Queer and Asian in the American South: Mid-1990s Diary

In this contribution to the forum we recall our experiences of doing Asian queer community-based organizing in Atlanta in the mid-1990s. We draw on the friendship and community that we formed at that time, and the friendships that persist between us and many other people whom we met and worked with then. These networks are part of the politically progressive community space we helped to build, which grew, changed, and eventually gave way to other projects and spaces. Here we focus on our efforts to organize APLBN, the Asian Pacific Lesbian Bisexual Network, a precursor to later Asian queer and trans organizational formations that accounted for gender diversity more explicitly in their monikers, including APLBTN (Asian Pacific Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans Network) and API-QXX.APLBN organizationally—and we individually—interacted with and helped to build then-nascent Asian and Pacific Islander national queer networks. The politics of the moment we reflect on here preceded the changes that were wrought via marriage equality and Lawrence v. Texas,1 both of which we experienced as mainstreaming American queer politics considerably. By the mid-1990s, the stigmatization of queerness seemed quaint, but was still contextualized by the formal criminalization of homosexuality in most of the world, even as this criminalization was seen as anachronistic and vestigial compared with anti-queer harassment that was a feature of everyday life. The moment we reflect on also preceded the emergence of Black Gay Pride in Atlanta, which so profoundly changed the context for queer and trans organizing in Atlanta we are discussing here. In the 1990s, visible and culturally legible LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities in Atlanta were overwhelmingly white. APLBN existed within a national context that reflected this racialized context; it included other Asian queer community spaces, but was one of the few that was by and for people who were not cis-men. It existed in a moment when tensions amongst queer organizations included how “political” they should be. Although all organizations and spaces were somehow connected with HIV/AIDS-related organizing, there were tensions around whether and how these organizations should focus on criticizing U.S. imperialism and immigration policies, classism, racism, and misogyny, and whether these should be addressed via policy interventions or more direct action. All of these questions rendered stark distinctions within the organizational milieu in which APLBN existed. APLBN's explicit commitments to intersectionality, when this concept was new and offered legibility to Asian women and nonbinary people, made it countercultural within the context of LGBTQIA+ politics in the American South. In the conversation that follows, we reflect on our individual trajectories to Atlanta and APLBN, and the ways in which this moment shaped our work and, in our view, the movement and academic spaces that emerged in its wake. Svati Shah: We were “firsts” in many ways—I had been the first South Asian president of the student queer organization at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1991 and 1992, then known as the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association. Patti, you were in one of the first PhD cohorts to graduate from Emory University's storied Women's Studies Program, itself one of the first to confer graduate degrees in the field. I had moved to Atlanta from London in 1993, where I had lived for around a year. I came to study public health at Emory. I was also deciding whether or not to give in to my own further academic aspirations, and I remember being so deeply affected by you and the other Asian queer academics I was meeting at the time, all of whom were in graduate school then. It may seem quaint now, but it is important to remember that in the period we're discussing here—the early and mid-1990s—the internet did not yet exist as we know it today. Facebook didn't exist before 2004, and Google was only founded in 1998. There were messaging boards and email, but nothing on the scale of what was to come. This meant that we “found” one another using analog means, having committed to organizing in part so that we could meet other people like us who were Asian or Pacific Islander (API). National queer API networks were forming at this time too, especially on the West Coast. Desh Pardesh was also happening then, a queer/labor/feminist South Asian conference and art event in Toronto. A lot of South Asian queer and arts organizing was happening in San Francisco and New York, which I would become a part of later on, but I had started hearing about it in Atlanta, where I was also part of Trikone, the local gay and lesbian South Asian organization. These events and networks were so important for us meeting each other, finding space, and making community.I think there are a couple of things that are important to mention here about these spaces, in light of what is happening today, when identity politics are manifesting in new ways and the solidarities we thought would last forever seem frayed. First, these networks were not necessarily spaces where we felt we shared “cultural” similarities, nor did we necessarily even talk about being “Asian” per se. In that sense these were not “cultural” spaces, nor were they culturalist. They were spaces where we learned more about the capaciousness of a term like “API,” not to mention, for me, the vast diversity of caste, class, region, language, migration histories, and politics encompassed within the moniker “South Asian.” These were spaces where we forged a sense of racialized identity and solidarity. The term “Asian” in the U.S. today seems to have reverted to its usage as another name for “East Asian,” from the more capacious understanding of “Asian” that we were trying to build earlier. At that time, I think we were trying to figure out how to make these rubrics as broad as possible, while accounting for the differences within them. It was highly imperfect, but the idea of solidarity- and coalition-building was everywhere, and it seemed natural that it would be present in a queer API space too.I find talking about the politics of gender identity in the organizing we did then complicated, because so many of us don't identify as “women” anymore, if indeed we ever did. Even though the “L” stood for “lesbian,” many of us who were involved in making APLBN happen were feminists who did not actually “identify” as “lesbian” for many reasons, including its potential for misgendering some of us. To that I would add, for me, the Western valences of “lesbian”2 that have clearly changed over time. Although we weren't using the categories “cis” and “trans” yet, I remember being clear that I called myself “queer,” if anything. At the same time, I participated in these spaces because that's where “we” were and where “we”—other queer Asian folks who were not cis-men—could find each other.I also remember this as a time that was full of possibility, which may sound odd in a context that does not remember a time before the internet. Looking back, I do think we struggled with finding each other, but find each other we did. I remember similar stories in the UK and India, where people would also use fliers, messages on notice boards in cafes, newspaper ads, or word-of-mouth networking to announce physical meetings. I remember once we did a discussion/hang out on the radio because there was a Black queer feminist show on the local public radio affiliate and they invited us to speak. Five of us went and talked about being queer and API; it was scary to be “out” like that for some of us but also an amazing experience. We insisted they play Ani Difranco during the break and then got in trouble because the song we requested had an F-bomb in it. They let us carry on with the program and we were able to take calls from listeners; it felt like proper media!Patti Duncan: Oh, wow—I had forgotten about that radio show we did! And getting in trouble because of that song. And what you said about the lack of internet spaces also struck a chord with me. I guess I had forgotten that in a way! Right—we had no social media or online groups. I remember learning to do email for the first time in grad school. . . . Remember all the people with AOL accounts? So much of our organizing back then was in person. If we couldn't reach each other on the phone, we'd actually drive over to find each other. We had in-person gatherings, and someone new would show up at a march or a potluck, and we would all need to know everything about them.Svati Shah: That was a world of physical meetings, making common cause across communities of color, and no social media, which meant we could have actual privacy. People weren't afraid of what they posted online, or getting doxed for having an opinion that other people didn't like. You could make mistakes and be lonely and then not be lonely and only the people you were in touch with would know about it. Beyond the very personal register that I'm invoking here, I think this space of privacy—which we didn't even mark because there was no “other” online public space yet—this space was important for us figuring out what we were doing with terms like “Asian” or “woman.” They somehow felt much more capacious than they do now. Don't get me wrong—I live online now just like everyone else, and I deeply appreciate living in a world that has so much more space for thinking with and within trans and nonbinary gender. However, I think it's important to remember that a space of less or no legibility is also a space for other kinds of non-identitarian possibilities. It may seem counterintuitive to think of it this way, but I think it resonates with what some social science writing says about the possibilities for sociality that manifest outside of the zones of juridical legibility.3 Legibility does convey greater access to certain things—like being connected to other like-minded people online, for example, but it is also disciplinary; it produces and iterates bounded categories in its own way. I remember us using terminology like “Asian” and “woman” very loosely, or not at all when we were hanging out in your living room. I remember them mainly being used in relation to experiences of racism, or of being exoticized or misunderstood by white folks in our respective graduate programs, for example, or to describe queer spaces that were misogynist. Otherwise our interactions were so ordinary—what did we spend all those hours and days talking about? Dating? School? Work? The next meeting we were organizing? Community and academic drama? It was just the everyday act of living and being friends in our twenties, figuring out what we were thinking about things, our families, right?Patti Duncan: Yes! Thinking back to that time . . . I moved to Atlanta in the early 1990s to attend the PhD program in Women's Studies (now Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) at Emory, like you mentioned. I was also volunteering at the Pan-Asian Community Center in the Buford Highway area, working with Asian immigrant and refugee elders on adjusting to life in the U.S., accessing and to take the I to be in community with other Asian and Asian American people, and the work at the community gave me an to do that felt I had been a and I was the of a immigrant and I was with finding my way the of the and also a to to my I also felt this need to find other API queer much in those but at the of my is the organizing and work we did as Asian Pacific American queer I remember what a community we around local and of us were queer women of then as we started finding each other, trying to a queer API you was very in my and as a API queer I remember so many And of of our at which there was an of of and all of us making for the next or The Lesbian had just started in New and went around the new of us Lesbian and learned how to I think we from their and and the use of to We participated in the very first at and our for APLBN, and later and then I think we changed the name of our a few as we worked out what it to be in with one to build to all of Emory, I was to study with who like and Lesbian early queer where I first The of and of the I also a grad with on Black where how to do feminist I was for the queer of I had and and This while in my very first and I them around with me as I to figure out my in the a on and us about an conference on queer and queer to take in I a which was and that was my first academic conference where I met a for me, which I still of the that at the conference were for me in terms of thinking about academic and feminist and queer There was this sense of about being in a space full of queer what queer be. At the same time, there was a of people of on the conference and the of the to the ways was still being We felt even while still being in that at some we were on a at a conference in Atlanta about being queer and Asian Pacific and I don't remember all the but what out to me is a from someone in the who said with our I think we had been talking about some of our experiences of and being queer and API in the and I remember we both had a very to we some time the to our and in being who we It felt important to convey how amazing it is to be queer and API and to our to the of we I think that's when it clear to me how much we APLBN These spaces we were spaces of but they were also spaces of Shah: Oh, they were spaces of with the folks you I was thinking of our meeting with had been by in So much of our with academics like who was also between these spaces It was before there was a to queer and feminist in the when there were people like some of the academics we are here, but there was also a of still doing that work as and who had other kinds of with the few in the academic The context now has its own of do more and more people to be able to get queer and gender of I also the of the which to as I think of people who academics later who went to New in the early to and be part of the for I had my own of by to live in London because I had about a queer South Asian organization there from a gay that someone from had me. you now because you in a And then you would up there and actually meet people and make amazing friends because of I experienced in London is the of what we're talking about here, but I to mention it because you and our community of I came back from and I think of it as being a in my You all what that have been like for me to to Atlanta from living in a in South our space in Atlanta but because the queer community was in touch with my white and South Asian queer friends in and that we were all part of a much It all felt very to London to to find queer South Asian community was for me connected with to the West for that Asian queer that some folks still It didn't for example, for us to use the for in our in Atlanta because we our space to too, and we were connected with national networks of queer and that were of Pacific and this as connected with that of being Duncan: there were a few queer Pacific Islander of our who talked about how so many other did not or rendered them their We were learning and trying to and where we could all a sense of Shah: There were other of I mention that I would to your take The first was the that I felt in the other there was one of that to and the API that was happening There was another for me, to the UK and to the of my time in Atlanta I went to on my own for the first time because I had the to live in and work as an at an organization working in the It was the of what my which my with it being the of my it was also the of some with people and organizations in India, my commitments and the of living there that to the All this at that time, for people who had been in the it is so much more but then I remember it being important to have you and our other friends in the API queer space who could what that have been and you went to not as I was important for us then, as it is now, is the politics of those were so much part of in the U.S., and it made sense to with I think because we were not involved in a in Atlanta, it made sense to other We were for solidarities everywhere, and I think we and made them happen in the Duncan: Oh, that time you in felt so and I remember talking about it and hearing your That was part of what me to to I felt a similar in terms of to my in the world within a my used to talk about as and so I guess some part of me that's how it would for me. That not the at a American who had up in the U.S., I had so many questions about and and I to my much of which had been by and within a I the questions I had weren't just about me or my were part of a of questions and to the the U.S. of South and the of women working in my who met my there when was in with the U.S. to at that in my life was for how it was to be especially for those of us to U.S. and women who worked in or around the I learned a lot during that time, but it was so very queer API and at that time, I think we were trying to make with our and trying to get to that queer to be in a This was I was also in my which later my first This Asian American and the of In the of writing my I learned about the work of and was to get to spend a doing at an at and art affected me I felt like was able to name the sense of and with being work also an personal I during that time, of which is in in Asian by and Shah: I remember with you about that to and the you had on to I We all gave each other so much to do the next And your work for The last of I to mention of the of us being in the South. to how important the of and in the South was for us then, and to be now. I the South in for New York, I remember in that of way, but I also remember the of that people in in the U.S. had a very idea of what the South It me a while to that people in New are just as as folks are in the but we a of I both the way people have of with each other, and the legibility for the and very movement that exist in the South. The American South being the of so much in the of the of and meant that it was also the of and to those my time in when I was by who were part of of writing and to the movement spaces in Atlanta that were and doing queer I know it would have been so had there not been a context in which people were making for example, in like and to and as in the that in to the and that preceded the in Duncan: being in the South during those was in many about the of and and the of and there was Black queer folks were very visible and and like you it was some of the Black queer who the of APLBN, and they us and our I remember being part of a at feminist that Black and API queer women to talk about our shared and and the was It was amazing to be part of that of coalition-building as we worked to with one the same time, I don't think I had a very sense yet of the of of us in a on a for a called in The by and They had out to us to in the about Asian American and so we an in the A of Islander Lesbian, Bisexual, and of felt so in the as Asian and Pacific Islander queer it felt important at the time to and name I think we'd this now, with more of and the of was important in that was our to of to and the way and had been in very and to an feminist queer In the we our as Asian and Pacific Islander queer women living in the racialized of and and We also how it was to find one another and to our This is what I remember most about being queer and Asian American in the in and of finding one the we had for each other, and the we experienced in our organizing and Shah: I so you And the ways we were by Black queer in the You were there and did so much more I including the here. I for graduate school living in Atlanta for a few but having most of my life in the American for New in my felt and I remember Atlanta as the last in the South I was to live in and I think of of ways my own thinking has changed that time as We are all thinking about more and now, in light of the at this is in The context we are living today me more clearly about the differences between in the and and the ways of the and South of us who are South Asian and working in South Asian Studies are thinking with as as and in ways that on the interventions of the I so to live with the of these with the that they in relation to and people who also spaces when we of queer Asian and Pacific Islander organizing in the is still to be It would not with the 1990s, but much with the of the and the of migration and in which API in the is The 1990s are a in this for that we have to describe a that is Although has on very over time, this a moment when the of its was being via spaces like

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