Asian women find support and unity in Dallas collective
DALLAS — On a recent Sunday, you could hear the sound of fists striking their targets all over Flag Pole Hill Park. The source? A group of about 20 Asian American women and their guests gathered to learn the basics of self-defense.
Donning workout gear and rolling out yoga mats, they each paired off with an instructor from Chamberlain Studios, a local martial arts studio. In the training, their clawed punches, elbow strikes and knee thrusts grew increasingly smooth and self-assured.
This is Dallas Women of Asian Descent, a collective of Asian American and Pacific Islander women born from a desire to discuss race honestly. The community is centered around its members’ feelings and thoughts, all while seeking to educate and empower one another.
The group has offered support in the face of increased anti-asian violence, which has been fueled by political rhetoric during the pandemic. Asian women have reported 2.3 times more hate incidents than Asian men, according to a recent Stop AAPI Hate report of close to 3,800 incidents since March 2020.
And after a mass shooting in Atlanta — where six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent — the group’s members have found solidarity in no longer being alone.
“It’s a space for us to be able to connect over shared values and experiences,” said Amy Tran-calhoun, a lead organizer. “Sometimes, you just want to be in community with people who get it.”
At Flag Pole Hill Park, the women also recognized how rare it was to share space with fellow Asian Americans willing to make mistakes, learn and grow together.
“This is making us not feel stupid that we don’t know self-defense,” said Kim Cummings, who works in human resources at a children’s hospital. “Being able to channel our ancestors’ strength and resilience is important.”
‘A labor of love’
The idea for Dallas Women of Asian Descent germinated after a panel hosted by Dallas Truth, Racial
Healing and Transformation, a racial equity nonprofit, in September 2020. Over Zoom, the panelists discussed race, racism and racial equity in the Asian American community.
Afterward, Stephanie Drenka, the panel moderator, reflected on how sharing even a virtual space with other Asian Americans was so refreshing. It made her feel seen and understood — a visibility that had been lacking even before the pandemic.
Tran-calhoun, who was a panelist, was feeling the same thing.
When she moved to Dallas in 2014, she struggled to connect to the communities she wanted to be a part of, especially in nonprofit education, where she found that her co-workers were reluctant to talk about race.
The panel was an opportunity to create the community she and other participants were looking for, so they decided to meet monthly.
The group started small, with about five women, but it grew through word of mouth. Their conversations ranged from developing the mission, vision and values of the group to unpacking the experience of being both Asian and a woman in America.
“It was something that I didn’t even realize that I wanted. Every time we have these meetings, it’s very validating,” said Sophia Kwong Myers, a charter school administrator.
Some have been asked where they are really from, while others have been subjected to racist catcalls or felt like they had to speak for the whole AAPI community. The women have taken comfort in sharing their stories with others who understand and can relate to their experiences.
“It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, this isn’t just in my brain, this isn’t just one isolated weird thing that happened to me,’ ” Kwong Myers said.
Dallas Women of Asian Descent has had some growing pains. The Asian American community is not a monolith, and the diversity of the group has led to long conversations about colorism, the “model minority myth” and allyship with other communities of color. But tensions, as uncomfortable as they may be, are welcome, Tran-calhoun said.
“It’s very much a space that’s built out of a labor of love,” she said. “I want it to be our thing that we develop and envision together.”
In January, the conversation topic was the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In February, it was the winter storm. In March, it was the Atlanta mass shooting, where many members found themselves realizing, “That could have been my grandmother. That could have been my mother. That could have been me.”
‘A place of refuge’
The March 16 shooting hit home, in part, because it brought longstanding issues discussed by the group to a head: the sacrifices made by immigrants to survive, the hypersexualization of Asian women, the near unrelenting nature of harassment and xenophobia.
It also highlighted the need for community. Dallas Women of Asian Descent became “a place of refuge,” said Aileen Fullchange, a psychologist. Its members decided to open their monthly meeting, recognizing that other women were in pain and in need of a space to process the events. That week, about 20 more women joined the conversation. To date, about 60 women have expressed interest in the group.
“For us to even exist and gather together, I think, is a symbol of our collective resilience,” Fullchange said. “The older generations, they weren’t able to, nor did they have the privilege of, talking about some of the things that we were able to talk about.”
Those moments of gathering and resilience have continued since, both virtually and in-person. Through teach-ins, meals at East Dallas’ Hello Dumpling, yoga sessions, improv comedy workshops and self-defense trainings, group members have bonded and healed together.
Looking ahead, the group will focus on increasing the political power of the AAPI community.
“Individually, as a person, trying to take on the responsibility and that burden is really hard,” Kwong Myers said. “But whenever you have a group of people to share it with, it transforms into something more empowering. There’s a sense of validation. There’s a sense of support.”