RT Article
T1 Hira Makes a Sound: Nepali Diasporic Worldviewing through Asian American Studies Praxis during the COVID-19 Anti-Asian Hate Pandemics
JF Religions
VO 14
IS 3
A1 Ty, Kim Soun
A1 Tang, Shirley Suet-ling
A1 Gurung, Parmita
A1 Ty, Ammany
A1 Duong, Nia
A1 Kiang, Peter Nien-chu
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1839632445
AB In this article, we offer a specific example from our programmatic research and teaching praxis during the COVID-19 anti-Asian hate pandemic period. We demonstrate how Asian American Studies community-centered knowledge coproduction and narrative generational wealth investment can address critical experiences of young learners from underrepresented, religiously-diverse populations through content that supports culturally sustaining child development and challenges disparately impactful realities of racism, misrepresentation, and systemic Western biases which undermine their health and wellbeing. Focusing on religious themes in relation to child development was not an explicit intention of our collaboratively developed storybook project titled, Hira Makes a Sound. Nevertheless, centering a women-led, intergenerational Nepali immigrant story in both our process and final product necessarily led to foregrounding religious, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of diasporic family and community life that are essential to coping and development for the fictional lead character, Hira, and her loved ones. Robust story data themes—paradoxically grounded in the ether of a shared Gurung worldview—provide generative lessons for researchers, educators, artists, and community advocates who work with or need to account for the lived experiences of young learners within religiously diverse, multi-generational immigrant family households and community ecologies.
K1 Asian American Studies
K1 Gurung worldview
K1 Nepali diaspora
K1 Covid-19
K1 anti-Asian hate
DO 10.3390/rel14030422