AAPI Heritage Month

quizzes

Quiz: Which Queer Book Should You Read To Close Out AAPI Month?

Please enjoy a captivating queer read by an AAPI author as we move into the season of leisurely reading by the pool and generally being gay.

Em Win —

May 28, 2023

af+

Editor’s Notes: On AAPI Heritage Month 2021

To exist as a queer/trans Asian/Pacific Islander means to put your stakes in the ground and to say, “I am all of these identities, and I exist, so therefore these…

himani —

May 31, 2021

first person

The Right to Breathe

I think of the moment I was born, how I must not have cared at all how loud I screamed. I needed to breathe. I needed everyone to know I…

xoai pham —

May 31, 2021

first person

The Birth and Death of a Name

This is the story of the birth and death of my name, which means that it is a story about transition, which means that it is necessarily a story about…

S Sukardi —

May 26, 2021

identity

Mourning the Loss of Indigenous Queer Identities

This is the legacy of colonization. It is the mass extinction of identities and languages that can no longer exist because someone else said they were bad.

Astrud Bowman —

May 24, 2021

visual art

These Portraits Depict the Radiance of Asian Trans Leaders

Trans Vietnamese artist, Jean Pham, shares an original portrait series, spotlighting and revering trans Asian leaders as subjects in the midst the heightened violence in both Asian and trans communities.

Jean Pham —

May 20, 2021

gender

What You Think A Woman Looks Like

Recognizing that I was never going to fit comfortably into my American peers’ idea of masculine or my Indian family’s idea of feminine meant freedom to throw out both scripts…

Nat Razi —

May 19, 2021

identity

How Tam Found Empowerment in the Closet

What are you to do when you are a Vietnamese asexual and aromantic woman who grew up in white, cishet, francophone-dominated Montreal in the 1980s and 1990s?

Diamond Yao —

May 17, 2021

love + sex

The Complicated Nature of Sex for Asian Women

Our trans subject editor Xoai Pham speaks to Jayda Shuavarnnasri, Thai-American sexuality educator and resident #SexPositiveAsianAuntie, about sexual violence, myths about polyamory, and what it means to take up space…

xoai pham —

May 13, 2021

first person

When Love Is A Matter Of Desperation

Loneliness is an old bedfellow of mine; despair, my oldest friend. If I can come to embrace those parts of myself I’ve always tried to push away — perhaps, that…

himani —

May 11, 2021

first person

Learning To Live After My Younger Brother Died

When I unexpectedly lost my little brother to cancer, I had to learn how to close out his unfinished business and live life again without him.

An Bùi —

May 26, 2020

identity

The Price I Pay For(ever) My Culture

Being a first-gen, Indigenous, queer, Samoan girl in diaspora almost cost me my Samoan culture. But one day, I’m going to be the queer Samoan elder who looks my grandchildren…

Terisa Siagatonu —

May 25, 2020