The Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science series engages with some of the most pressing public health issues of our time, in a regular public forum catalyzed by a book. The December edition features Mimi Khúc, author of dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss, in conversation with Lydia X.Z. Brown.

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In dear elia Mimi Khúc revolutionizes how we understand mental health. Khúc traces the contemporary Asian American mental health crisis from the university into the maw of the COVID-19 pandemic, reenvisioning mental health through a pedagogy of unwellness—the recognition that we are all differentially unwell. In an intimate series of letters, she bears witness to Asian American unwellness up close and invites readers to recognize in it the shapes and sources of their own unwellness.

Interspersed throughout the book are reflective activities, including original tarot cards, that enact the very pedagogy Khúc advances, offering readers alternative ways of being that divest from structures of unwellness and open new possibilities for collective care.

Mimi Khúc, PhD, is a writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell. She is the Co-Editor of The Asian American Literary Review and an adjunct professor.

Her work includes Open in Emergency, a hybrid book-arts project decolonizing Asian American mental health; the Asian American Tarot, a reimagined deck of tarot cards; and the Open in Emergency Initiative, an ongoing national project developing mental health arts programming with universities and community spaces.

Her new creative-critical, genre-bending book on mental health and a pedagogy of unwellness, dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss (Duke University Press), is a journey into the depths of Asian American unwellness at the intersections of ableism, model minoritization, and the university, and an exploration of new approaches to building collective care.

Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them) is a writer, public speaker, educator, trainer, consultant, advocate, community organizer, community builder, activist, scholar, and attorney. You can read more about their work to address and end interpersonal and state violence targeting disabled people here.