Pride Spotlights: Queer Asian Americans in Chinatown
This June, we’re spotlighting a few queer Asian Americans on what it means to be queer in the Asian American community.
Rohan Zhou Lee, They/Siya/祂 (Tā)
Ballet dancer, writer, community organiser (@diaryofafirebird)
What is your favorite thing about Chinatown?
Not going to lie, there are three things I currently love:
The kindness of our elders. I remember this past new year celebration on Mott I offered to make space for one to see a lion dance. They waved to say no but also for a minute held my hand.
I am the third generation of Black Chinese people in my family. Unfortunately, I cannot speak or read my ancestral languages. One of my great-grandfathers was a Paper Son, so I will never know his true name. However, coming to Chinatown almost feels like my ancestors are walking with me and smiling. There's always a sweet familiarity to it all. I briefly lived in Chinatown during my housing struggle, but even though with gentrification I cannot afford to live in a neighborhood that belongs to my people, it's always been home.
I also admire our resilience to continue to reimagine what justice for our community looks like. With the mega jail construction, we have made our mark in so many ways and will continue to do so. Instead of building any new prisons anywhere, we should be investing in healing restorative justice centers. We shouldn't have to fight for our survival in a city that is defined by historic neighborhoods like Chinatown. We should be free enough to advocate for what we need next: a Chinatown LGBT resource center, expanding support programmes for our elders, or expanding community safety resources for Disabled members of our community, the vast majority of whom have been so staunchly excluded in these discussions around anti-Asian hate crimes, all of which should be funded by the city. These are the community investments we need, not a new prison that will also serve as a direct threat to those in our community who are living beneath the poverty line, Disabled, housing insecure, unhoused, or undocumented. I know many of us feel like this struggle is hopeless, but time and again Chinatown has reimagined what resistance looks like. From the restaurant shut down and march after the police beating of Peter Yew in 1975, to the garment workers strikes in the 80s, we have defeated oppression. I believe in Chinatown. I believe in our people. I believe in Asian power. I believe in intersectional liberation.
Sammy Kim, They/Them
Artist/Sex Worker (@sammysinsss)
If you can give any advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Spend more energy discerning the doubtful from the critical. doubt will only breed more of the same, but the critical welcomes imagination and invention of something better.
What are your views of queerness within the Asian American community? Within the Chinatown community?
Queerness is an investigation of the self, a process of uncovering and becoming. The Asian American experience can often feel the same way, rooted in your ancestral lineage and diasporic reconciliation. in 2022, to be queer in the Asian American community, or the other way around, is to feel like our time is now. It is a time when the intersectional foundations of our experiences and identities will be understood, visible, celebrated, and empowered more than ever before.
What is your favorite thing about Chinatown?
The intergenerational display of Asian community that has historical roots that give me a sense of belonging.
What is your comfort food?
Sticky rice in lotus leaf, Buddha Bodai, roast pork buns, Golden Unicorn, rice cakes!
Kyo Pang, She/Her
Executive Chef & Owner of Kopitiam (@kyo_pang78)
If you can give any advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Trust your instinct, never give up, there are always surprises ahead of you.
What are your views of queerness within the Asian American community? Within the Chinatown community?
Not open enough
Favorite thing about Chinatown?
All kind of food and grocery
What is your comfort food?
Kaya toast lol ;)
Kim Sandara, She/Her/They/Them
Artist, Illustrator, Animator Museum worker, Lover of Banh mí’s (@kimthediamond)
If you can give any advice to your younger self, what would it be?
I would tell them : It’s okay to be different, the right people will always love you for it not in spite of it. I would also tell myself to start thinking about jobs outside of art school earlier, like sophomore year —and to start paying my smaller loans while I’m in school. Start researching retirement funds to invest in. Don’t let your first experience of unconditional romantic love distract you from building upon your dreams.
What are your views of queerness within the Asian American community? Within the Chinatown community?
I think queerness is more accepted in the Asian community than it’s thought to be. Queerness only became a bad thing in Buddhist Asian communities because of an overarching Christian/Catholic culture of shame. I think a lot of Asian families in America have pride about bringing themselves here to try to give a better life to their kids so I would hope those parents wouldn’t stop their kids from trying to be their fullest selves. Unfortunately it’s not so black and white. I wish it could be. I wish everyone could be proud and free. I can only speak for myself. It took my mom a few years to accept me but she was still a caring parent during the journey. The Chinatown community is funny because it’s very easy for elders and mainland Chinese folks to not read into American queerness among Asian youth. I often don’t feel clocked when I’m around with my girlfriend giggling and holding hands. We’re just gal pals. The indifference sometimes makes me feel free and happy.
What is your favorite thing about Chinatown?
Chinatown will always have a soft spot in my heart because it’s the first community to take me in when I moved here in September 2020!
Edric Huang, He/Him
Head of Research at Studio ATAO (@__erd__)
What are your views of queerness within the Asian American community? Within the Chinatown community?
I think a lot about something Ocean Vuong once said: "I do believe that queerness saved me. It made me a better person because I had to find different angles to the world. I couldn't just accept what was there." My queerness has expanded my understanding of Asian Americana, guiding me to know that notions such as "home" and "family" can be nuanced beyond the standard narrative we've accepted — that it is possible to form villages (beyond just families) around us, rooted in our intersectionality. In many ways, Chinatown knows this. Chinatown is rooted in community love, in alternative food networks that uplift our heritage, in street vendors and hole-in-the-walls who have nourished generations of kids like me. While there is a lot of work to do — unpacking phobias, generational traumas, respectability politics, toxic masculinity / gender norms, internalized racism, and more — the roots, I believe, are there.
Ji Hae Byun, She/Hers
Founder of LIVIN (@jihaebyun)
What are your views of queerness within the Asian American community? Within the Chinatown community?
Queerness within the asian american community is complex, nuanced, love, joyful, resilient, palpable, and constantly evolving.
Every pride, I'm reminded that our queer community has come a very long way since the stone wall uprising. More specifically, never could I ever have imagined that we'd be able to share space with a crowd packed with beautiful Asian American queers, AND personally engage with a majority of queer asian americans in my everyday for work.
Currently, we've been in togetherness within our community and been finding our way to each other based on commonality. It is radical to be sharing space with so many of us out here. It also feels that as we deepen our togetherness, we're also recognizing our differences that is helping us to understand what our shared responsibilities are. We as humans are not a monolith, therefore, the queer asian american community is also not a monolith: we are humans that are alike, and have nuanced experiences. Each of our experiences are incredibly nuanced. There is so much that we've uncovered so far and so much work ahead of us! As we continue figuring out what our shared responsibilities are, I'd like for us to figure out what justice fighting for justice for our queer siblings looks like even outside of our queer asian american community.
The chinatown community has shown tremendous resilience and Recently, I have been deeply moved by the mutual aid, embrace, sense of home that both the queer Asian American community and Chinatown community have created. From grass roots orgs like welcome to chinatown, send chinatown love, think chinatown to all the others who have found home within Chinatown have taken on a shared responsibility to keep Chinatown safe and alive. What has happened in Chinatown feels like a model that can be replicated to keeping other communities nourished and supported.
What is your favorite thing about Chinatown?
The character and resilience!!! The combination of the smell of fish, sewage water, baked goods and active kitchen married with all the chatter, cars honking has been a welcomed sensation especially after the long silence that bled through the community through the peak of covid.
What is your comfort food?
Kimchi Jiigae / Duen Jang Ji Ggae (kimchi stew / soybean paste soup) + any kind of asian noodle soup.
