PANAAWTM and the Inner Landscape

Pui-lan reflects on the personal and professional impact of PANAAWTM (Pacific, Asian, North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry) over its 40-year history. She recounts how the organization, founded by international Asian women theologians in the 1980s, helped her confront gaps in historical knowledge and supported her academic journey on Chinese Christian women. PANAAWTM provided a space for exploring identity amid cultural dislocation, racialization, and postcolonial transitions. She discusses the complexities of being "almost Asian American" and how transnational belonging shaped her evolving self-understanding. She highlights PANAAWTM's unique ability to hold diverse identities--biracial, nonbinary, diasporic--and foster solidarity. The group became a vital "spiritual house," enabling members to thrive and resist marginalization. She concludes with a call to continue building this community as a space of refuge, wisdom, and love amid growing global instability and empire-driven division.

___________________________________________

Stable URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jfs.00054

Return to Volume 41 Number 2