Post-Show Book Signing Reception and Q&A with Kristina Wong and Auntie Sewing Squad
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View Upcoming EventsJoin us for a special reception and Q&A with Kristina Wong and local “Aunties” followed by a book signing of The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice following the matinee performance on November 20th.
In March 2020, when the U.S. government failed to provide personal protective gear during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Auntie Sewing Squad emerged. Founded by performance artist Kristina Wong, the mutual-aid group sewed face masks with a bold social justice mission: to protect the most vulnerable and most neglected.
Written and edited by Aunties themselves, The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice tells a powerful story. As the pandemic unfolded, hate crimes against Asian Americans spiked. In this climate of fear and despair, a team of mostly Asian American women using the familial label “Auntie” formed online, gathered momentum, and sewed masks at home by the thousands.
The Auntie Sewing Squad speaks back to the history of exploited immigrant labor as it enacts an intersectional commitment to public health for all. This collection of essays and ephemera is a community document of the labor and care of the Auntie Sewing Squad.
The book will be available for purchase at the event!
The Auntie Sewing Squad was founded on March 24, 2020, by performance artist and comedian Kristina Wong as a casual effort to connect with other friends sewing homemade masks for essential workers due to the Federal Government’s failure to prepare them with proper personal protective equipment. Originally intended as a three-week stopgap, the Auntie Sewing Squad is still sewing and has since exploded into a network of hundreds of active Aunties across the United States, who have shipped tens of thousands of masks to vulnerable communities across the North American continent. Our team of Aunties includes college professors, costume designers, screenwriters, scientists, published authors, actors, healthcare workers, retirees, teachers, students, award-winning artists and filmmakers, labor organizers, graphic designers, lawyers, and all-over badasses. Our youngest Auntie is 8 while our eldest is 93. We are juggling families, careers, and our own losses from Covid-19, in addition to this sewing labor.
While inexpensive factory-made masks are now readily available on the market, the need for homemade masks continues indefinitely in vulnerable communities throughout the country. Our Aunties have made strategic outreach into communities where Covid-19 outbreaks are considerably higher and are getting far less Federal support — First Nations, farmworkers, migrants seeking asylum, incarcerated communities, and poor communities of color. What many of these communities have in common is that they have historically borne the brunt of structural racism and violence. We work with a vast network of community organizations to distribute masks, including CASA, Alma Backyard Farms, South Texas Human Rights Center, and Lao Family Community Development.
Auntie Sewing Squad has been featured on CNN, NBC, KCRW, Washington Post, Good Morning America, and many more. We Go Down Sewing, a cross between an anthology, memoir, and a visual record of the work of the Auntie Sewing Squad will be published in Fall 2021 by University of California Press. The Aunties also collaborated with the Kronos Quartet on the film Radical Care: The Auntie Sewing Squad which uses music by Kronos and testimony and footage provided by the Aunties. We are a college course at San Francisco State University. We also have hosted two rounds of an online summer mask sewing camp for kids. Our relationship with various First Nations has extended to include fundraising and sending them sewing and relief supplies. We have sent several vans filled with sewing and hygiene supplies to the Seamstresses United Navajo & Hopi Nation for distribution throughout both reservations.
We credit our staying power as Aunties to our team of Care Aunties who support us with offerings of baked goods, cooked meals, Zoom yoga classes, and more. By recognizing that our labor has value via this community caring for our mental, physical and emotional health, we have been able to sustain our ability to continue this work so many months in. We unabashedly acknowledge the political power of our sewing as a way to express our solidarity and support in the most impacted of communities when national leadership has failed us. We proudly trace the lineage of this sewing to our mothers and grandmothers, immigrant and refugee communities in America, and underpaid women of color garment workers globally.
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