Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Anita Kinney
On October 25th, the Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project held its annual gala and silent auction. For the second year, the event featured monologues about domestic violence, including one delivered by a DVRP client. Prominent members of the Asian-American community also spoke at the gala, including Representative Judy Chu and Julie Koo, director of DC’s Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs.
The event is a fundraiser for DVRP, which provides support to Asian American survivors of domestic violence in the DC area. Attendees enjoyed a cocktail reception and dinner. To illustrate the prevalence of domestic violence, the event’s host, Diana Bui asked guests with red Xs on their programs to stand. One in four programs had been marked, so many stood up. Bui asked attendees to reflect on this staggering number, then threw the real punch by asking attendees with blue Xs on their programs to stand. This time, 50% of the audience stood, representing the number of Asian American victims of domestic violence. According to DVRP, about 60% of Asian American women will experience some form of domestic violence.
Asian Americans who experience domestic abuse face a variety of challenges. Amy Van Arsdale, a psychology professor at Marymount University, conducted a pilot study with 29 DVRP clients from different countries. One of Van Arsdale’s subjects noted that “Asian women tend to tolerate domestic violence.” This violence can be physical or emotional, and can include abuse from in-laws. Asian American women are particularly vulnerable because of their isolation: many do not speak English, 75% of survey participants said that they do not have family in the DC area, and 65% are not citizens. Immigration status is a cause for concern for women whose husbands threaten them with deportation.
“There isn’t a lot of research that’s been done,” with the APA population, Van Arsdale said. Research is difficult because of language barriers. DVRP mitigates the impact of these barriers through its bilingual advocates: the organization’s staff and volunteers speak over 20 Asian and Pacific Island languages. This made DVRP a natural fit for Van Arsdale’s research, which paved the way for a larger grant from the federal government that allowed DVRP to hire additional staff members, including new case manager Haruka Nobukuni.
Nobukuni, who formerly worked on call for DVRP, is now a full-time case manager supporting DVRP’s Japanese clients. DVRP has a high number of Japanese clients, even though there are relatively few Japanese and Japanese-Americans in the DC area in comparison with other nationalities. Nobukuni thinks this may be because domestic violence is more visible in Japan than in other Asian countries. “Japanese culture is a little different,” from other Asian countries where domestic violence is not discussed. “Domestic violence is something that’s talked about in Japan, so Japanese women are aware of it,” Nobukuni said.
Annette Kwok, president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s DC chapter, observes that cultural barriers can be as significant as linguistic ones. Kwok has worked with DVRP as a translator, and has also helped clients prepare affidavits for visa applications after they have sought help for domestic violence. “In Asian culture, the concept of [spousal] rape doesn’t exist,” Kwok explained. “It can only be rape by a stranger. Your husband or boyfriend can’t rape you.” Due to these cultural differences, the clients Kwok helped were struggling to communicate in court and with police, even though they spoke some English. “The police would ask if she’d been raped, and she’d say, ‘that’s not what happened.’”
In addition to the obvious logistical hurdles, being forced to speak English has an emotional toll on survivors. At the gala, a survivor spoke about her experiences with an abusive husband and about how DVRP’s services provided a lifeline. The first group she contacted for help connected her with an employee who used “lots of difficult, technical words. I wanted to hang up. My brain was overwhelmed,” she said. She pointed out that her English was even weaker when she was in a stressful position. “It’s difficult to explain our situation in English. It’s very painful if we cannot explain in our native language,” the client said. DVRP’s bilingual advocates speak over 20 languages and provide support that takes each client’s cultural background into account. This allows DVRP to assist in ways that other organizations can’t. The client credited DVRP with saving her life. “Because of DVRP, I can say I’m happy, now,” she said.
The theme of the Gala, “Breaking the Silence,” was especially apt in light of these issues. The most resounding theme of the evening was the power and healing survivors can achieve through speaking out about their experiences. “I think monologues are a powerful way to convey DVRP’s message to our communities. They help women heal and become stronger,” said Jessica Li, DVRP’s CEO and executive director, who initiated the monologue show last year.
Diana Bui, the event’s host and emcee, agreed. “Monologues are a powerful art form for survivors to tell their stories and encourage us to talk about issues we don’t tend to discuss,” she said.
In keeping with the theme of empowerment through performance, Bui closed with an interactive reading of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise,” with the audience joining in for the refrain. Following the poem, she led the audience in a unity clap: a tradition devised by the United Farm Workers union to bridge the language gap among migrant workers and build solidarity. The audience clapped in unison, then exclaimed together, “Isang bagsak!” Tagalog for “one down, one fall.” It was a reminder that pan-Asian coalitions can work together, across languages, to support domestic abuse survivors.
