Image Credit: Asian American Literary Review
Mental health is a big concern for Asian Americans, but one that our community still struggles to talk about. The Asian American Literary Review is trying to lay all its cards on the table, so to speak, by raising $23,000 through Kickstarter to create a set of 22 Asian American tarot cards reimagined to focus on mental health themes in the AAPI community, while also nodding to the fortune telling practices that are traditional in many Asian cultures.
Here’s what AALR’s director, Lawrence-Minh Davis, a mixed-race Vietnamese American, says about the project:
It’s really important to us that the deck be an extension of existing fortune telling / spirit work practices that have long been a part of Asian American community life. We didn’t want to create a parody but a deck that could actually function in readings, only doing more to echo and foreground what are perhaps the invisible contours of Asian American life.
Of course, the cards are not literally meant to divine anyone’s fortune. They are meant to serve as more of a discussion starter or teaching tool to illustrate what Davis describes as the “core histories and theoretical guidelines” of Asian American studies classes or mental wellness services. Along with the beautifully haunting artwork, the accompanying texts are written by writers including Shawna Yang Ryan, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Konrad Ng, and Matthew Salesses. Particularly interesting to parents is a segment addressing the erasure of Asian American women from postpartum depression information.
This is part of AALR’s broader project Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Mental Health, which also includes an anthology of the same name, edited by Mimi Khúc.
The cards will be available for digital download in October, with printed materials available at the beginning of 2017.