We are now more than a week into Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Since it’s not always clear to me what is generally known (or not known) about Asian Americans, let me test out a few things here. Did you… Read More ›
Asian American
Social Transformation in the Urban Context (a.k.a. PANAAWTM 2016) By Grace Yia-Hei Kao
In a few days I’ll be heading to Chicago to attend another conference—PANAAWTM to be exact. PANAAAWTM stands for “Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry.” As I’ve explained in a previous blog, PANAAWTM’s deepest roots… Read More ›
A Tale of Two Conferences (Or Reflections of a Parent Who Occasionally Travels for Work) by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
In the space of twelve days I will have taken two inter-continental and two transcontinental flights to attend two conferences. I will have slept in my own bed in sunny Los Angeles for only four of those nights and been… Read More ›
Liberations of Immigrant Women in Western Religious Conversion by Andreea Nica
The prolonged debate around feminist subjectivity and religious participation continues to evoke much compelling discussion in academia, political arenas, and public space. There have been a number of academic studies around the intersection of gender, religion, and migration, specifically on… Read More ›
Ringing In the Lunar New Year with LGBT Activism By Grace Yia-Hei Kao
On Sunday, February 10, the Tet parade in Little Saigon, Westminster (CA) went on as planned. Several thousand people turned up to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, or what Khanh Ho, Assistant Professor of English at Grinnell College, has likened… Read More ›
Government “Apologies” for Historical Injustices: Why They Matter
“I rejoice in this most recent admission of institutional racism. I am not naïve enough to believe that this public acknowledgment, like previous ones to other racial-ethnic groups, was untainted by political calculations. But I am also not Kantian (so… Read More ›
Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“Did you know that…the Asian population grew faster than any other race group in the United States between 2000 and 2010…[and that] Chinese is the second most widely spoken non-English language in the country (behind Spanish)”?
The Boldness of Grace Ji-Sun Kim by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“The Grace of Sophia is an openly ‘syncretistic’ work.”
The Power of Feminist Rituals by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“These were very simple rituals and yet they were so powerful.” Jeanette Stokes’ 25 Years in the Garden is on my bedside table. It’s a book I read several years ago with a small group of feminist Christians when I… Read More ›
My First Experience at a Women-Only Conference by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“This ain’t your daddy’s conference!” I knew that I was going to be attending a totally different type of conference than I had ever been to before when I received the following instructions on additional items to pack: (1) my… Read More ›
A FEMINIST TAOIST VOICE PART 1: MY DIALOGUE WITH ELISA FON, ACUPUNCTURIST, TAOIST, FEMINIST AND FRIEND by Sara Frykenberg
“So it all kind of depends… even in men compared to men, and women compared to women, you would have to have a counterpart to judge something as yin or yang—you are never statically just yin or just yang…” Elisa… Read More ›
“Passing” for White to Get Into Harvard? By Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“[G]rowing numbers of Asian Americans are not taking a ‘wait and see’ approach about whether elite colleges are discriminating against Asian Americans on account of their race, but have been acting under the assumption that they have been and still are.” Asian Americans and Harvard… Read More ›
Participating in Beauty Culture
“I…liked how we were neither dogmatic in our judgments (i.e., no one played the role of feminist fashion police), nor laissez-faire in thinking that ‘anything goes’—after all, feminists were the ones who had popularized the slogan the ‘personal is political.’” At the… Read More ›
A Next Wave of Scholarship By Kwok Pui Lan
I came to the United States in 1984 to begin my doctoral studies at Harvard Divinity School. It was an exciting time to do feminist theology and religious studies. Womanist ethics just began to emerge, as Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon… Read More ›
Getting Tenure, Part II: On Being the First of My Kind by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“I am honored to be the first person of Taiwanese heritage, and first Asian American woman, to have earned tenure at CST.” I’ve recently recounted how it took a village for me to complete the rite of passage known as tenure… Read More ›
Halloween Matters: An Immigrant Family, Christian, and Feminist Parenting Perspective by Grace Yia-Hei Kao
“I had realized that my parents legitimately had more important things to do than to carve pumpkins or buy costumes. But as a young child, I equated participating in the cultural phenomenon that is Halloween with being an American. I,… Read More ›
