Dr. Rossina Zamora Liu, UMD Alumna, Joins Asian American Studies Affiliate Faculty

The Asian American Studies Program welcomes Dr. Rossina Zamora Liu to the AAST affiliate faculty and to the University of Maryland. Dr. Liu, a UMD alumna, shares her journey below.

“The first time I learned about ethnic and racial identities and that I was an ‘Asian American’ was during my undergraduate studies at UMD when I took my first two Asian American Studies courses; 1995 was a significant year for me and I consider it the beginning of my racial awakening. From there, I became involved with the Asian American Student Union and served as its vice president of public relations. I was also the features editor for the Asian American student newspaper, and I helped with conferences like ECASU and EoC, and of course, with local, campus events and sister groups. In short, I was very eager to participate in and contribute to efforts that supported the creation of the Asian American Studies Program at UMD. Until that point of my life, I did not even know that I could call myself American, someone with historical roots and legitimacy in the U.S. It sounds odd now, but I was always ‘oriental’ or refugee or worse labels—a foreigner who didn’t belong here–and growing up, I internalized a lot of the inferiority narratives that came with these identities (my mother is Vietnamese).

My story, of course, is not new nor is it unique. There are many first-generation Asian American woman of color who may recall similar lived experiences, and each of us has processed and made sense of them in our own ways. For me, these lived narratives along with my (re)education at UMD have taught me the importance of understanding one’s racial identities in relation to community membership, social justice, and home. Importantly, they have illuminated for me that access to these physical, social, cultural, mental, and emotional spaces are not always readily or equitably available to everyone. I learned, too, that dominant narratives about communities of color and communities of working poor families are plagued with deficits because they do not reflect White middle-class cultural norms and expectations.

Today, as a publicly engaged, interdisciplinary researcher, writer, and humanist, my work centers on elevating our communities of color and of underserved families. Since 2010 I have facilitated and directed art-based writing workshops in public literacy spaces where I have had the privilege of collaborating extensively with, and learning from a range of community partners including writers and artists at homeless shelters and veterans—men and women—enrolled in rehabilitation and recovery programs at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Additionally I have worked extensively with local artists (e.g., b-boys, musicians, documentary film makers), college student-athletes of color in yearlong preparatory seminars, high school and middle school students in urban and rural communities, and community college students with diverse lived experiences. Through counter-narratives and counter-storytelling I seek always to disrupt dominant narratives of lack about people of color and people who live in underserved communities. Currently I am co-authoring a book about the psychology of White supremacy and White privilege, and forthcoming this fall, I have an article on racial trauma and a reconceptualization of acculturation theory.”