"Hot Commodities, Cheap Labor" Revisited: Old Frontiers with New Friends, Epistemology of Two Asian Feminists Writing

Abstract:In this collaborative project, the authors revisit an article published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies in 2014. Through the act of revisiting together a publication by one of us ten years earlier, we aim to trace multiple trajectories of feminist knowledge production, particularly regarding women of color and Third World feminisms as well as transnational feminisms in and outside of the academy. Methodologically, we propose "Two Asian Feminists Writing" (TAFW) as a way to disrupt conventional academic forms of scholarly writing by building on each other's voices, explicitly creating coalitional identity practice in order to find common ground through both similarities and differences in our experiences as Asian/American feminists. Thinking together as Vietnamese and Korean American scholars of women, gender, and sexuality studies, we navigate various borders—disciplinary, national, generational, and institutional—to share stories and formulate new epistemology. Via TAFW, the authors reclaim both the positionalities of two Asian feminists writing and the subversive format of the interview mixed with summative critical analyses to discuss the transformative impact of "Hot Commodities, Cheap Labor: Women of Color in the Academy" over time. We look back and live now to move forward toward a queer of color futurity that is critical and free of epistemic systems of oppression.