolonial and postcolonial history. Notably, though, the several centuries of colonization inevitably left their indelible mark on the Philippines in things like beef caldereta, champorado, and spamsilog. As benign as those examples might be, colonialism had more insidious effects, most notably affecting the psychology of the local population. This effect, more generally referred to as a colonial mentality, has impacted consequential aspects of life including standards of beauty, social stratification that prizes Whiteness, migratory aspirations, and Western idealization. In considering these issues, Gabrielle presents a research proposal to address a greatly important question: To what extent do second-generation North American Filipino diaspora identify with media about Filipinos and how does this facilitate distance or proximity to their Filipino ethnic identities?

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)