On October 14, Reckonings’ Artists-in-Residences Joanna Tam and Lani Asunción invited workshop participants to activate the language found in Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) newsletters, through creative mapping and collective imagination. AARW is a political home for pan-Asian communities in Greater Boston, committed to building grassroots power through political education, creative expression, and issue-based and neighborhood organizing. AARW offices used to be in Chinatown and have since moved to Dorchester, to the area now designated Little Saigon, in order to work effectively with the communities of Boston’s changing neighborhoods. Tam and Asunción, as well as Nicole Eigbrett, Co-Executive Director of AARW, and Billy Zeng, Dorchester Program Coordinator of AARW, introduced AARW and the workshop activities. 

In the course of the evening, workshop participants split into three groups and shared reflections on climate justice and making AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander) more inclusive, offering layered perspectives on how activism takes root in local histories and lived experience. Participants discussed how personal and collective identities influence engagement in social movements and how environmental justice remains tied to struggles for belonging and survival. Participant teams then wrote key words and phrases on large pieces of fabric, hand-dyed by Joanna Tam with tea, and then joined them together, making a big piece of work. 

Tam and Asunción’s facilitation of this workshop emphasized collaboration and embodied learning, transforming the archival materials into a living site of visualization and conversation. 

Their work with the Reckonings Project, in partnership with Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections and Center for Design, highlights how art and public history can intersect to spark dialogue about race, place, and resilience. 

To learn more about the artists and the Hidden Histories Artists-in-Residence Program, visit reckoningsproject.org/artistsinresidence.  

Follow their work on Instagram at Joanna Tam (@joanna_tam)  and Lani Asunción (@lani.asuncion).