Prompt

Draw on any
4 essays of your choice (at least 3
must be post mid-term) to compare and contrast the experiences of
different groups AAPI women, specifically around issues of gender as
it intersects with different phenomena (e.g. sexuality, race,
culture, immigration, class, law, colonialism, etc.). For each essay,
you may examine gender in relation to a different phenomenon, e.g.
for one essay you may think about the relationship between gender and
immigration as it played out in the lives of Korean women, and in
another you may be demonstrating how gender and sexuality
intersected, or gender and race, or gender and culture, and race,
etc.

Be sure to provide
at least two specific
examples of how gender affected/affects the life experiences of the
AAPI women’s communities under discussion in each essay. Be sure to
provide a brief background of the essay, and do mention the group of
AAPI women you are discussing.

Include an
introduction and a conclusion for your essay, cite your sources (MLA
style), and edit your papers well.

Additional
Guidelines:

• Due:
  Upload to canvas by 12/18 before 12:15 p.m.
• Length:
  4-5 double-spaced pages.
• Edit:
  Be sure to edit your papers. If you can, take them to the writing
  center and get help to make sure the writing is as good as it can
  get.
• Citations/Format:
  Your papers should be formatted in MLA style. Be sure to insert the
  page number when citing an author, and you to include a Works Cited
  page at the end of the paper. Check out the following link for a
  pretty detailed paper in MLA format. This paper also gives some
  ideas on how to organize your paper with an introduction, a thesis,
  and different sections (if you need to break it down in sections)
  that help the reader follow the arguments you are making. Do not get
  overwhelmed by this sample paper. Instead, just take from its
  formatting what is useful for you.
  https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/documents/20180702110400_747-2.pdf

Grading
Breakdown for this paper:

• Each of the 4
  essays you discuss will be worth 5 points (a total of 20 points). As
  previously mentioned, be sure to include a brief background from the
  essay, and 2 specific examples of how gender intersects with X to
  shape the life experiences of the community under discussion.
• The overall
  writing and formatting of the paper will account for the remaining 5
  points.

Essay#1 =
Race, Gender & Sexuality in Early Communities of Chinese Women in
the U.S.

Reading:

• Judy Tzu-Chun Wu. “Was Mom Chung a ‘Sister Lesbian?’
  Asian American Gender Experimentation and Interracial
  Homoeroticism.” Journal of Women’s History. Spring
  2001. Pp. 58-76.

Wu_WasMomChungASisterLesbian?.pdf

I included the assignment I did
on this reading/essay as an attachment

Essay
#2= Contemporary Issues: Sexual Harassment & Domestic Violence

Readings

• Sumi Cho, “Asian Pacific American Women and
  Racialized Sexual Harassment”

APA-women-and-racialized-sex-harassment.pdf

• Shamita
  Das Gupta. “Battered South Asian Women in U.S. Courts.” Chapter
  15 in “Body Evidence: Intimate Violence Against South Asian Women
  in America.” 211-225

Dasgupta.pdf

READING
QUIZ QUESTIONS & ANSWERS FOR ESSAY #2

1Q:
Sumi Cho uses the term “racialized sexual harassment” to
mean the following:

1A:
Racial stereotypes of certain groups affect the ways in which they
are sexualized and sexually harassed

2Q:The
“model minority” stereotype comes into play in the sexual
harassment experiences of AAPI women because

2A:People
are likely to see AAPI women as subservient victims who will not
fight back

3Q:According
to Sumi Cho, the two legal battles involving Asian American women
professors demonstrate that:

3A:The
universities did not side with the victims but, in fact, worked to
protect the harassers &The law needs to be able to address how
racial and gender based stereotypes combine in the ways certain
individuals experience harassment and discrimination on the job

4Q:According
to Dasgupta, one of the challenges facing South Asian immigrant women
is that:

4A:The
legal systems of their country of origin versus the U.S. laws may not
be in agreement and this creates loopholes around issues such as
divorce, custody, property, etc.

5Q:According
to Dasgupta, some of the internal barriers South Asian battered
immigrant women face in seeking help from the police and the courts
include:

5A:Language
barriers, fear of the police, and lack of knowledge about how the
legal system in the U.S. Works

6Q:According
to Dasgupta, some of the issues external to South Asian battered
women that affect their access to legal recourse include:

6A:
South Asian immigrant women are often seen as untrustworthy in the
courts, partly because of their body language and cultural ways of
communication,Attorneys internalize stereotypes about them as
indecisive and submissive and assume they will just return to their
abusers anyways,Police officers don’t take the women seriously when
they are not fluent in English,The batterers who do speak English are
much more saavy and comfortable in dealing with police officers and
courts and hence seem more trustworthy (all the above)

7Q:After
9/11, many South Asians came under government suspicion and were
detained illegally as possible terrorists. The way this impacted
battered South Asian immigrant women was:

7A:They
felt hesitant to contact police because their community was already
under attack and surveillance, and racism against South Asians had
greatly increased since 9/11

8Q:Attorneys
of South Asian immigrant battered women who are seeking gender base
asylum for them are caught in a bind. They have to stereotype an
entire culture as oppressive to women and backward in order to get
them to be able to stay in the U.S. This according to Dasgupta, is:

8A:
A problem because it stereotypes an entire culture in order to save
individual women

ESSAY
#3: Negotiating
Gender, Family and Community

Readings

Tuyet-Lan Pho and Anne Mulvey, “Southeast Asian Women in
Lowell: Family Relations, Gender Roles, and Community Concerns,”
in Contemporary Asian America, etc. Zhou and Gatewood, pp. 181-201

Pho_Mulvey.pdf

READING
QUIZ QUESTIONS & ANSWERS FOR ESSAY #3

Q1:In
the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, the following is true:

A1:Cambodians, Vietnamese and Laotians represent about 20%
of the city’s population

Q2:While the Latino parents mostly led the school
desegregation movement in Lowell, the South East Asian parents:

A2:Had mixed feelings as to why their children need
bilingual education and why their kids were now being bused to far
off places

Q3:From pages 185-187, the authors are telling us about how
many South East Asian families tend to be patriarchal (male
dominated). They make this claim based on the following:

A3:Son preference, expectations on mothers to be supportive
while fathers discuss education and careers, and the extra
restrictions placed on girls

Q4:For many South East Asian women who begin working
outside the house and earning an income:

A4:The results are mixed because even as they feel
empowered their husbands are often upset because the fall behind on
taking care of the household responsibilities

Q5:For South East Asian women in Lowell, two groups were
most likely to experience domestic violence:

A5:The elder women who did not speak English and the young
ones who were more assimilated into American culture

Q6:In the process of making the film, the group of film
makers disagreed on a number of issues around how to talk about
domestic violence in the South East Asian communities. Some reasons
for these disagreements were:

A6:Conflict over whether domestic violence should be blamed
on the men, the cultures, the extended families, the trauma of
war/refugee life, clashes with American values or American values
themselves

Q7:Toward the end of the essay, Irish American author
Mulvey writes in her reflections that the project helped her realize:

A7:That the issue of domestic violence within these
communities reveals how complex family relationships are, and how
sometimes women do not want to betray their families and cultures by
calling out the men in public

Q8:In the end the film makers decided to do the following
in/with the film:

A8:Use the high value placed on ‘culture’ to challenge
men’s violence against women as opposed to portray culture as bad
itself

ESSAY
#4 = Readings & Assignments

Readings:

Gina Masequesmay. “The Emergence of Queer Vietnamese
America.” Amerasia Journal, 2003. pp. 117-132

GinaM-1.pdf

I included the assignment I did
on this reading/essay as an attachment