Who are we writing for? While many cishet white scholars are only recently reckoning with this question, it has undergirded the work of historically minoritized academics and writers for decades. For many scholars of color, this question is not a theoretical, ethical exercise; it is an embodied accounting of ourselves and our communities and the ways in which we (may never) belong. The answer also informs how we create community in places designed to exclude us. Finding these communities can determine our very survival, both in the academy and in the world writ large.
In these instances, and for scholars like V. Jo Hsu, writing is an essential search for home, for community, for belonging. In Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics, Hsu writes for diasporic queer and trans Asian American communities: to engage in the messiness of their disparate histories, lived experiences, and shared dreams and...
