Systemic racism endangers us all. The murders in Atlanta put into stark relief what Asian Americans have known long before the beginning of the global pandemic. History shows us the more than a century-long legislation against Asians in America. This past year, Asians were being targeted by white supremacists and xenophobes across the world. In this country, the hate was exacerbated because we posed a threat to regressive attempts to “make America great again.” Asians became scapegoats for an utterly inept and racist governmental and social charge that directly led to the deaths of over 500,000 people in this country.

Nationalism, like racism and misogyny, is the real danger to the body politic. It infuses the mind and spreads fastest among those most vulnerable to ideas that fetishize the power of self-regard above all else. But a concept of a self worth becomes valuable only when it prizes a common experience that underwrites that concept in the first place: that no one becomes genuinely someone on their own.

Artists, activists, and forward-minded lawmakers have understood this dynamic and have pushed for a broad set of political and social protections for Asian-Americans long before the 2016 election. Asians are a part of the evolving American experience who cannot be erased or assaulted without gravely distorting that experience.

Engagement with art and the act of reading are two common endeavors where the fate of concepts and the power of experiences are most intertwined. Art and books are opportunities where the concept of the self can be enlarged and enlivened by experiencing all that it is not, or not yet.

These are just some of the thoughts Emmy Catedral and I shared, as we tried to grapple with what happened on Tuesday. What little solace we found came from acts of solidarity against the tide of anti-Asian hate. From the streets. Online. Even from legislators on the state and federal level. And from thinking about these works. – Paul Chan, March 19, 2021

“To name it now so as not to repeat history in oblivion. To extract each fragment by each fragment from the word from the image another word another image the reply that will not repeat history in oblivion.” – Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee