Interwoven: Black/Asian Solidarities
Sophie Sarkar, Endria Richardson, Dwight Dunston, Kim Huynh, Rhetta MorganVirtual Workshop Series + Zine, Philadelphia and Beyond
2020-Present
Interwoven is a community, workshop series, and zine that explores the radical and inevitable solidarities between Black and Asian communities in the US (Turtle Island). Our communities have a rich legacy of shared struggle and vision as can be seen in the relationships and exchanges between Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama, Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh, B.R. Ambedkar and W.E.B. Du Bois, and many others. The project was started by Kim Huynh, Rhetta Morgan, Dwight Dunston, and Sophie Dipti Sarkar, four creative activists and friends who wanted to learn to love each other better.
As our Black and Asian communities continue to experience many different forms of racial violence—from physical attacks, to police brutality, to climate injustice, to displacement and deportation—the tender and vulnerable work of building solidarity between our peoples has never been more essential. Our main hopes in creating Interwoven are to support our communities to heal, build empathy and awareness, deepen our relationships, and strengthen social movement work toward our collective liberation. May we be softer towards ourselves and one another, and fiercer as a collective.
Workshop Series
During the summer of 2020, a team of Black and Asian creative activists offered Interwoven, a virtual community building series for 23 Black and Asian people across the US. The series explored our connections and contentions as Black and Asian people through the following themes: art + culture, history, healing, acts of resistance, and visions for the future. The overarching question of the series was: how can we, as Black and Asian people living in the U.S., see our struggles and liberation, as deeply interconnected?
Interwoven Zine
Interwoven: Black/Asian Solidarities zine is a compilation and expansion of many of the learnings we unearthed in our workshop series and beyond. It features a facilitator guide, interviews, and creative works by 19 Black and/or Asian contributors across the U.S., and was edited by Endria Richardson and Sophie Sarkar.
A LOOK INSIDE INTERWOVEN ZINE