When activist and scholar Bianca Mabute-Louie lost her Popo in 2021, she held onto memories of how her beloved grandmother “stayed unapologetically herself.” Even after immigrating to the United States, Mabute-Louie writes in UNASSIMILABLE, Popo “never learned English, drove recklessly in the 99 Ranch parking lot, and didn’t give a f*ck.”

In her debut book, UNASSIMILABLE: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the 21st Century, Mabute-Louie takes down lessons from her Popo. She writes through a lens of sociological expertise and personal experiences—like stories about her Popo’s mahjong group and a promposal she accepted at her Chinese church—to envision what political awakening and collectivity could look like for Asian Americans.

Mabute-Louie’s advocacy spans public-facing writing on anti-Asian racism, calls to action across her Instagram, TikTok, and Substack followings, and scholarly research on race and religion. For Mabute-Louie, channeling her work into UNASSIMILABLE, which came out earlier this year, started when her personal loss converged with widespread mobilizing for social justice in 2021. “It was kind of on the heels of racial reckoning of 2020, very much on the heels of the Atlanta spa shooting and the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes,” Mabute-Louie says. “At the same time…I was writing a eulogy for my Popo’s funeral and really reflecting on all of the very difficult aspects of her life.”

In this rare moment in which national conversations about racial inequality were centering Asian Americans, Mabute-Louie felt disturbed by responses like that of former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who urged Asian Americans to “wear red, white, and blue” and “show without a shadow of a doubt that we are Americans who will do our part for our country in this time of need.” “(Yang’s) particular framing…was very much like, ‘We’re from here trying to prove our Americanness and argue that we’re good immigrants…and so we don’t deserve to be hate-crimed on the street,’” Mabute-Louie says. “That narrative really didn’t sit well with me.”

Mabute-Louie felt compelled to do more than fend for her sense of belonging as an Asian American. She looked to her hometown of San Gabriel, California, a Chinese immigrant-majority “ethnoburb,” full of popos who did not clamber to assimilate—or try to be “more American”—but instead embraced the Chinese community made up of utterly “unassimilable” Asian immigrants. “I think when (Popo) was living, we didn’t appreciate…that kind of fiery refusal,” Mabute-Louie says. “And so I really want[ed] to honor that and let that teach me how to engage in this political moment.”

Bianca Mabute-Louie at a book signing event.

Courtesy of Bianca Mabute-Louie

Instead of fearfully parading our “Americanness,” Mabute-Louie locates potential to seize the momentum of racial reckoning and reimagine what it means to be Asian American. Drawing from “Black radical traditions,” she shares hope for Asian American political consciousness. “Why are we trying to prove ourselves to this country?” Mabute-Louie asks. “I’m really exploring what that would look like for Asian diasporic peoples to own our sense of not belonging here and turn it into this rebellious politic.”

Mabute-Louie’s roadmap for rejecting Americanness includes keeping ethnic studies programs alive in universities and advocating for K-12 ethnic studies curriculum, as well as being willing to educate each other and celebrating a uniquely Asian sense of community. In UNASSIMILABLE, she points to the Chinese church and ethnoburbs like the San Gabriel Valley as places where chosen families are born and “our cultural value of interconnectedness and interdependence…gets put on overdrive.” For Mabute-Louie, the key to meaningful change is already built into the ways Asian Americans have always supported each other—especially when the United States has failed us and rejected us for being too “foreign.”

Candidly, Mabute-Louie also calls out how Asian Americans often harm other marginalized groups by buying into assimilability. When Asian Americans’ own racial biases overlapped with fears around anti-Asian violence, Mabute-Louie experienced this firsthand in conversations with her family. “During that time of #StopAsianHate, my parents were like, ‘We’re so glad you don’t live (in Oakland Chinatown) anymore,’” Mabute-Louie says. “That felt very…racially loaded.”

“UNASSIMILABLE” examines Asian Americans who refuse to assimilate and instead develop their own belonging.

Bianca Mabute-Louie

Mabute-Louie explains that her parents were reacting to social media and news coverage of “Black-on-Asian criminality,” which overrepresented Black perpetrators of hate crimes against Asian people. While sympathizing with the impulse to defend fellow Asian Americans, Mabute-Louie criticizes these narratives that promote increased police presence and villainize Black and brown communities.“It’s seductive to want to hang onto those definitions because the system is telling us, ‘These are the people who are dangerous. We’re the ones who will protect us,’” she says. “But we’ve seen, over and over again, (that) in communities with more policing to address hate crimes, that doesn’t actually prevent hate crimes.”

Mabute-Louie writes at length about how Asian Americans have been used to uphold a racist, “convenient anti-Black framework” in the United States. She explains how the model minority myth casts East Asians, in particular, as “the ‘good, hardworking, and law-abiding’ minority” that highlight the perceived negative cultural traits of “Black and Brown communities…as ‘lazy’ or ‘criminal’” in American society. Mabute-Louie writes plainly, “the subtext beneath the model minority myth [is] ‘if Asians can get in line and succeed, why can’t everybody else?’”

“The aspiration is all of us to have to orient towards a politic of refusal against this really violent settler state that is continually revealing itself to be contradictory and inept. And really, to understand our fate is with oppressed people all over the world.”

To push against this, Mabute-Louie says solidarity from Asian Americans with different marginalized groups and global resistance efforts is vital to real change. She shares tangible ways she sees this among Asian American peers who are, “are breaking rules to protect immigrants from ICE raids right now,” and protesting for Palestinian liberation—actions of “subversive community building and defiance” that destroy the myth of passive, assimilable Asian Americans.

For Mabute-Louie, revolution is near. She proposes a complete move away from the term “Asian American” and pitches “Asian Diaspora” as an expansive identity that allows for shared belonging, apart from the idea of Americanness. “The aspiration is all of us to have to orient towards a politic of refusal against this really violent settler state that is continually revealing itself to be contradictory and inept,” Mabute-Louie says. “And really, to understand our fate is with oppressed people all over the world.”

In her book, Mabute-Louie looks at how “Predominantly White Institutions With A lot of Asians” shape the racial politics of Asian Americans.

Courtesy of Bianca Mabute-Louie

While Mabute-Louie insists on radical change and an unflinching indictment of the United States itself, she stresses that a love for community underlies her hopes for the future of the Asian Diaspora.

“The book is not the end goal, but a conduit to building community,” she says. “That is why I have been drawn…to expand my political consciousness, because I care about people, and I think we need each other to survive, and humanity cannot keep going as it is.”

As Mabute-Louie describes, the demands of forging a new, intentional identity for the Asian Diaspora are heavy. It will take wrestling with centuries of oppression, addressing racism within Asian communities, and showing up for resistance movements everywhere. Still, Mabute-Louie finds joy in the call for unassimilability. For her, collective care is not only the only way forward, but an essential act of love.

“I feel like we undermine, and we underestimate how powerful it is to really center love and relationships with each other,” she says. “You can have all of the right analyses or all of the right politics, but…I don’t think it will get you very far if you don’t have deep love for your community and for people.”