Environmental Sacrificie & Vietnamese/American Futures on Louisiana's Coast - March 4, 2019

Event Date: 

Monday, March 4, 2019 - 12:00pm to 2:30pm

Event Location: 

  • Asian American Studies Conference Room - HSSB 5024

In this talk, Simi Kang explores how Southeast Louisiana’s Vietnamese/American fisherfolk suffer the consequence of ongoing federal and state flood control and restoration projects. Taking seriously the imbrication of governance and environmental injustice in the experiences of her interlocutors, she asks how fisherfolks’ experience and expertise represent a rejection of and are subsumed by ongoing state and federal land and water management practices.

Simi Kang is a Doctoral Dissertation Fellow in the Feminist Studies Program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. As an educator, scholar, artist, and community advocate, she centers Asian/American stories and knowledges to interrogate the intersection of environment and policy. Kang’s work has been supported in many ways big and small by her interlocutors in Louisiana and was funded by the UMN Graduate School and Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. Her work has appeared in The Asian American Literary ReviewGravy QuarterlyHyphen MagazineKartika ReviewOpen Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community, and Jaggery: A DesiLit Arts and Literature Journal.