Beep-boop--that’s the sound of creating a new, shared hybrid culture through virtual communities such as VNForum, VNBiz, and BBS. Valverde’s chapter emphasizes the idea of “network individualism” as the “individual rising to form community” (Valverde 88) through the versatile cyberspace, specifically to affect social change and activism. A recent example of this would be the Welga Archive [created by] the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies (WA-BCFS). Although the archive initially focused on Filipino American labor history, its legacy is transnational with collaborations between social/political activists from Bulosan’s hometown in the Philippines and the BCFS in California. This diasporic community engages in network individualism through online archives and political/social activism, similar to the Vietnamese diaspora. In doing so, the communities create and renegotiate their various identities, including sexual identity as Tsang discusses in his chapter. I found it very intriguing when he noted how Asian males in particular could challenge stereotypes of asexuality and, by extension, other similar mindsets. However, compared to these men, how do Asian and Pacific Islander women of varying sexualities interact with cyberspace?
Works Cited:
Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Social Transformations from Virtual Communities.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam.
Daniel Tsang. “Notes on Queer ‘N’ Asian Virtual Sex.”
Image Source: https://welgadigitalarchive.omeka.net/exhibits/show/about
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