These resources are specific to Asian Pacific Islander (API) LGBTQ individuals and their families, including counseling and support services, local and national organizations, books and reading materials, and short films and videos.

Counseling and Support

These local counseling and support groups specifically serve the Asian and API community. You might also consult Counseling and Support for general services.

• API Chaya is a Seattle-based group that seeks to end violence in API communities. It includes a Queer Network Program, which works to engage the API LGBTQ community to address and prevent intimate partner violence.
• Asian Counseling and Referral Services is a Seattle-based organization that offers a broad array of behavioral health programs, human services, and civic engagement activities for Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and other communities in King County and beyond.

You can further explore local support options via the GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality, the world’s largest and oldest association of LGBTQ healthcare professionals. Its extensive Provider Directory lets you specify your therapeutic needs. If you click the Additional Search button to display the Language Spoken menu, you can search for a physician who speaks your desired language, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, and more.

Local Organizations

These organizations are located in the Seattle area.

• Japanese American Citizens League -Seattle dedicates itself to preserving the rights and well-being of all Asian Americans and others who fall victim to social injustice in the United States. 
• Pride Asia celebrates, empowers, and nurtures the multi-cultural diversity of the LGBTQ communities through the Asian Pacific Islander lens and features a range of events.
• U.T.O.P.I.A. (United Territories Of Pacific Islanders’ Alliance ) is a non-profit organization of volunteers in the Greater Seattle area working to promote community, diversity, and acceptance, and to create a safe space for Pacific Islander LGBTQ communities.

Other Organizations

These organizations support, information, and resources for the API community. For a broader range or services and organizations, consult LGBTQ Resources.

• API Equality LA  (Asian and Pacific Islanders for LGBT Equality) is a coalition of organizations and individuals working for fair treatment of LGBTQ people in the greater Los Angeles Asian and Pacific Islander community. Check its Resources page for in-language materials.
• Asian & Pacific Islander Family Pride are parents and friends of LGBTQ people, who seek to end the isolation of Asian and Pacific Islander families with LGBTQ members through support, education, and educational materials.
• Asian Pride Project is an online space for family and friends of LGBTQ Asian and API,  where they can share stories and experiences with each other, in the languages of their communities, and through video, sound, pictures, and words.
• Desi provides a free telephone helpline (sponsored by Trikone) that offers confidential, culturally sensitive peer support, information, and resources LGBTQ South Asians. Note that the Desi helpline does not offer suicide support: if you need it, please click the red Help phone image on the right side of this page.
• NQAPIA is a federation of LGBTQ Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander organizations, which seeks to build the capacity of local LGBT API organizations, invigorate grassroots organizing, develop leadership, and challenge homophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant bias. 
• PFLAG Korea has a website in Korean only but you can read more their work (in English) here.
• Q&A Space  is a project of API Equality LA that is a separate and robust website, offering storytelling and resources  specifically designed for those who identify as API and LGBTQ as well as Coming Out resources.
• Queer Asian Spirit is a collection of resources for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, pansexual, asexual, queer and questioning LGBTQ people of API descent who are interested in spiritual and religious issues.
• The Dari Project develops resources to increase awareness and acceptance in Korean American communities of LGBTQ) people of Korean descent. Its website includes personal stories and resources. You might also check this article profiling one of its members.
• Trikone offers support to people of South Asian descent who trace their ethnicities to one of these places: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet.
• Trikone Northwest aspires to create a safe and inclusive world where LGBTQ+ South Asians can freely express themselves and reach their unlimited potential by building community, increasing social and political visibility, and promoting racial and sexual equality. Check out their Facebook page for upcoming workshops, book readings, potlucks, and more. 

Books 

This book list is specific to the Asian and API communities.  If the book is currently part of the King County Library, the link takes you to its catalog page: otherwise, it goes to an available source for purchase. For a more extensive book list, consult Recommended Reading. In addition, if you attend our meetings, you can check out books from our Member Library.

• Beloved Daughter is a collection of letters, written by family members of LGBTQ Asian women, who tell the stories and struggles of families grappling with their daughters and/or sisters’ sexuality. Each letter appears in both English and Chinese.
• Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by distinguished law professor Kenji Yoshino is both of memoir of his own journey as a gay man combined with a legal manifesto for civil rights.
• Moving Truths: Queer and Transgender: Desi Writings on Family is an anthology of essays edited by Aparajeeta ‘Sasha’ Duttchoudhury and Rukie Hartman that uses storytelling as a bridge for families to better understand their Queer and Transgender Desi family members. Both authors are alumni of University of Washington. This article explains how and why they created this book.
• Two Spirits, One Heart: A Mother, Her Transgender Son, and Their Journey to Love and Acceptance by Marsha Aizumi is a mother’s story of understanding, accepting, and supporting her transgender son.

Additional Readings

These web pages provide articles, fact sheets, and multi-language information. You might also consult Brochures for more materials.

• Coming Out is a resource on the Q&A Space website for LGBTQ individuals who want to disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity to their loved ones. It includes questions to consider before coming out, a plan for possible parental reactions, and guidelines for creating a Coming Out Letter.
• Family Is Still Family, Developed by Love is Love (scroll to bottom of page) is a series of one-page, multilingual fact sheets for parents who have LGBTQ kids, in nineteen Asian languages and scripts. NQAPIA developed them in conjunction with their PSA campaign (see the upcoming section “Videos” for details.)
• Human Right Campaign provides several helpful articles.
  • Coming Out Issues for Asian Pacific Americans
  • Family and Coming Out Issues for Asian Pacific Families
  • Religion and Coming Out Issues for Asian Pacific Americans
• PFLAG San Gabriel Valley API Chapter is an Asian Pacific Islander Chapter of PFLAG and provides resources, including multilingual documents, as well as personal stories and a blog.
• PFLAG NYC API Project is a New York-based dedicated group for API and Asian families and provides resources (from PFLAG Brisbane) in multiple languages including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Videos

These videos range from short films to longer documentaries, several in Chinese.

• API Parents Who Love Their LGBT Kids is a multilingual PSA campaign, sponsored by NQAPIA, that supports API parents who have LGBTQ kids as well as LGBTQ youth who want to come out to their parents, who are often foreign-born immigrants or/and limited English proficient. In the related Asian or API language, with English subtitles. 

• A Place in the Middle is a student-friendly educational short film which tells the true story of a young girl in Hawaiʻi who dreams of leading her school’s boys-only hula group. The website includes learning goals on diversity and inclusion. In English.

• Coming Home – Celebrating Chinese New Year tells the story of a young gay man who comes home to his parents over the holiday and the subsequent changes that occur.
• Daddy’s Heart is a short video  on a Taiwanese father’s journey to acceptance for his lesbian daughter. Produced by Home Is Love, a Taiwanese group that supports same-sex marriage. In Chinese with English subtitles.
• Love in a Mountain Town is a short film produced by PFLAG-China, about LGBTQ people and their families facing issues such as coming out in a Chinese town, with English and Chinese subtitles.
• Mama Rainbow is a documentary, shown here in full, that features six Chinese mothers talking openly about their experiences with their gay and lesbian children. In Chinese with English subtitles.
• Our Families: LGBT Asian and Pacific Islanders Stories is the first in a series produced by Our Families, a community education campaign that raises the visibility of LGBTQ people of color, and features first person accounts from API LGBTQ people.
• PFLAG China features mothers from PFLAG China, all in Chinese with no subtitles.
• PFLAG Korea provides several videos, including this one in Korean with English subtitles. You can also check this moving video of their chapter providing love and support for the LGBTQ community by giving hugs at Korea’s Queer Culture Festival held in Seoul.
•  Q&A Space, a project of API Equality LA offers many compelling videos on the issues that face LGBTQ API people and their families. Here is a sampling of them (all in English):
  • Proud Mom is series of short videos by a mother of a gay gender-creative son, who shares her parenting insights and experiences during his growing years.
  • It’s a Process is a first person account of a Chinese lesbian woman discovering her identity and coming out to her family.
  • Mr. Macho Man is a first person account of a gay man with Samoan Chinese heritage on meeting his first love and coming out to his family.