Love on the Front Lines: Asian American Motherscholars Resisting Dehumanizing Contexts through Humanizing Collectivity

ABSTRACT In this article, we, four Asian American Motherscholars, share our collective resistance and resilience and our commitment to practicing solidarity through the intentional centering of radical love in our interactions with one another and in our professional lives. Through collaborative autoethnographic analysis grounded in a framework of Asian American feminist coalitional resistance, we share how our relationship, built on our fluid and multiple identities as Asian American Motherscholars and alliance, allowed us to challenge dominant structures of dehumanization to make space to honor our humanity. We highlight the period of time from mid-March 2020 to mid-May 2020, immediately following social-distancing orders in our respective states due to COVID-19, as a particularly salient moment at which the nexus of our identities took center stage in our conversations and collaboration. Our study focuses on the central research questions, How, through love, can we resist dehumanization in times of crisis? How does love make space for our full humanity as Asian American Motherscholars?