June Chan

Last updated
June Chan
Born (1956-06-06) June 6, 1956 (age 68)
Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Occupation(s)Activist, biologist

June Chan (born June 6, 1956) is an American lesbian activist and biologist. The organizer and co-founder of the Asian Lesbians of the East Coast (ALOEC), Chan raised awareness for LGBT issues relating to the Asian-American community.

Contents

Biography

Chan was born on June 6, 1956, in Lower Manhattan to parents who worked in New York City's Chinatown. [1] Chan's mother was a refugee from China and the Japanese invasion of China. [2] Chan's activism had its roots in her childhood, remembering tourists displaying racist attitudes to people in Chinatown. [1] Chan attended the Bronx High School of Science and graduated in 1973. [1] She went on to earn her bachelor's degree in biology at the City College of New York in 1977. [1] Chan earned her master's degree in biology from the State University of Buffalo. [1] After graduate school, she came out to her family, which was a mostly positive experience. [1] Chan also works in research on neurobiology. [1]

Chan and Katherine Hall met in 1983 and began working on projects together. They created a slide show of Asian lesbians in history and literature which were shown in the 1980s. [3] Their Asian lesbian history slide show was considered "grassroots scholarship" by Polly Thistlethwaite. [4] The slide show gave lesbians "a larger context for ourselves as Asian and Pacific Islander peoples, as people of color in the United States, and as lesbians." [5]

Also in 1983, Chan and Hall formed the Asian Lesbians of the East Coast (ALOEC). [1] The group was formed in response to the overly white and male LGBT community at the time and provided a place for support for lesbians. [1] ALOEC conducted workshops and published newsletters. [5] ALOEC took part in the 1989 LGBT march on Washington, D.C., demanding civil rights. [2] During the process of organizing the march, Chan connected with other Asian-American lesbian groups. [2] These groups and ALOEC formed the Asian Pacific Lesbian Network (later called the Asian Pacific Bi-Sexual Lesbian Network). [2] In 1994, ALOEC participated in the 25th commemoration of the Stonewall riots. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mattachine Society</span> American gay male advocacy group

The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, preceded by several covert and open organizations, such as Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities, and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.

Racism is a concern for many in the Western lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) communities, with members of racial, ethnic, and national minorities reporting having faced discrimination from other LGBT people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesbian Herstory Archives</span> Archive, history museum in Brooklyn, New York

The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) is a New York City-based archive, community center, and museum dedicated to preserving lesbian history, located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Archives contain the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians.

Daniel Chun-Tuen Tsang is an American activist and scholar whose writings have been of great importance in the Asian American and LGBT political movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBTQ culture in San Francisco</span>

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBTQ culture in Los Angeles</span>

Although often characterized as apolitical, “Los Angeles has provided the setting for many important chapters in the struggle for gay and lesbian community, visibility, and civil rights." Moreover, Los Angeles' LGBTQ community has historically played a significant role in the development of the entertainment industry.

Crystal Jang is an LGBT activist based in San Francisco, California. She is one of the co-founders of the San Francisco Bay Area based organization, Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community (APIQWTC), as well as community-based organization Older Asian Sisters in Solidarity (OASIS), which is now a part of APIQWTC.

This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of Asian and Pacific Islander ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally-specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Asia and the Pacific Islands and in the global Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked. Please note: this is a very incomplete timeline, notably lacking LGBTQ-specific items from the 1800s to 1970s, and should not be used as a research resource until additional material is added.

Steve Lew is an American community organizer, LGBT rights activist and AIDS activist.

Shamakami was an early organization of South Asian lesbians and bisexual women based in the United States. They published a newsletter of the same name between June 1990 and February 1997.

Anamika was an early newsletter for South Asian lesbians and bisexual women. The newsletter was published in Brooklyn, New York. Its first issue was published in May 1985 by a lesbian collective. Three issues were published before it shut down in 1987.

GAPIMNY is an all-volunteer-run organization that provides a range of social, educational, and cultural programming for queer and transgender people who are Asian and/or Pacific Islander in the New York City metropolitan area to support each other. The organization's community building efforts is intricately tied to political education and mutual aid.

Sexuality, including same-sex sexuality, and other non-normative forms of sexuality have been central to the history of Chinatown, San Francisco. San Francisco's Chinatown, founded in 1848, is the first and largest in the United States. San Francisco was shaped by early Chinese immigrants, who came from the Guangdong province of southern China. These immigrants gathered in the Bay Area in order to join in the California Gold Rush and to build railroads in the American West. San Francisco's Chinatown made room for these early Chinese immigrants to live, and the area turned into a "bachelor society", where female prostitution was pervasive because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. As a racialized immigration region, Chinatown was viewed as an immoral place with the characteristics of "vice", "sluttery" and "sexual deviance" for a long time. These traits were incompatible with the mainstream culture and dominant norms of American society. From the mid-19th century, the state problematized Chinese female prostitution with the subject of sexual transmission, and the government began to go against industrial prostitution in Chinatown, as well as Chinese immigration. As the sex industry grew throughout the Bay Area, the government had to stop the anti-prostitution and anti-immigration law in the beginning of the 20th century. Just like the Castro district and other areas, Chinatown developed its own sexual industries and provided a variety of sexual entertainment to both immigrants and white visitors.

Katie Quan is a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, a former chair of the center, and a former labor organizer. In 1982, she was one of the organizers of the historic garment workers' strike in New York City's Chinatown.

Filipino American LGBT Studies is a field of studies that focus on the issues met by people at the intersection of Filipino American and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities.

Diana Ming Chan was an American social worker, philanthropist, advocate, and educator known for her pioneering work in school social work and direct services. She was the first Cantonese-speaking bilingual social worker in San Francisco's Chinatown. She was known for her "dumpling diplomacy", in which politicians were invited to her home to discuss the importance of social workers in public schools over dumplings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trinity Ordona</span> Filipino-American teacher and activist

Rev. Trinity Ordoña is a lesbian Filipino-American college teacher, activist, community organizer, and ordained minister currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is notable for her grassroots work on intersectional social justice. Her activism includes issues of voice and visibility for Asian/Pacific gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals and their families, Lesbians of color, and survivors of sexual abuse. Her works include her dissertation Coming Out Together: an ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander queer women's and transgendered people's movement of San Francisco, as well as various interviews and articles published in anthologies like Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity and Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology. She co-founded Asian and Pacific Islander Family Pride (APIFP), which "[sustains] support networks for API families with members who are LGBTQ," founded Healing for Change, "a CCSF student organization that sponsors campus-community healing events directed to survivors of violence and abuse," and is currently an instructor in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Department at City College of San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance</span> American nonprofit organization

The GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance, sometimes GAPA, is a 501(c)(4) non-profit social welfare organization that was incorporated in February 1988 in San Francisco, California, as a social support group for gay and bisexual Asian Pacific Islander (API) men. It engages in direct social, cultural and political advocacy, with a vision of "a powerful queer and transgender Asian and Pacific-Islander (QTAPI) community that is seen, heard, and celebrated," and a mission "to unite our families and allies to build a community through advocacy, inclusion, and love."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vernita Gray</span> African-American lesbian activist and writer

Vernita Gray was an African-American lesbian and women's liberation activist from the beginning of those movements in Chicago. She began her writing career publishing in the newsletter Lavender Woman. After owning and operating her own restaurant for almost a decade, Gray became the LGBT liaison for the Cook County State's Attorney's office. In 2013, she and her partner became the first same-sex partners to wed in Illinois.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Henry 1995, p. 32.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Henry 1995, p. 33.
  3. ↑ Carmichael Jr., James Vinson (1998). Daring to Find Our Names: The Search for Lesbigay Library History. Praeger. p. 162. ISBN   978-0313299636.
  4. ↑ Thistlethwaite 1998, p. 3.
  5. 1 2 Wilkinson, Willie. "Out, Loud, and Seen: The Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Movement Past and Present". Women Artists of the American West. Archived from the original on 23 October 2013. Retrieved 18 May 2016.

Sources

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.