ABC (A Border Crosser): Autoethnographic Inquiry of an Asian Migrant Mother Through AsianCrit

Informed by Asian Critical Theory and the literature on borders and borderlands, this paper examines three autoethnographic encounters situated in various contexts-a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection at an airport, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the border crossing between home and a child care center. By unpacking sociohistorical discourses involved with various acts of border crossing in the three different contexts, I problematize implicit and explicit power dynamics and negotiations of differences that are often normalized and disregarded from a minoritized perspective of an Asian migrant mother. The following research question guides my inquiry: How does an Asian migrant mother-educator navigate and negotiate racial, ethnic, and cultural borders as a minoritized individual in the U.S. society? In particular, autoethnographic accounts of an Asian migrant mother offers an alternate epistemological orientation in various contexts where the colonialist and imperialist discourses are prominent and often go underexamined. The paper concludes with a poem titled "ABC," where I reflect on personal experiences as an Asian migrant and ponder upon the experiences of the next generation of Asian American children.