#UnapologeticallyAsian Manifesto 2024
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In 3rd grade, my teacher, Mrs. Rappaport, taught my class that we (as in Americans) warred with Native Americans. The first thought I had hearing this was who’s “we”? I knew I didn’t look like those colonizers in the paintings in my history book. I didn’t ask the question out loud at the time but it definitely reserved a space in my young, impressionable mind. Returning to this question now, I have come to acknowledge the privileges of being a US-born citizen along with the prejudice and discrimination that comes with placing “Chinese” in front of “American”.
In an essay entitled, "Beyond Land Acknowledgments” by Chelsea Vowel (also known by her Cree name âpihtawikosisân ah-pih-du-wi-GO-si-sahn), states:
"Moving beyond territorial acknowledgments means asking hard questions about what needs to be done once we’re ‘aware of Indigenous presence’. It requires that we remain uncomfortable, and it means making concrete, disruptive change. How can YOU be in good relationship with Indigenous peoples, with non-human beings, with the land and water?"
Before I even talk about the dance that I dance, I must talk about the land I dance my dance on. Accepting being “American” in nationality has been hard given our country is mainly signaled by White folks AND I still have responsibility holding the privileges of being a US citizen to be in right relationship with our land and our original people. To be born in the United States, is to recognize that this country was formed in the wake of genocide of the peoples indigenous to the land. And that there has been no formal acknowledgment by the US government of the genocide of Native Americans, nor any reparations, compensations, or land back offered as a result of this intentional tragedy.
Tonight, we acknowledge that we are standing on the occupied land of the Munsee Lenape and the Canarsie. I want to express eternal gratitude to Creator and wholeheartedly thank the spirits of the land now known as Long Island City, for allowing us to gather in community for tonight’s event, The #UnapologeticallyAsian Gala.
#UNAPOLOGETICALLYASIAN
As I reflect back on my many years of dancing, I ask myself what does #UnapologeticallyAsian mean today in 2024?
In 2015, when I started this movement, it meant taking a very private moment in my mind and making it public as a learning platform for others. The origin story of #UnapologeticallyAsian is rooted in an experience I had at the Brooklyn Museum in May. It was Asian American Pacific Islander History Month and they were exhibiting the revolutionary Chinese contemporary artist, Ai Wei Wei. Stepping into the museum was like stepping into Chinatown; I had never seen so many people that looked like me at a Target First Saturday. And the first thing I did in my head was apologize for taking up so much space. The second thing I did, quite sharply after, was realize, there was nothing to apologize for. In this instance, I committed myself to a journey deconstructing why this specific apology wedged its way to the surface of my consciousness. Thus, the #UnapologeticallyAsian movement manifested from this self work.
As with many, the pandemic alone changed me from my very core. Layered on top of this global health experience were other experiences that opened my consciousness up about this movement I had started.
In the first year of the pandemic, I had two experiences where I was ching-chonged. In one instance, a man was holding his dog on a leash. While the dog lunged at me, the man said “Get that Chink!”. In another instance, I passed by someone who ching-chonged me in the comfort of their own car with tinted windows. And in both instances, I was going for a run, an exercise not just of physicality for me but of bodily liberation. And in both instances, I retreated very deeply inward from the psychological impact of the bigotry I experienced right outside of my own home.
In the second year of the pandemic, I returned home to finally visit my parents during Thanksgiving weekend. My hope was that after not seeing each other for 2 years, we would be so relieved to finally spend time with one another, that we wouldn’t revert back to old, toxic patterns. Lo and behold, my parents reengaged me in the same dynamics that were the building blocks of my developmental trauma. They chose their most hurtful words to linguistically disown me and I was left emotionally devastated, only to cut my trip short, vowing never to return to my childhood home. And I have not since.
These personal experiences of psychological unrest with both strangers and family, coupled with the growing reports of the rise in Asian hate crimes by over 300%, all within the backdrop of a global pandemic, forced me to ask myself,
“Where do I feel safe?”
QUEERNESS
Truthfully, I do not feel safe in a lot of spaces, especially because most are white-dominant, male-dominant, and/or heteronormative. The spaces that I often feel safest in are queer spaces.
Queerness, for me, started as a way of connecting to a community who understood me when I said over 20 years ago, “I love people and not their gender.” It led me to my first adult relationship which was with a woman, coming out to my parents, and then being excommunicated by my parents for a year once they found out.
Through queer education and gender and sexuality studies, I expanded my relationship to queerness as a way of life and the daily assertion to speak and act into existence, a world where everyone can feel safe and fully relax. And simultaneously a recognition of the inherent danger that co-exists with publicly advocating for this kind of environment. For me, Queerness is not solely about a sexual orientation or identity, but about living an unapologetic life that is political, subversive, inclusive, intersectional, and interconnected.
HIP-HOP
Hip-Hop is also about a life that is revolutionary. To be in Hip-Hop is to recognize that the very injustices that affected the birth of Hip-Hop Culture, is the same thread of inhumanity we continue to resist today through our art. Usually when I teach Hip-Hop Dance workshops I tend to “sour the mood” of what was anticipated to be a “solely fun experience” by sharing the “ugly” part of the origin story. It’s the part where the “urban architect,” Robert Moses, decided to place his own vision for the future of NYC and the comfort of upwardly mobile White folks, above the very people that lived in the Bronx who were then displaced by the forced creation of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
This extractive relationship to place anything above people is no different from the conversations I have today with people who have all the right words and all the wrong intentions. Who want to extract Hip-Hop from its roots and foundations. Who want to extract its beautiful art forms from its creators. Hip-Hop Dance / Street Dance / Club Dance are all a bodily assertion of our freedom of existence. The way we intricately carve through space and gracefully flow with time is a bold statement of to show up as ourselves and no one else.
INTERSECTIONS
Being in Hip-Hop as a 1st generation, Chinese American, queer woman, has always been an interesting set of circumstances. I resonate with the spirit of Hip-Hop and the powerful assertion of Black and Puerto Rican Americans in the US during a tumultuous post-Civil rights era. Of surviving and overcoming the Bronx Burnings, “The Great Migration” (which really was forced displacement), The Watts Riots (which coincidentally also started on August 11th in 1965), and so much more. At the same time I am constantly alert in mediating my womanhood in many male-dominated spaces, my queerness in often queer and transphobic arenas, and my guest status being Asian in Black and Brown spaces.
This balancing act is challenging and complex. To have both nuanced empathy for why some people give me the side eye and question mark face for being who I am in this art form, while also holding my ground with all that my body represents, has been an unusual strain and struggle that I manage to swiftly navigate day in and day out. .
I fight for myself and for anyone that represents a sliver of the many intersectional identities that are within me: dancer, Hip-Hop, freelance artist, professional/working artist, woman, queer, 1st generation, immigrant. While I haven’t battled in the Olympics (shoutout to B-Girl Ami, B-Girl Nicka, and B-Girl 671), I have battled the intense toxicity of so many institutions and people with my voice and my pen to see us for all of our humanity and not just the part that is convenient and/or serves their wants. I've done my best to speak from a place of educating and not berating, and from a place of communicating and not canceling; even when people have berated and canceled me for being a threat to their myopia.
HOUSE OF CHOW AS A SAFE & BRAVE SPACE
Ursula Wolfe Rocca stated:
“It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that they’re all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.”
For me, being #UnapologeticallyAsian is a deliberate choice. It is everything I always wanted to be, but had immense difficulties ever imagining myself to be. No amount of black eyeliner, bubble tea, peace signs, bebe clothing, soup noodle bowls, clueless White boyfriends (yeah, I said it), etc. will ever measure up to the intense need for us to critically and actively define how we move as Asians in the US. My goal in centering Asians is not to drown out other movements or cultures, but to be an example within my cultural identity of what it can look like to show up as your full self in everything you do, in everywhere you go, and in everyone you meet. It’s about recognizing that many cultural and social movements in our world are interconnected by the pure desire for humanness and a revolution towards a world that is more just and inclusive.
Being Chinese American is not a “part of me”. It is all of me. My DNA. My blood. My English name is Yvonne Huatin Chow and my Chinese name in Mandarin is Chow Hwa Wei. Centuries back, my father’s family chose the beginning names of each generation. Our names were predetermined by family members we would never meet. “Hua” is a verb that means “to become.”. My mother then chose the next word in my name, “Wei” which stands for “bright.” So my full Chinese name means “Becoming Bright.”
As such, #UnapologeticallyAsian is a living up to my family-given name. My life manifesto, if you will. A conceptual child I birthed from my self-work to uniquely carve out my role as a leader in Hip-Hop, dance, and beyond.
To all Asians (mixed race Asians, multiracial Asians, Asian adoptees): #UnapologeticallyAsian is for you, and no one else. And here’s the space you’ll never have to apologize for. Doh Jeh.
Unapologetically,
