Maiden China’s Queer Performance of Care in the Wake of the Atlanta Spa Shootings

This article reflects on the differing articulations of care in the wake of the 2021 Atlanta Spa Shootings. On March 16, 2021, at 5 pm in the afternoon, a white gunman killed eight women, six of them Asian Americans, at three spa and massage businesses in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. With attention to the material and discursive forms following the shootings, the article considers how particular forms of visibility are conferred upon “Asian women” in relation to the question of anti-Asian violence. It then focuses how care and protection is defined by the law to trace how the case of the Atlanta Spa Shootings becomes a renewed site of Asian American attachment to hate crime legislation. As a response to this problematic, it explores the Vancouver-based trans femme nonbinary drag artist, Kendell Yan, aka Maiden China, and her memorialization of the Atlanta Spa Shootings, arguing how a queer performance of care can expand and rearticulate contemporary meanings of anti-Asian violence.