The Crip Tarot Card

The Crip is one of thirty cards in the Asian American Tarot, an original deck of tarot cards I curated as part of my hybrid book arts project on mental health, Open in Emergency (first published in 2016 and then in an expanded second edition in 2019/2020). Each card names an archetype that structures the psychic and material life of Asian Americans, and draws upon knowledge production in Asian American studies and Asian American communities to theorize that archetype’s shape and reach. Each features original art and text, a collaboration between a visual artist and a scholar or literary writer. Each ends with guidance, a gentle directive to the reader for what to do now that they have drawn this card in a tarot reading. The Asian American Tarot is art-meets-scholarship-meets-wellness-practice-equals-magic-for-our-times. The Crip is the twenty-sixth card in the major arcana, and it is here welcoming us all on our disability journeys.