Eileen Chow: The Bones of Strangers: On Violence, Grief, and Asian-American Kin-Making

Description

Eileen Chow, an associate professor of the practice in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, will give a talk titled "The Bones of Strangers: On Violence, Grief, and Asian-American Kin-Making" for the Critical Responses to Anti-Asian Violence (CRAAV) Initiative.

What are the stories we have told and continue to tell—about grief, violence, kinship, and Asian America? How have these stories circulated as talismans of survival and as parables for building common purpose in diaspora? The inscribed, effaced, and excavated poems found on the Angel Island detention center walls, the tales of misplaced remains of 19th century railroad workers accidentally cremated and melded with the bones of strangers in lieu of proper burial, and the lost histories of the women who lost their lives in the March 2020 shootings in Atlanta—anchor my exploration of Asian immigrant storytelling in the present.

Critical Responses to Anti-Asian Violence (CRAAV) is a scholarly and community-oriented initiative to build anti-racist coalitions across Johns Hopkins University and Baltimore. Funding for this initiative has been provided by the SNF Agora Faculty Grants Program. This event is co-sponsored by the Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship Program, the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, the Department of English, and the Program in East Asian Studies.