Dear Elia

Mimi KhUc is a writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell. She is the creator of Open in Emergency and the Asian American Tarot.

dear elia 1 1. a pedagogy of unwellness 3 interlude 1. the corner 25 2. touring the abyss 28 interlude 2. the suicide tarot 60 3. how to save your asian american life in an hour 63 interlude 3. the professor is _______ 89 4. the professor is ill 91 interlude 4. surveying access 146 5. teaching in pandemic times 149 cura personalis 221 Acknowledgments 229 Notes 235 Bibliography 249 Index 257

"To my 21-year-old self in spring 1999: I wish you could read dear elia. Then you would know that you are not alone. That your unwellness is not your fault. That you are allowed to feel ungrateful and angry at the forces that contribute to your unwellness. That the abyss engulfing you is shared by others who are also Asian Americanly wounded and suffering. Thankfully, a quarter of a century into the future, you will read dear elia. You will feel waves of visceral empathy for your younger self. You will weep, and the weeping will be cathartic. Unapologetically emotional, exuberantly unorthodox, fiercely compassionate, dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss will save your life." - Seo-Young Chu (Los Angeles Review of Books) "Showing that we are all differentially unwell and that our social contexts and identities impact our unwellness in different ways and at different times, Mimi KhUc argues that we need to embrace and accept unwellness in order to reorient ourselves toward a system of care. Refreshing, necessary, and challenging in the best ways, this incredible book will change and save lives." - Sami Schalk, author of (Black Disability Politics) "This phenomenal book puts front and center the generally overlooked importance of Asian American positionality in educational institutions and mental health. It is not, however, just for Asian Americans or those already concerned with mental health; it is for anyone engaged in the university. A project of enormous generosity that shares hard-won lessons, dear elia is greatly needed, and never more than right now. I have never read anything like this unprecedented book." - Mel Y. Chen, author of (Intoxicated: Race, Disability, and Chemical Intimacy across Empire) With dear elia, Mimi KhUc throws out the playbook for scholarly books published by university presses, and I am here for it. Her outstanding exploration of mental health, with particular attention paid to Asian American peoples, is focused not on wellness as we know it but on the game-changing notion that we are all 'differently unwell.'" - Karla J. Strand (Ms. Magazine) "Though it is focused on Asian American studies, this book is an indispensable read for anyone entering academia, for those already entrenched in it, and for all needing a reminder of the precarity and unwellness facing students and academics alike." - Lena Chen (Amerasia Journal) "What KhUc illuminates about higher education now is, in some ways, deceptively simple: from the cordoning off of 'wellness' as the sole purview-or perhaps more accurately, mandate-of campus counseling centers to the normalization of contingent faculty as a perpetual laboring underclass, the university is a place that kills." - Amy R. Wong (Parapraxis)