SWHNM Collective

She Who Has No Master(s) is a literary arts collective of womxn and nonbinary writers and artists of the Vietnamese diaspora. We create collaborative poetry, art, writing, performances and community events, as well as mentorship activities, that serve a minority (Vietnamese women and nonbinary individuals) within our already marginalized Asian American communities. Knowing that women and nonbinary folks are often overlooked as well as given extra labors, SWHNM’s mission centers creativity and care for Vietnamese diasporic women and nonbinary writers and artists, through engaging in collaborative writing and art processes, and creating opportunities for cross-diasporic relationship-building. One of SWHNM’s primary goals is to bring together voices from across the nation, together creating unique “multi-voice” writings and artworks that reflect our collective experience as women and nonbinary Vietnamese persons. Through these works, we enact a poetics of engagement and a community of repair and possibility.

SWHNM’s mission centers creativity and care for Vietnamese and SE Asian diasporic womxn and nonbinary writers and artists, through engaging in collaborative writing and art processes, and creating opportunities for cross-diasporic relationship-building. As a collective of Vietnamese and SE Asian writers, poets, performers, and scholars engaging with questions of diaspora, marginality, and refugee-immigrant subjectivity, we use our collaborative artistic practice to enact a poetics of engagement and a community of repair and possibility.

We are raising funds to continue to nourish our collective's creative productions and to continue/extend our mentorship program for 2024.

Launched in 2022, our first mentorship program awarded 4 tuition-free mentorship opportunities to Vietnamese and mixed-race Vietnamese women and nonbinary writers. Mentees received intensive one-on-one consultations from mentors, tailored to individual needs, with the program culminating in a public reading event showcasing the mentees reading with their mentors, hosted by The Poetry Project. We wish to continue our mentorship program annually as a tuition-free (or low cost) offering, in order to ensure accessibility for those who might not be able to afford a degree program. It is also important to us that we offer equitable pay to our mentors for their teaching labor.