Asylum for the Arts events
Principal Investigator:
- Mai-Linh Hong
Additional participating faculty member:
- Ma Vang (Co-PI)
Graduate Fellow Team Members:
- Alma Alvarado-Cabrera
- Jamie Moore
- May Kao Xiong
- May Yang
Community Partner:
- Center for Refugee Poetics
- Local Merced Artists and Writers
Project Summary:
Our project, Asylum for the Arts, is an initiative whose mission is to establish a lasting infrastructure of support for refugee and immigrant writers and artists in the Central Valley. Asylum for the Arts is an adaptive and adaptable cooperative of scholars, writers, and artists that approaches support for refugee creative work through the idiom of asylum--a state of protection for artists with vulnerabilities and barriers to writing/publishing created by forced migration. “Refugee” includes people who migrate (or whose families migrate) in search of protection. Our approach strives to be trauma-informed, culturally competent, justice-oriented, and responsive to writers’ basic needs, in addition to supporting writers’ professional and artistic development. Asylum for the arts operates based grant funding in Merced that highlight the art and literature in the Central Valley.
Project Outcomes:
Symposium:
- Hong, Mai-Linh, Ma Vang, Alma Alvarado-Cabrera, Jamie Moore, May Kao Xiong, and May Yang, “Asylum For the Arts Community Symposium.” Via Zoom, August 2021.
Additional Grant Funding:
- UCHRI – $20,000
- Center for the Humanities – $5,000
Other Funded Events:
- Hong, Mai-Linh & Ma Vang, “Story Telling.” Youth Hub, Merced, CA, April 27, 2025. (funded by UCHRI)
- Carmen Ruíz, Aneliza, Carlos Caro, and Sara Borjas, “Asylum for the Arts Day of Creativity, Refuge, and Community.” Mai-Linh Hong and Ma Vang, ASIP Sensory Lab, Merced, CA, April 5, 2025. (funded by UCHRI)
- Yang, May, Sheng Lor, Dej Txiaj Ntsim, Ger Xiong, and Jer Xiong, “Lives On and Off Paper: Hmong Art and Writing in the Everytday.” Mai-Linh Hong and Ma Vang, Merced County Library, Merced, CA, June 23, 2023. (funded by the Center for the Humanities at UC Merced)
- Hong, Mai-Linh & Ma Vang, "Asylum for the Arts Faculty Retreat," Ahwahnee, CA, May 12-15, 2023. (funded by the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at UC Merced)
