In "Asian Lesbians in San Francisco", Ordona seems to outline some interesting blurring of boundaries between political movements in the seventies and eighties. Though some of her attention is on the community formation of the AAF, Unbound Feet, and the Asian Women's Group, which are unambiguously Asian lesbian activist groups, an equal amount of space is dedicated to groups that were not specifically formed along Asian-American lesbian identity lines. Zee Wong's co-foundation of Gente is an act of Asian lesbian protest, but in the context of a broader movement of lesbians of color. This Bridge Called My Back's inclusion of Asian lesbian writers is a similar situation.

Even more puzzling to me is Ordona's evidence that, concurrently with the movements she discusses in the text -- i. e., during the early eighties -- broader social movements were beginning to integrate Asian queer members. Bridge's official notice of Asian American protesters, the performance of Aw Shucks by a mainstream Asian American theater company, and Unbound Feet's success a feminist (not an explicitly lesbian) performance group as early as 1979 all indicate integrative or at the very least extremely intersectional efforts. I may be overly cynical, but I'd be extremely surprised to hear that this happened organically, that the Asian American left went from being as homophobic and sexist as Kitty Tsui describes it to being a movement willing to recognize and laud Asian lesbians in San Francisco. Surely lesbian activists were working hard to accomplish that in more ways than forming internal networks of support; surely it's not as simple as saying that as visibility increased, and as lesbians of color united, other movements began to recognize them more and more?

I'm just very confused by the proposed chronology here*, and more confused by the size of the community that she represents. There is no return, for example, to the Oakland KPD, or anything as overtly political. Most of the names here are Chinese, and many of them are Zee Wong! San Francisco alone has about a hundred thousand Asian American women living in it, and using the general population rate of 10%, that's ten thousand Asian American lesbians within the boundaries of the city. The largest organization discussed is 112 people. While I don't doubt the importance of Lisa Chun and Zee Wong's efforts, the references to the familial nature of the community, the romantic and sexual relationships formed and reformed, and the repetition of so many names makes me cautious of Ordona's article as a representative sampling. Can you really say that a group has formed a community network when you're not even discussing one percent of that group's population? Or is my skepticism misplaced?

*Even moreso when I see that Lisa Chun discovered her lesbianism in 1979 and yet founded the Asian Women's Group mailing list in 1977. Perhaps that's a typo?