Celebrating Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi American Heritage Month

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Asian American stories are underrepresented in mainstream media, leading to ignorance about the Asian population in America, to the perpetuation of stereotypes, and even to acts of violence against Asian people. Most contemporary Asian American media and representation centers on communities in California, and typically East Asian communities. Taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, this project seeks to expand Asian American representation via the lived experiences of Asian American university students in the Pacific Northwest. This project is a series of poetry, poetry reflections, and interview quotes collected and shared on a website, https://whereareyoufromproject.wordpress.com, for the public to have easy access and to share. The poems, reflections, and quotes come from 23 Asian American students and alumni from Western Washington University, Seattle University, University of Washington, and Pacific Lutheran University. These students come from a variety of backgrounds, heritages, and academic disciplines, with the aim to expose and explore the nuance that is often overshadowed by the umbrella label “Asian American.”

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How did discriminatory policies shape a uniquely pan-Asian neighborhood? Multiple disciplines and immigrant histories merge in this timely urban exegesis.

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The last installment in a series of graphic novels that began with We Hereby Refuse (Washington State Book Award Finalist) and Those Who Helped Us...This book tells the stories of six courageous Japanese American soldiers from the Pacific Northwest who volunteered to fight in the combined 442nd Regimental Combat Team with the 100th Infantry Battalion during World War II. While their friends and family were incarcerated in American concentration camps, Nisei soldiers fought heroically in the most dangerous missions on the European front. Adapted from interviews by Lawrence Matsuda and brought to life by Matt Sasaki's dynamic illustrations, Fighting for America preserves and honors the stories of six veterans who made a significant mark on American history. --

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In her first work of literary nonfiction, Sharon H. Chang reflects critically on her Asian American, Mixed Race and activist identity through the prism of returning to Hawaiʻi as a tourist. While visiting Oʻahu and Kauaʻi she considers childhood trips to Maui and the Big Island, pop culture and Hollywood movies of her youth that perpetuated Hawaiian stereotypes, and what it means that she has been stereotyped as a 'Hawaiʻi girl' her whole life though she has never lived on the islands. But what begins as a journey to unpack the ways she has been perceived and treated as a multiracial woman evolves into much more as Chang learns the real impacts of colonization and corporate tourism on Hawaiʻi and uncovers what her Asian multiracial 'mainland' identity actually looks like in relationship to the land, its Indigenous peoples, and the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement--Page 4 of cover.

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Hardly War, Don Mee Choi's major second collection, defies history, national identity, and militarism. Using artifacts from Choi's father, a professional photographer during the Korean and Vietnam wars, she combines memoir, image, and opera to explore her paternal relationship and heritage. Here poetry and geopolitics are inseparable twin sisters, conjoined to the belly of a warring empire.

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As a young femme growing up in Manila in the 1990s, Geena Rocero endured shouts of bakla, bakla!, a Filipino taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the little universe of her eskinita. Eventually she found her place in trans pageants, events as widely attended and culturally significant as a national sport, going to high school by day and competing by night. When her competitors denigrated her with the nickname horse barbie, due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet, stepping onto stage with an undeniable charisma-part equine and all fashion. By seventeen, she was the Philippines' most prominent and highest-earning trans pageant queen. When she moved to the United States, Geena was able to change her name and gender marker on her documents, which wasn't-and still isn't-possible for trans people in the Philippines. But legal recognition didn't come with any guarantee of safety. In order to survive, Geena went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom and truth at the expense of another. For a while, it worked. Within a few years she'd become an in-demand model, appearing in music videos, billboards, and magazine campaigns, and was hailed as the epitome of feminine beauty. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self, yet had to remain eternally vigilant in order to protect her dream career. The tenuous, high-stakes double life finally led Geena to a breaking point when she had to decide how to reclaim the power of Horse Barbie once and for all: radiant, head held high, and unabashedly herself--

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Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.

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The first Korean adoptees were powerful symbols of American superiority in the Cold War; as Korean adoption continued, adoptees' visibility as Asians faded as they became a geopolitical success story-all-American children in loving white families. In Invisible Asians, Kim Park Nelson analyzes the processes by which Korean American adoptees' have been rendered racially invisible, and how that invisibility facilitates their treatment as exceptional subjects within the context of American race relations and in government policies. Invisible Asians draws on the life stories of more than sixty adult Korean adoptees in three locations: Minnesota, home to the largest concentration of Korean adoptees in the United States; the Pacific Northwest, where many of the first Korean adoptees were raised; and Seoul, home to hundreds of adult adoptees who have returned to South Korea to live and work. Their experiences underpin a critical examination of research and policy making about transnational adoption from the 1950s to the present day. Park Nelson connects the invisibility of Korean adoptees to the ambiguous racial positioning of Asian Americans in American culture, and explores the implications of invisibility for Korean adoptees as they navigate race, culture, and nationality. Raised in white families, they are ideal racial subjects in support of the trope of colorblindness as a cure for racism in America, and continue to enjoy the most privileged legal status in terms of immigration and naturalization of any immigrant group, built on regulations created specifically to facilitate the transfer of foreign children to American families. Invisible Asians offers an engaging account that makes an important contribution to our understanding of race in America, and illuminates issues of power and identity in a globalized world.

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My Unforgotten Seattle is a deeply personal collection of vignettes by journalist and community organizer Ron Chew. The author narrates his life journey with a rich cast of characters set against a backdrop of chop suey restaurants and sewing factories in a small town growing too fast to preserve its soul. In powerful simple strokes, Chew tells of his awkward years as the child of Chinese immigrants and the discovery of his family's hidden past. He retraces the political awakening that led to his celebrated career as editor of an Asian American community newspaper and national museum authority. This book is a revealing tapestry of ordinary stories made extraordinary by the author's dexterity at capturing everyday moments for us to treasure. --Back cover.

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A dazzling mother-daughter adventure around the world in pursuit of self-discovery, a family reckoning, and Asian American defiance. Connie Wang explores her complicated relationship to her stubborn and charismatic mother, Qing Li, through the oh my god moments in their travels together. From attending a Magic Mike strip show in Vegas to experimenting with edibles in Amsterdam to flip-flopping through Versailles, this iconic mother-daughter duo venture into the world to find their place in it, and sometimes rail against it--as well as against each other--

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Jane Wong's powerful first book OVERPOUR weaves together seemingly disparate topics such as war and child's play, language and exile, debt, animals and nature. By doing so, Wong creates a space between--for the reader to enter. At the same time, by creating this space, she makes a space for possibility. For instance, in her poem 'Filed Notes Toward War,' Wong writes 'The war is not over. / The streets are lined with little lamps of snow, / melting. Water pours without end. / There is a swan bathing in my mouth.' Montage-like, the poems are also a kind of philosophy by which I mean they are curious. They ask questions of the world. Not afraid of being earnest, Wong's voice is both playful and cerebral, weaving in and out of the world-- its wars and its violence, poverty and alienation--making a beautiful and smart, strange and new, word elixir.--Cynthia Cruz, back cover.

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These are splendid, searching stories, written in Jhumpa Lahiri's adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz. Stories steeped in the moods of Italian master Alberto Moravia and guided, in the concluding tale, by the ineluctable ghost of Dante Alighieri, whose words lead the protagonist toward a new way of life. --

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It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl living in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. When Anvar and Safwa's worlds collide as two remarkable, strong-willed adults, their contradictory, intertwined fates will rock their community, and families, to their core.--Provided by publisher

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Real life isn't a fairytale. But Tié̂n still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tié̂n, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through? Is there a way to tell them he's gay?--

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Ocean Vuong's second collection of poetry looks inward, on the aftershocks of his mother's death, and the struggle - and rewards - of staying present in the world. Time Is a Mother moves outward and onward, in concert with the themes of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, as Vuong continues, through his work, his profound exploration of personal trauma, of what it means to be the product of an American war in America, and how to circle these fragmented tragedies to find not a restoration, but the epicenter of the break--

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Exploring the secrets and complexities lying at the heart of family life and relationships, a collection of eight stories includes the title work, about a young mother in a new city whose father tends her garden while hiding a secret love affair.

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In November 2016, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Indian American woman to serve in that role. Two years later, the fast-rising Democratic star and determined critic of President Donald Trump, according to Politico's Playbook 2017 Power List, won reelection with more votes than any other member of the House. Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, proved her progressive bonafides when she introduced the most comprehensive Medicare-for-all bill to Congress in February. Behind the story of Jayapal's rise to political prominence lie over two decades of devoted advocacy on behalf of immigrants and progressive causes--and years of learning how to turn activism into public policy that serves all Americans. Use the Power You Have is Jayapal's account of the path from sixteen-year-old Indian immigrant to grassroots activist, state senator, and now progressive powerhouse in Washington, DC. Written with passion and insight, Use the Power You Have offers a wealth of ideas and inspiration for a new generation of engaged citizens interested in fighting back and making change, whether in Washington or in their own communities.--

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Three Japanese American individuals with different beliefs and backgrounds decided to resist imprisonment by the United States government during World War II in different ways. Jim Akutsu, considered by some to be the inspiration for John Okada's No-No Boy, resisted the draft and argued that he had no obligation to serve the US military because he was classified as an enemy alien. Hiroshi Kashiwagi renounced his United States citizenship and refused to fill out the loyalty questionnaire required by the US government. He and his family were segregated by the government and ostracized by the Japanese American community for being disloyal. And Mitsuye Endo became a reluctant but willing plaintiff in a Supreme Court case that was eventually decided in her favor. These three stories show the devastating effects of the imprisonment, but also how widespread and varied the resistance was--

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In this spiky and hilarious 21st century reboot of the iconic film Taxi Driver, a ride share driver is barely holding it together on the hunt for love, dignity and a living wage . . . until she decides she's done waiting. Damani is tired. Her father just passed away and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in the basement of her parents' old house, caring for her mom, and driving for an app to (not even) pay the bills. Protests are all the rage--everybody's in solidarity with somebody-- and the city is roiling with them, but while she keeps hearing that they're fighting for change on behalf of people like her she's too broke to even afford to pay attention. And they're blocking the roads. That is, until she gives a ride to Jolene, and life opens up. Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend - attentive, attractive, liberal - and their chemistry is incredible. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that's holding her back: She's never dated a white girl before. But Jolene's done the reading, she goes to every protest, and she says all the right things. Still, just as their romance intensifies, just as Damani is learning to trust, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off an explosive chain of events. A wild ride brimming with dark comedy, piercing social commentary and propulsive writing, Your driver is waiting is a feverish take on our culture of modern alienation--