Introducing 🍃the perilla project🍃

Dear community, 

We’re excited to share with you a new monthly column and space for Asian American feminist discourse, political education, storytelling, interviews, and more. 

Introducing 🍃the perilla project🍃 by the Asian American Feminist Collective: a space to make our voices heard, explore, and share what’s meaningful to us – in community with you! 

A mainstay of Asian herbal traditions and cooking, the perilla leaf symbolizes wellness and protection – just like the vitality and lifeblood that we have received and co-created through Asian American feminist world building and community care. The perilla leaf can be used to wrap meat, be pickled in vinegar, shredded into a stew, used as a garnish, and brewed to ease discomfort and warm the body in traditional medicine. The leaf has a peppery, earthy flavor – grounding us in where we all come from and where we’ll all return one day. We love perilla as a symbol of vitality, renewal, and culture we can infuse into this project of storytelling, exploration, connection, and community – and we’re so excited to share it with you.

The perilla project will live on our website, as a space to reflect on political issues and questions from a feminist lens; uplift organizing and cultural work; share books that we can’t put down; and be in conversation with other artists, writers, and organizers. 🍃perilla project🍃emerged from period of chrysalis for our collective where we desired ways to regenerate energy for feminist conversation. We have found ourselves seeking conversation and connection around the things that deeply shape our lives: care, parenting, intimate relationships, organizing, and more. This project reflects a hunger for what we have always sought to foster: an Asian American feminist public to learn, process, and build with. 

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How to Submit to the 🍃perilla project🍃: 

For pitches, we are looking for original essays, interviews, political analysis, cultural criticism, profiles, photo essays and artwork, and book/film/theater reviews. Please send a 1-2 paragraph description of your idea – this is an open invitation to share all kinds of written work that explores Asian American feminism. Please also include a brief introduction and if applicable, also share links to previous work in your submission to ground us in your style and interests. 

We are also accepting completed work for flash fiction, non-fiction and poetry. 

We pay contributors $50 and aim to publish monthly. Please allow up to 3 months for follow up. Submissions can be sent to aafcollective@gmail.com with subject line “name, submission - perilla project”. 

Check out our first published work below – an interview with with author Lana Lin, The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao. We can’t wait to share your stories and build this project with you. 

With love,
The Asian American Feminist Collective

Senti, Julie, Salonee, & Rachel