YELLOW COLLECTIVE

Our Asian Pacific American diaspora is a richly diverse community encompassing a multitude of varying cultures and languages. While there are differences, we also share common experiences, beliefs and attitudes that helped shape us. Many of us grew up with a narrow definition of who were allowed to be, not quite fitting in with either the dominant or our ethnic cultures. We oftentimes grew up feeling liked we lacked permission to be ourselves and to shine.

The mission of the collective is to create a community of AAPI women who want to connect intentionally through workshops and events designed to empower us to reclaim ourselves and shine. While we do the work on ourselves, our concurrent mission is to uplift the AAPI community by donating 100% of proceeds from all events to individuals and organizations serving our community.

“Yellow” has historically been used as a derogatory and racist term meaning “coward” in the American lexicon. Growing up as non-white members of this country, many of us had the experience of being “othered” and lumped into a monolithic category of people.

We intentionally chose the term “yellow” for our collective because it is time to reclaim ourselves by defining who we are for ourselves. We get to choose what yellow means. Yellow denotes joy, sunshine and shining our light as brightly as we can. We are taking the color that tried to define us and turning it around to something we harness and use as our power.

With just three events in 2020, we were able to donate over $750 to AAPI organizations and people including the Asian American Federation and their anti-hate efforts during Covid, the Center for Asian Pacific American Women, and Linda Lee for NYC Council for greater Asian representation in local government. We are so excited for what’s to come in 2021!