Originally from Việt Nam, Yến Lê Espiritu is Distinguished Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She has published extensively on Asian American communities, critical immigration and refugee studies, and US colonialism and wars in Asia. A founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective (CRSC), Espiritu is the lead author of Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies (U of California P, 2022), written collaboratively by CRSC members.