In 1875, Chinese women were barred from entering the United States on the premise that they were all likely to be prostitutes. The Page Act prevented Chinese women and "coolies" from entering the country because of the "slavish nature" of the Chinese, was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first immigration code in the U.S. to outlaw a group of people based on nationality. Today, racial targeting of Asian sex workers in police raids, continue to discriminate against Asian women, imprisoning them while falsely alleging to protect them. American fetishization of Asian sexuality, as seen in the Hollywood depictions of Anna May Wong, portrayed as either a villainess or a sex slave -- justifies the reduction of all Asian women throughout American history to objects for white desire and white heroism. This workshop will talk about the fetishization (and reduction) of Asian sexuality, both female and male, as a national instrument of silence, exclusion and segregation, for the promotion of white supremacy.

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a little about Kai:

Kai Zhang is the Executive Director of the New York State Assembly Asian Pacific American Task Force, a writing fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop, and the cofounder of Red Canary Song, a collective of Asian sex workers based in New York City. The descendant of many generations of Chinese farmers, Kai was born in Shanghai to hard-working parents who escaped the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution. Raised in the NYCHA housing projects of Spanish Harlem, she studied math and public policy at Columbia University, where she paid her way through school as a dominatrix and dancer, with a special interest in labor law and immigrant workers' movements.