Aaron Tam A01 Week 5

Blog

For week fives reading assignments, I chose to blog about the topic of "Precariously Positioned: Asian American Women Students Negotiating Power of Academia" by Shannon Deloso. The topic of Deloso's segment in this book stresses student activism as a whole, especially for asian American women in academia. This documents her idea of student activism and how to change the script of the social norms in academia, as well as a personal account of how she did so as a student activist.

Although I am not an asian American female in academia, I do know how it feels personally to have something important to me not be in my favor due to prejudices of sort. I personally do believe in activism to a certain extent, and I feel as though in relation to the course content, Professor Valverde was an activist in many ways as well. She often tells us many stories about how she was prejudiced as an asian American female in academia and how she had to stand up for what she believed in in order to succeed. Her writing this book was a form of activism as well.

I think that personally, choosing to stand up for what you believe in is the first step in pushing for change. There are many forms of activism as well as many aspects that would make it easier or more difficult to pursue. I believe that in an academia environment however, most of the time those protesting or being activists do in fact receive some form of positive change on their behalf. This is why I support activism in the academic environment so much, due to the fact that although not all the time, it has worked in the past. The student body is very powerful as a whole. This excerpt from the book tied in directly to what the Professor has been preaching about that last couple lectures, and I think it is very meaningful how similar both of their accounts are. In a way as well as an asian American, I feel infuriated as well due to how my fellow asian Americans are treated and how there is an overarching theme behind all of this.

Media



Sources

Hampton, Caleb. “UC Davis Students Condemn Chinese Censorship.” Davis Enterprise, 18 Nov. 2019, www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/uc-davis-students-condemn-chinese-censorship/.

Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline, and Wei Ming Dariotis. Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars' Resistance and Renewal in the Academy. Rutgers University Press, 2020.