Chinese Gay Women In America Speech Summary

Zia’s speech mainly consisted of many of her own experiences and examples of some of the injustices she has endured being a Chinese, gay woman. She started off her speech by talking about two major changes. The first being that we are witnessing the largest demographic shift that will dissolve any majority race. This is due to global migration which is a cause of instability in the world. Zia states that the second major change is the profound global economic shift. She talks about how economies such as Chinas, has surpassed the American economy. She affirms that with all this cultural and economic shift in society that we must “acknowledge our lack of knowledge about each other” (Zia 4/4/18). She gives an example about where she grew up, …show more content…
She said that she would reply “Jersey”. However, she would soon catch on that they were asking about her ethnicity and so she would say she was Chinese. In her talk she said she could easily have flipped the question on to anyone who usually asked her that question. Zia asserts that unless you are Native American, everyone is “from” somewhere else. Zia segued into talking about her activist group she was involved in when she was younger and how even this group of diverse backgrounds judged her. She could not tell her activist group that she was a lesbian for she would be expelled from her communities of color. In her activist group, someone confronted her asking is she was a lesbian and she stated she was not out of fear. The person then replied “good, there are no gay Asians”. Conversely, she decided to come out to her peers and in a ten-minute talk she slipped in that she was a lesbian. Zia said that she was fortunate to find out that her colleagues did not abandon her instead she felt liberated being honest. This honesty even helped strengthen her relationships with colleagues. Zia also discussed some of the other discriminations against Asians when she was younger that were