Fight the Tower

Asian American Women Scholars’ Resistance and Renewal in the Academy

Edited by Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis

Rutgers University Press

Asian American women scholars experience shockingly low rates of tenure and promotion because of the particular ways they are marginalized by the intersectionalities of race and gender in academia. Although Asian American studies critics have long since debunked the model minority myth that constructs Asian Americans as the ideal academic subject, university administrators still treat Asian American women in academia as though they will simply show up and shut up. Consequently, because silent complicity is expected, power holders will punish and oppress Asian American women severely when they question or critique the system.

However, change is in the air. Fight the Tower is a continuation of the Fight the Tower movement, which supports women standing up for their rights to claim their earned place in academia and to work for positive change for all within academic institutions. The essays provide powerful portraits, reflections, and analyses of a population often rendered invisible by the lies that sustain intersectional injustices in order to operate an oppressive system.

Fight the Tower is engaging. Readers will immerse themselves in the lives of these authors, will readily find their own lives in these courageous narratives, and will find nurturing and applicable guidance. Yolanda Flores Niemann, co-editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia

A searing indictment of the oppressive working conditions encountered by Asian American women faculty and graduate students, and an inspiring chronicle of the struggles for liberation. This insightful volume should be read by everyone—including aspiring academics, junior and senior faculty, and university leaders. Carmen Gonzalez, co-editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia

Selected New Books on Higher Education,' compiled by Ki-Jana Deadwyler and Ruth Hammond
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Selected-New-Books-on-Higher/247595
Chronicle of Higher Education

Recommended. Choice

Fight the Tower explicitly challenges readers to action from the opening Women of Color in Academia Manifesto to the conclusion: turn research into action and join the movement to build a new academy of liberatory education that models and ‘fosters the kind of respect and empathy upon which social justice is built. International Examiner

Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde is an associate professor of Asian American studies and the founding director of the New Viet Nam Studies Initiative at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora and co-founder of the social justice movement, Fight the Tower.

Wei Ming Dariotis is a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. She is co-editor of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and co-author of the definition of critical mixed race studies.

Contents
Prologue: Taking Action: Asian American Faculty Against Injustices in the Academy
Shirley Hune
Section I: “Fear is the Path to the Dark Side”: Introducing The Fight
Waking
WP
Introduction: “The Time to Fight is Now”: Asian American Women, Academia’s Socially Engineered “Privileged Oppressed,” Go Rogue
Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis
Section 2: “That’s No Moon!”: Attack of the Institution
Who Killed Soek-Fang Sim?
WP
Chapter 1: Unpacking the Master’s Plan: Asian American Women Resisting the Language of Academic Imperialism
Eliza Noh
Chapter 2: Investigating Discrimination: Injustice Against Women of Color in the Academy
Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross
Chapter 3: Killing Machine: Exposing the Health Threats to Asian American Women Scholars in Academia
Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai
Section 3: “You Are Unwise to Lower Your Defenses”: The Phantom Menace
The Cost of Speaking
WP
Chapter 4: Precariously Positioned: Asian American Women Students Negotiating Power in Academia
Shannon Deloso
Chapter 5: Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of and By Hmong Americans
Kaozong N. Mouavangsou
Chapter 6: An Offering: Healing the Wounds and Ruptures of Graduate School
Cindy Nhi Huynh
Chapter 7: Opening the Box: An International Asian Woman Scholar’s Fight
Akiko Takeyama
Chapter 8: How to Leave Academia
Rani Neutill
Section 4: “Do. Or Do Not. There is No Try”: Radical Love as Pedagogy and Practice
She Shall Not Be Moved
WP
Chapter 9: Attack on the Spirit by the “Rational World” (and Spiritual Recovery from It)
Brett J. Esaki
Chapter 10: Care Work: The Invisible Labor of Asian American Women in Academia
Wei Ming Dariotis and Grace J. Yoo
Chapter 11: Pain + Love = Growth: The Labor of Pinayist Pedagogical Praxis
Melissa-Ann Nievera-Lozano
Chapter 12: Mothering is Liberation: Giving Birth to Alagaan Pedagogy (Pedagogy of Care)
Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales
Chapter 13: Resistance is Not Futile: From #adjuncthustle to Hell Yeah!
Genevieve Erin O’Brien
Chapter 14: Academic Symbiosis: A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies
Wei Ming Dariotis
Section 5: The Academic Awakens: “We Are One with the Force and the Force is One with Us”
Conclusion: Academics Awaken: Power, Resistance, and Being Woke
Wei Ming Dariotis and Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde
My Kintsuki
WP
Epilogue: Upward and Onward: Asian American Women’s Legal Resistance
Robyn Rodriguez
Notes on Contributors
Index

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