Embodying Liberatory Education: The Values and Hopes of Asian Non-Binary and Women Movement Makers

Abstract

Asian movement makers (organizers, community educators, artists, and healers) engaged in liberatory movement spaces continue to teach the next generation through modeling action, hosting educational workshop, engaging activist through art, and providing support and care for their communities. Therefore, much can be learned from Asian movement makers’ values and hopes to create sustaining and liberatory learning spaces across settings. In this dissertation, I seek to answer the following research questions: 1) How do we create chosen, culturally sustaining learning spaces that are grounded in the values and hopes of Asian movement makers (organizers, community educators, artists, and healers)? 2) How might this inform the design of transformational and liberatory learning spaces across settings for Asian youth? Utilizing surveys, one-on-one interviews, focus group sessions, and reflective arts-based narrative methods, I learned with and from 12 Asian movement makers in Seattle that 1) their politics were informed by their personal experiences 2) their commitments were to intergenerational and intersectional care, and that they seek a liberatory world that allows for refusal and exercising of choice, and the normalization of safety and joy. I conclude this study with pedagogical and curricular implications informed by the 12 Asian movement makers’ values and hopes. I call for educators and scholars across learning settings to embody liberatory politics and to create and lean on a constellation of care, or a culturally sustaining community network. These learnings from the movement makers can inform a liberatory education that is culturally sustaining and humanizing to Asian learners in community and school spaces.