James Huỳnh, PhD, MA, MPH

This was written for my Gender Studies dissertation proposal writing class. We were tasked with writing a non-academic blog post explaining our dissertation project.

The anger in the room was palpable. Folks were settling into their seats, nervously moving around the circle of chairs to find spots next to people they knew. I sat on a plastic picnic chair, getting ready for the event to get started. Rainbow pride flags floated down from the ceiling, reminding us that this was a queer space. Of course, it was a queer space. That’s why we were all gathered here. This was a queer space for and by people of color.

Viet Rainbow of Orange County (VROC), a queer and trans Vietnamese American advocacy organization, along with VietRISE, a Vietnamese American immigrant power-building organization, and youth formerly associated with the Youth Empowered To Act group from the LGBTQ Center of Orange County coordinated a press conference to call out the Center’s egregious, racist, transphobic decision to include law enforcement in the OC Pride Parade, an event with roots in the Stonewall Riot. This intergenerational coalition between queer, trans, and straight Vietnamese Americans, Latine, and Black organizers represented a key shift in social movements in Orange County, CA. The organizers criticized the Center’s overwhelmingly upper-class, White leadership (the Executive Director and the Board of Directors) for collaborating with the White supremacist institution of law enforcement and for aggressively shutting down dissent from queer and trans staff of color within and beyond the Center.

These organizers articulated what theorists like Cathy Cohen, Roderick Ferguson, José Muñoz, and Martin Manalansan IV have been calling “queer of color critique”.

As an organizer in VROC, I helped write op-eds and participated in direct actions against the Center. Throughout this process, I felt like this coalition was on the precipice of building a critical mass of multigenerational and multiracial queer and trans of color power that had not been seen before in OC. However, like many social movements and coalitions, this formation did not last long beyond this incident. Some folks had to move away for college. Pre-existing organizing priorities took hold. The Center’s intentional strategy of dragging the process through the mud preyed on the limited time that organizers of color have. Last, but not least, the COVID-19 pandemic came and disrupted all of life in 2020.

Motivated by a backdrop like this, my dissertation project attempts to understand how political coalition building and kinship-making affect the mental health of queer and trans Vietnamese American organizers and organizations in Orange County. Framed by queer of color critique, I’m interested in how queer and trans Vietnamese American organizers and organizations articulate how and why they organize and who they organize with. Who is considered a comrade? Who is considered kin? Who is political accomplice? What do folks’ coalition and kinship networks even look like? How long do those networks last? What are the conditions that lead to those network formations? And finally, how do these processes affect the mental health of the folks who are attempting to create transformative social change in a region often called the “Florida” of “progressive” California?

In doing this project, I hope to chart out how queer and trans Viet organizers and organizations sustain each other’s lives and well-being on an everyday basis while they challenge the death-making structures that shape their movement work.