Research Guides: Diversity Initiatives in the Library: May-Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

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Articles of Interest

Angel Island: The Roots and Branches of Asian American Poetry Kimiko Hahn speaks about her history as an Asian American poet and how it intertwines with a larger collective story. She details a literary history implicitly linked with movements of resistance, as well as experimental and cross-genre forms. An examination of both how Asian American poetry acts as a collective history as well as how the aesthetics of Asian American poetry have changed in recent decades.
WHO STUDIES THE ASIAN AMERICAN MOVEMENT? A Historiographical Analysis The fourth (2000 to present) can be seen as the "coming of age"-the adolescence, but not full maturity-of AAM scholarship, with the greatest number of scholarly works, a re-emphasis on the radical roots of the AAM, and attention to Steven Lawson's "interactive model" that calls for connecting local and national, social and political issues.3 Unlike historiographies of established fields that focus on books, my analysis also includes journal articles, book chapters, Ph.D. dissertations, and Masters' theses.4 Three types of works are excluded. 7 MAINSTREAM SOCIAL MOVEMENT LITERATURE Mainstream social movement scholarship, primarily in the fields of sociology, political science, and history, has produced a voluminous literature on the 1960s-1970s social movements.8 Yet there has been scant attention paid to the study of the AAM, with a few exceptions.9 Two frameworks- the logic governing U.S. race relations and the tendency towards liberalism-help to explain this erasure of memory in relation to Asian American resistance.
Asian American History and the Perils of a Usable Past Perhaps no individual Asian American exemplifies how the existence of such brokers challenges politically driven historical narratives more than Mike Masaoka, the self-proclaimed “Moses” for Japanese Americans during their darkest years of incarceration.8 Masaoka advised the U.S. government regarding terms for fellow U.S.-born Nisei citizens to be released from camp, producing processes that required Japanese Americans to display unequivocal loyalties to the very nation that had placed them behind barbed wire without due cause or due process. Despite the great bitterness attending these conditions, the image of hyper-patriotic, civically compliant, and martially heroic Japanese Americans laid powerful foundations for later political gains such as more equal immigration and citizenship rights, a Hollywood movie, Hawaiian statehood, electoral successes, and unquestionable inclusion as Americans, albeit in the form of the problematic model minority stereotype.9 Despite the overwhelming emphasis on World War II, incarceration, and the 442nd in Japanese American history, Masaoka is not a widely celebrated hero. Masaoka's marginalization in Asian American history runs so deep that supporters had to fight to include him in the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II erected in Washington DC in 2000.10 I recount these obscured pasts not because my colleagues in Asian American history and I have gotten our stories wrong, but because they are incomplete in ways that handicap our capacities to explain the persistence and remaking of racial differentiation and class inequalities. Masaoka appears as a supporting character in the Broadway musical “Allegiance” (2015–2016), which starred George Takei and a version of his family's World War II history.
Photovoice in a Vietnamese Immigrant Family: Untold Partial Stories behind the Pictures This paper, in the form of walking meditation, sitting, drinking, eating, and traveling among spaces and times, witnesses how the author as a Vietnamese immigrant child living in the United States (U.S.) traces untold stories of their family through family photos. Further, this paper attempts to find, understand and connect the relation between personal and political, between individual and collective, for a Vietnamese re-education camp detainee and his family, situated in political, historical, and cultural context. The use of photo elicitation comes from the desire that the reader can engage with the voices of the family members as they describe events in their past history. In addition, this paper refuses the forms of “category” and “fixed results” in writing up academic research. Rather, it will appear in the form of daily conversation, collected from multiple settings. Simply speaking, this paper is a form of storytelling that invites the readers to oscillate, communicate and think with the author’s family members on this historical journey.

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Films and Videos

The Chinese Exclusion Act by PBS
Call Number: E 184 .C5 A44 2018
ISBN: 9781531704889
Publication Date: 2018

Events and Websites

Books

Heart of Fire by Mazie K. Hirono
Call Number: E 901.1 .H57 H5 2021
ISBN: 9781984881601
Publication Date: 2021-04-20
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide by Jia Lynn Yang
Call Number: JV 6455 .Y34 2020
ISBN: 9780393635843
Publication Date: 2020-05-19
Made in China by Amelia Pang
Call Number: HD 9736 .C62 P36 2021
ISBN: 9781616209179
Publication Date: 2021-02-02
Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran
Call Number: F 159 .C2 T73 2020
ISBN: 9781250194718
Publication Date: 2020-04-21
Dear Girls by Ali Wong
Call Number: PN 2287 .W555 A3 2019
ISBN: 9780525508830
Publication Date: 2019-10-15

eBooks

Asian Cuisines by E. N. Anderson
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9781614728467
Publication Date: 2018-02-28
Asians and Pacific Islanders in American Football by Joel S. Franks
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9781498560979
Publication Date: 2018-05-04
A Feeling of Belonging by Shirley Jennifer Lim
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9780814765241
Publication Date: 2005-12-01
Inscrutable Belongings : Queer Asian North American Fiction by Stephen Hong Sohn
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9781503605930
Publication Date: 2018
The Rebirth of Hope : My Journey From Vietnam War Child to American Citizen by Sau Le Hudecek
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9780875654324
Publication Date: 2017-06-15