Virtual Lobby Display: Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Thirty leading scholars offer original essays that trace Asian American history from the experience of exclusion, violence, and racism to the social and political activism of the late twentieth century.

Far East, Down South provides essential essays that restore and explore an overlooked part of the American South's story - Asian immigration. The essays form a comprehensive overview of key episodes and issues in the history of Asian immigrants to the South.

This collection of coming-of-age essays, edited and written by young Asian Americans, powerfully captures the joys and struggles of their evolving identities as one of the fastest-growing groups in the nation and poignantly depicts the many oft-conflicting ties they feel to both American and Asian cultures.

Louder and Faster is a cultural study of Asian American taiko, the thundering, athletic drumming tradition that originated in Japan. Deborah Wong reveals a complicated story embedded in memories of Japanese American internment and legacies of imperialism, Asian American identity and politics, and the intersection of culture and global capitalism.

Muncie remains the epitome of an American town. Yet in their decades of studies, scholars ignored the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and tensions woven into American communities. Muncie, India(na) invites readers to feel the truth of the fascinating stories behind one woman's revised portrait of an American community.

The deep associations Asians in the United States have with food have become ingrained in American popular imagination. This book collects new scholarship that centers the study of foodways and culinary practices in our understanding of Asian Americanness.

Histories of civil rights movements in America generally place little or no emphasis on the activism of Asian Americans. Yet there is a legacy of civil rights activism among foreign and American-born Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino students, who formed crucial alliances based on their shared religious affiliations and experiences of discrimination.

From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Immigration Act of 1924 to Japanese American internment during World War II, the United States has a long history of anti-Asian policies. But Lon Kurashige demonstrates that despite widespread racism, Asian exclusion was not the product of an ongoing national consensus; it was a subject of fierce debate.

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality.

In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the U.S. But as historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life.

A bird sacred to Hawaiians and a member of the raven family, the 'Alala today survives only in captivity. How the species once flourished, how it has been driven to near-extinction, and how people struggled to save it, is the gripping story of Seeking the Sacred Raven.

Although Pacific history, society, and culture have been the subjects of much research and writing, the lives of Pacific Islanders in the diaspora (particularly in the U.S.) have received far less attention. The contributors to this volume hope to rectify this oversight.

Six years ago at the age of twenty-one, Jaed Muncharoen Coffin, a half-Thai American man, left New England's privileged Middlebury College to be ordained as a Buddhist monk in his mother's native village of Panomsarakram - thus fulfilling a familial obligation. A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants chronicles his time at the temple that rain season.

Fleeing the murderous Pol Pot regime, Cambodian refugees arrive in America as at once the victims and the heroes of America's misadventures in Southeast Asia; and their encounters with American citizenship are contradictory as well.

This collection showcases seven exciting new plays that dramatize timely themes that are familiar to Asian Americans. The works variously address immigration, racism, stereotyping, identity, generational tensions, assimilation, and upward mobility as well as post-9/11 paranoia, racial isolation, and adoptee experiences.

Daniel is finally coming back to Hawai'i. His Uncle Koji lives with the memories of Daniel's mother, Mariko, the love of his life. He can't wait to see Daniel, who he's always thought of as a son. The Color of Air interweaves the stories of Daniel, Koji, and Mariko to create a vibrant, bittersweet chorus that celebrates their lifelong bond to one other and to their immigrant community.

Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world.

It is 1995, and Anvar is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy growing up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root, his family decides to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and model-Muslim brother adjust easily, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar commits to being a bad Muslim.

In this groundbreaking anthology, first-and second-generation Hmong Americans - the first to write creatively in English - share their perspectives on being Hmong in America. In stories, poetry, essays, and drama, these writers address the common challenges of immigrants adapting to a new homeland.

Asian diasporic writers imagine "home" in the twenty-first century through an array of fiction, memoir, and poetry. This anthology moves beyond the model-minority myth and showcases the singular intimacies of individuals figuring out what it means to belong.

Forty-eight stories sweep across the 20th century and the range of Asian American experience.

In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong and talk. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between these four women and their American-born daughters.

On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her.

In the early twentieth century a young Chinese boy joins his father in San Francisco and helps him realize his dream of making a flying machine.

When a young boy visits his Thai-speaking grandfather, their lack of a common language leads to confusion, frustration, and silence. But as they sit down to draw together, something magical happens - the two form a bond that goes beyond words.

For all ten years of her life, Hà has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, and the warmth of her friends close by. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama.

Bullied at school, eighth-grader Apple, a Filipino American who loves the music of the Beatles, decides to change her life by learning how to play the guitar.

Sundara fled Cambodia with her aunt's family to escape the Khmer Rouge army when she was 13, leaving behind her parents, brother and sister, and the boy she had loved since she was a child. Four years later, she struggles to fit in at her Oregon high school. She wonders, are her hopes for happiness and new life in America disloyal to her past and her people?

Nadira and her family are illegal aliens, fleeing to the Canadian border - running from the country they thought was their home. For years since emigrating from Bangladesh, they have lived on expired visas in New York City, hoping they could someday realize their dream of becoming legal citizens of the United States. But after 9/11, everything changes.

Would you make a deal with a magical tiger? This uplifting story brings Korean folklore to life as a girl goes on a quest to unlock the power of stories and save her grandmother.

Meet San Lee, a (sort of) innocent teenager, who moves against his will to a new town. Things get interesting when he (sort of) invents a new past for himself, which makes him incredibly popular. In fact, his whole school starts to (sort of) worship him, just because he (sort of) accidentally gave the impression that he's a reincarnated mystic.

Alvin, an Asian American second grader, is afraid of everything - elevators, tunnels, girls, and, most of all, school. He's so afraid of school that, while he's there, he never, ever, says a word. But at home he's a very loud superhero named Firecracker Man, a brother to Calvin and Anibelly, and a gentleman-in-training, so he can be just like his dad.

After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.