Asian diaspora imaginaries and futurities: imagining alternative nows and envisioning possibilities for Asian diasporas

Asian diaspora imaginaries/futurities refer to the ways Asian diasporas imagine futurities and create possibilities for themselves and their descendants beyond the constraints of oppressive spaces/places. I explore the theoretical traditions, cartographies, and renditions of Asian diaspora imaginaries/futurities. Inspired by AfroFuturism, Indigenous Futurism, Chicana/o and Lantina/o/Latinx Futurisms, Diaspora Futurism, and Asian Futurism, particularly Southeast Asian Futurism, I conceptualize Asian diaspora imaginaries/futurities as multicultural/multiethnic/multilingual/multiracial aesthetics to explore the intersectionality of languages, cultures, identities, races, ethnicities, genders, classes, powers, histories, spaces, and places. I delve into the cartographies of such imaginaries and futurities embedded in Asian diasporas’ shared memories, histories, experiences, and struggles representing a multiplicity of temporalities, localities, traditions, identities, and subjectivities engendered by senses of belonging/unbelonging and processes of becoming. Asian diaspora imaginaries/futurities shatter white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, orientalism, settler colonialism, and imperialism, recreate imageries/futurities, envision alternative nows, and invent possibilities for Asian diaspora existence.