Reflections on Asian American Religions: Transformative Hope and APARRI

Abstract

Reflections on Asian American ReligionsTransformative Hope and APARRI Tamara C. Ho (bio) Despite the long history of Asian American authors writing about religion in US communities since the late 1800s (dating back to one of our earliest authors, Sui Sin Far), Asian American faith communities have been marginalized and persistently misrepresented in the larger public narrative of American religion because of the prevailing focus on white and Black communities and white Christian hegemony. Research and pedagogy on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) religions are often unsupported and unrecognized in the academy, both in secular and theological institutions, because of structural racism, orientalism, and epistemological blinders. US academic scholarship has operated with particularly skewed notions and stereotypical views of Asian Americans and their engagement with religion. Teaching and scholarship rarely take into consideration how race is a defining and intersectional factor in the study of religion. Reshaping public knowledge and the narrative around Asian American religions is not only timely but also urgent because of increasing concern about anti-Asian hate—metastasized during the Islamophobic period following 9/11 and the Trump presidency, and intensified by the COVID pandemic since early 2020. Asian American and Pacific Islander religious communities are important elements of racial justice work and centers of political mobilizing. More critical attention to community dynamics, coalition building, and research in this sub-field can enhance the understanding of not only international relations among the United States, Asian nations, and Oceania (the transnational region often known as the Pacific Rim), but also interracial encounters, alliances, and diverse histories within the United States. Only relatively recently has there emerged a critical mass of scholars who can understand these intertwined, intersectional dynamics of race, gender, and religion, and how they shape perceptions of Asian American religious life. For [End Page 117] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Screenshot of photograph shown by Cabezón during his online 2020 AAR presidential address. example, during his 2020 presidential address on "The Study of Buddhism and the AAR [American Academy of Religion]," José I. Cabezón shared an archival photograph from the 1960s of the "Asian Religions" section meeting at an annual AAR conference: it showed a room full of white men and an all-male cisgender panel of white scholars at the front (fig. 1).1 It was not until 2019 that the annual AAR conference hosted a panel on "Asian American Buddhism and American Belonging" that was comprised entirely of Asian American scholar-teachers of varying genders, ethnicities, and Buddhist traditions. Organized by Sharon A. Suh, this panel was notable not only in its Asian American focus and diverse embodiment, but audience members also praised its remarkable ethos of collegiality, accountability, and mutual respect—a welcome and rare shift from the formality, competition, and self-promotion that is often the normative modality at academic gatherings. As an interdisciplinary feminist comparativist, my scholarship has always focused on minoritized genders, women, and nonbinary individuals (e.g., trans-gender Burmese spirit mediums, or nat kadaw) in order to highlight how marginalized, ignored, and stigmatized populations can function as cultural producers, offering critical insights into the workings of power, community, and the logics of heteropatriarchy and hegemony. I have been told that I often cite too many folks in my research and publications. My citational practice centers on respecting and illuminating feminist [End Page 118] genealogies. In my publications, I spotlight minoritized colleagues, mentors, and friends of color whose work in critical ethnic/race studies, postcolonial/transnational feminist studies, and cultural studies has shaped, influenced, and informed my own thinking. This epistemological practice follows the tradition of Black and Native feminist theorists such as the Combahee River Collective, Alice Walker, Paula Gunn Allen, and Deborah Miranda who also named their maternal/feminist genealogies as a counterhegemonic intervention into the patriarchal ecology of knowledge production.2 Feminist theorist Sara Ahmed writes that citation is "how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way" and discusses how she intentionally cites "feminists of color who have contributed to the project of naming and dismantling the institutions of patriarchal whiteness."3 Yet Carrie Mott and Daniel Cockayne categorize...