Working Contextually and in Solidarity with Others Grace Y. Kao (bio) I am grateful to Nami Kim and Anne Joh for drawing attention to the place of Asian/Asian North American feminist theological reflections within the larger discourse of feminist studies in religion. I affirm many things they write in their lead-in essay, most especially their use of and invitation for an intersectional analysis to social problems. Space constraints, however, prevent me from providing an exhaustive commentary, so I will respond only to two of the four topics they have identified as meriting further analysis: gender, sexuality, and violence against Asian/Asian North American women and the politics of solidarity, after first engaging the theme of class that recurs throughout their essay.1 The Socioeconomic Realities of Many Asian Americans I appreciate Kim and Joh’s acknowledgment of notable economic disparities among Asian Americans. While recent nationwide studies have touted Asian Americans as the “highest-income [and] best-educated” racial group in the United States, a different picture emerges—one that includes poverty and significant high-school dropout rates—if we disaggregate the data, thus undermining the persistent myth of across-the-board “model minority” success.2 Like Kim and Joh, I welcome greater attention by scholars to the socioeconomic struggles of disparate ethnic subgroups, including pursuit of theo-ethical questions such as these: Might some groups be more susceptible to the false lure of the “prosperity gospel” than others? What factors lead some Asian American [End Page 115] Christian subcultures to conflate the kin-dom of God with the “American Dream” and discipleship with upward mobility?3 In what ways might wealthier Asian American groups be complicit in the economic exploitation of others, including co-ethnics or co-racials (a point to which I return below)? I am also grateful for Kim and Joh’s mention of the “invisibility of undocumented Asian immigrants in the current political debate on immigration reform” (110). Indeed, the latter is not solely a Latina/o issue as widely perceived: five out of the top ten countries of origin for “unauthorized” immigrants in the United States are Asian (the Philippines, India, Korea, China, and Vietnam) and the Asian region accounts for 11.4 percent of the total undocumented population.4 Some undocumented Asians are smuggled or trafficked across the border by “snakeheads” (she tou, slang for Chinese gangs) and others become deportable through participation in marriage or other kinds of document fraud, but the vast majority of undocumented Asian noncitizens enter the United States legally through tourist, student, or other temporary visas and then overstay their time.5 All of these facts in my judgment cry out for theo-ethical examination. Is the image of Jesus that some Asian American theologians have offered as a “border-crosser,” “immigrant par excellence,” and underprivileged ethnic minority who himself moved from the margins (Galilee) to the center (Jerusalem) sufficient or do we need other theological imaginings?6 What can justice-seeking people do within or outside of Christian churches to ease the fear, mistreatment, and marginalization of the undocumented? To be clear, I would encourage further critical reflection on immigration to include several legal avenues adopted by some Asian subgroups as well, so as simultaneously to make more visible and problematize these lesser-known migratory paths. For example, the growing phenomenon of “parachute kids” (shaio liu shuesheng, or “little students abroad” in Chinese), where minors are “dropped off” to live and attend school in the United States under the watch of a distant relative or paid caretaker while their wealthy parents stay home, raises a host of serious questions about the nature and obligations of transnational families, the value of and sacrifices for education (particularly to learn the hegemonic [End Page 116] language of English), and children’s well-being. The growing trend of “maternity tourism,” wherein a cottage industry of hotels-with-health care has arisen to service affluent women from Chinese-speaking countries wishing to give birth to American babies (as per the Fourteenth Amendment) raises a different set of issues (including the rights and obligations of citizenship), as does “split family migration” (kirogi kajok, or “goose” families in Korean; taikongren, or “astronaut” families...