The Dragon Fruit Project is an intergenerational oral hxstory project that explores queer Asians and Pacific Islanders and their experiences with love and activism in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Since 2013, volunteers have engaged with our queer Asian and Pacific Islander hxstories by recording, transcribing, and disseminating over 60 Dragon Fruit Project interviews. With the help of over 200 volunteers and 4 years of collecting interviews, our vision for the project is to make our hxstories publicly accessible. The Dragon Fruit Project Portal is the beginning of our efforts in providing more resources for our community to learn and understand the struggles that we’ve faced in order to create further social change. The portal at www.dragonfruitproject.org currently features 24 individuals from the queer Asian and Pacific community and their personal narratives.
The Dragon Fruit Project has been an integral part of our work because it represents our resistance to dominant mainstream narratives and amplifies the resilience of queer and trans API voices. We are collecting our hxstories for ourselves. The Dragon Fruit Project Digital Portal reflects “Know/No Hxstory. Know/No Self” in which community members have access and space to honor the hxstories that ground our movements and communities.
These stories give voice to our struggles, activism and, our aspirations. The Dragon Fruit Project Digital Portal is an important tool that provides access to these stories and will inspire many future generations to come. – Satyajit
The question for Dragon Fruit Project has been, “What’s the next step in activating our community hxstories towards our movements?”
Throughout my life, I feel like I’ve been treading carefully between multiple different cultures and identities, and constantly being alert of my situation to navigate these identities has been tiring. APIENC is important to me not only because I don’t have to explain myself but also because it celebrates the very identities that I have struggled to reconcile. It’s also inspiring to meet other people through this organization to hear about their stories or see how passionate and hard-working they are in their work. – Katie H.
As our communities continue to survive under oppressive forces, we will need to constantly reimagine how to organize and mobilize. We view this digital portal as one creative and critical tool we can use to incorporate into our transformative organizing practices so that we can realize a world that fully uplifts these stories – one in which we are ALL free.
Thank you to Dragon Fruit Project volunteers and all the labor that made this possible!
