Category: Activism
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Activism, Palestine, Gender, Settler Colonialism
Feminist solidarity with Gaza must challenge Western representations of #Arabmen
February 11, 2021
Thursday November 14, 2019: Sitting on my balcony looking out over the city of Amman, I sip my coffee and begin what has become an integral part of this morning ritual in every corner of the globe. I scroll through my various social media accounts, glancing over the most recent developments in Trump’s impeachment inquiry and the usual posts by friends. This morning, though, there are new posts, denouncing the latest round of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, which began just two days ago on Tuesday, November 12, 2019…
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Cooking Across Generations
April 6, 2020
On November 2, 2019, the United Women of East Africa in San Diego hosted Cooking Across Generations, a community-building gathering of local refugee families from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia to share their traditional foods and cultural performances. Funded by the Critical Refugees Studies Collective, the event was a collaboration by the UC San Diego Center for Community Health, the Karen Organization of San Diego, and the United Women of East Africa…
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Buna: on the culture, creativity, and self determination of East African refugees
January 27, 2020
Walking into a Starbucks coffee shop in San Diego, California one Sunday morning I was struck by two large images mounted on the wall: one of Ethiopian farmworkers sifting through a wide spread of roasted coffee beans and the other of a jebena, a fragile and sanctified coffee brewing device that many Ethiopian and Eritrean women in the diaspora maintain like a holy grail…
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Cipotes en Tijuana
December 16, 2019
In January of 2019, I began volunteering at Casa Asilo as part of UCSD's Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program (MMFRP). The shelter coordinator introduced me to newly arrived Melo, a 17-year old migrant from El Salvador. Through our hour-long conversation, I learned that Melo is from the same colonía as my own family.
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On Refugee Re/Enactments
July 30, 2018
In the fall of 2017, we, along with Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, began Refugee Re/Enactments, a series of activities that remembers and revives the history of social and political engagement at UCLA. Inspired by award-winning writer Toni Morrison’s concept of “rememory,” Refugee Re/Enactments grapples with the persistence of war memories through the performance of oppositional acts.
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You Didn’t Kill Us All, You Know — Part Two
April 21, 2014
Part two of this provocative essay is the first essay published in English, since 1987, which exclusively centers the Chăm in Việt Nam and their communities and identities in the US.
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