InfoGuides: CRIM 250 Domestic Violence (Whyte): Asian and Pacific Islanders

Finding Information

(from SART website) Be aware that broad generalizations about the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community are difficult and often inaccurate because of the U.S.’s classification of this diverse and disparate group of people.

The Asian and Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV) uses the term “Asian and Pacific Islander” to include all peoples of Asian, Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander ancestry who trace their origins to the countries, states, jurisdictions, and the diasporic communities of these geographic regions.

In the United States, the Census Bureau has historically grouped “Asian and Pacific Islanders” together using a very broad brush, cutting across many countries and cultures. For instance, the Census Bureau groups peoples from countries as disparate as Saudi Arabia and Thailand.

Further complicating this grouping is the wide disparity of actual ties to the country of descent among persons described as API. These individuals can be fifth-generation Americans, like the gosei of Japanese descent, who have only tangential ties or understanding of Japanese culture, but APIs can also be those who have recently arrived to the United States and have strong linguistic and cultural ties to their country of origin.

The Pacific Islands include countries and U.S. territories such as Fiji, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Guam, Tonga, Republic of Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Hawai’i, Samoa, and Tonga.

The April 2018 factsheet, Pacific Islanders and Domestic & Sexual Violence, provides a compilation of information on Pacific Islander diversity and identities including resources for Pacific Islander survivors and advocates. This resource seeks to generate awareness about the frequently overlooked Pacific Islander community.

Find more information on API immigrants.

Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence
National Network to End Domestic Violence
Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence
Domestic Violence Against Asian and Pacific Islander Women
The National Organization of Asian Pacific Islander Ending Sexual Violence
VAW.net
Sexual Violence: the U.S. Asian & Pacific Islander Community

Book Titles

Body Evidence: Intimate violence against South Asian women in America
When South Asians immigrated to the United States in great numbers in the 1970s, they were passionately driven to achieve economic stability and socialize the next generation to retain the traditions of their home culture. During these years, the immigrant community went to great lengths to project an impeccable public image by denying the existence of social problems such as domestic violence, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, mental illness, racism, and intergenerational conflict. It was not until recently that activist groups have worked to bring these issues out into the open. In Body Evidence, more than twenty scholars and public health professionals uncover the unique challenges faced by victims of violence in intimate spaces . . . within families, communities and trusted relationships in South Asian American communities. Topics include cultural obsession with women's chastity and virginity; the continued silence surrounding intimate violence among women who identify themselves as lesbian, bisexual, or transgender; the consequences of refusing marriage proposals or failing to meet dowry demands; and, ultimately, the ways in which the United States courts often confuse and exacerbate the plights of these women.
Campus Action Against Sexual Assault
There is a chapter on Asian American snf Pacific Islander women.
Contemporary Asian American Communities
Once thought of in terms of geographically bounded spaces, Asian America has undergone profound changes as a result of post-1965 immigration as well as the growth and reshaping of established communities. This collection of original essays demonstrates that conventional notions of community, of ethnic enclaves determined by exclusion and ghettoization, now have limited use in explaining the dynamic processes of contemporary community formation.Writing from a variety of perspectives, these contributors expand the concept of community to include sites not necessarily bounded by space; formations around gender, class, sexuality, and generation reveal new processes as well as the demographic diversity of today's Asian American population. The case studies gathered here speak to the fluidity of these communities and to the need for new analytic approaches to account for the similarities and differences between them. Taken together, these essays forcefully argue that it is time to replace the outworn concept of a monolithic Asian America.
Handbook of Asian American Psychology
This comprehensive volume examines current research and constructs necessary for improving our understanding of Asian Americans. The contributors focus on a wide range of topics, including racism, family violence, addictive behaviours, interracial marriage, academic achievement, interpersonal relationships, career development and mental health.

Videos

Joy Luck Club
Every mother longs for the love of her daughter and to break through the barriers that often stand in the way of understanding each other. Every daughter dreams of earning the affection and approval of her mother and to feel that there is something of value to be shared between them. This is the story of four remarkable women whose extraordinary lives are filled with love and tragedy, richness and magic, and who are sustained by the hopes and dreams they have for their daughters. a young woman, June, is invited to join the Joy Luck Club--the weekly mahjong group of her recently deceased mother Suyuan. As a portrait of the club's three "aunties" -- Lindo, An Mei and Ying Ying -- unfolds, it reveals a mosaic of the startling events and conditions that have shaped their lives, and the lives of their precious daughters. Companion book.
Monsoon Wedding
A stressed father, a bride-to-be with a secret, a smitten event planner, and relatives from around the world create much ado about the preparations for an arranged marriage in India. A young relative accuses Tej of being a molester.
Slumdog Millionaire
About the desultory life and times of an Indian boy whose bleak, formative experiences lead to an appearance on his country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Jamal (played as a young man by Dev Patel) and his brother are orphaned as children, raising themselves in various slums and crime-ridden neighorhoods and falling in, for a while, with a monstrous gang exploiting children as beggars and prostitutes. Driven by his love for Latika (Freida Pinto), Jamal, while a teen, later goes on a journey to rescue her from the gang's clutches, only to lose her again to another oppressive fate as the lover of a notorious gangster. Companion book.