The AACP Newsletter
Since 1970 Asian American Curriculum Project, Inc. - Books for All Ages January 2003

2002 APAHE Conference Special Report
By Jaime Young

Another step has been completed: Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (APIA) have entered the arena of higher education and they are pursuing their dreams. But, where do we go from here? Many APIA's are unaware of the long history we have in this country and several APIA student organizations on college campuses nationwide are mostly social or cultural groups, not "political" ones. The 2002 Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) Conference held from November 1 - November 3 at Columbia University addressed many of the issues facing APIAs today, including student struggles to build pan-Asian coalitions and also to create Asian American Studies majors at their respective schools.

Several workshops were held during this three-day conference in New York, but the ones about building a pan-Asian coalition and student struggles for Asian American Studies majors were of personal interest to me, as I am an Asian American Studies major and the co-chair of the pan-Asian coalition, Asian Pacific Council, at UC Berkeley. As I sat through the coalition-building workshop, I realized something; how lucky I am to be on the West Coast and to be a student at UCB. The workshop mostly focused on building a coalition, not on keeping that coalition strong and effective, something that the UCB Asian Pacific Council is struggling to do today. I noticed that the majority of the schools present at the conference and in that particular workshop were East Coast schools. They were having a difficult time uniting what Asian American students they had at their respective campuses and trying to build a pan-Asian coalition. Many students expressed frustration in trying to pull students together in hopes of making them more aware of APIA issues and also making them more "political." Some schools mentioned acts of anti-Asian violence on their campuses and how neither the university nor the students did anything to correct the wrongs. The APIA students were simply afraid to speak up, and they did not have a strong, political APIA student organization to support them.

During the workshop discussing the creation of an Asian American Studies major, the panelists from SUNY Buffalo talked about the great victory they won in establishing three Asian American Studies classes. However, these classes were not even classified as "Asian American Studies," but instead as "English" classes in order to attract more students to take them and possibly, in my opinion, to refrain from using the "R" word, race. The students who took the class did not know what to expect and were quite shocked to learn that APIAs have such a long history in this country. Personally, I did not feel that I actually learned anything from this conference. The workshops did not "teach" me anything new. They did, however, make me truly appreciative of my environment, my school and everything that it has to offer me.

That is not to say that I did not benefit at all from this conference. I left New York with a newfound inspiration to work even harder to continue building a more tightly knit coalition of APIAs and to continue attacking all the relative issues that affect us. I am also inspired to keep our Asian American Studies program as strong as ever, especially today when our university continues to cut our classes and our budget more and more every year. Although the West Coast schools already have Asian American Studies majors and pan-Asian coalitions, our work is nowhere near complete. Our main goal and challenge is to ensure that these things stay alive and do not get taken away from us. We need to reach out to the greater APIA community and make them see the importance of being involved, of being political, and of being heard. It is only with a strong, united voice that we can make our presence known.


Up Coming Events

Here are some events that AACP will soon be attending. Invite us to your events.
Date/TimeEventLocation
Feb. 1
8:30 am - 5:30 pm
Exploring Lessons Learned from the 1942 Internment of Japanese Americans Vineyard Hills Community Clubhouse
Fremont, CA
Feb. 5 3rd Annual Library Materials Fair Santa Clara County Office of Education
San Jose, CA
March 1-2Reading the World VUSF
San Francisco, CA
Other Event of Interest that AACP Will Not Attend
Jan. 26 - Feb. 16 SF Chinese New Year Parade and Festival San Francisco, CA
Feb. 1 - 2 San Jose Tet
Nguyen Dan Festival
Santa Clara
County Fairgrounds
344 Tully Rd.
San Jose, CA

More Information on
Exploring Lessons Learned from the 1942 Internment of Japanese Americans
  • For all principals, teachers and community leaders
  • Meet former internees and their families in an informal setting
  • Participate in discussions about personal experiences
  • Learn from one another about how to handle prejudice
  • Learn skills to intervene and shift thinking away from prejudice
  • Receive a coupon gift toward Jack Matsuoka's book, Poston CAMP II, BLOCK 211
  • Lunch is provided
Location: Vineyard Hills Community Clubhouse, near Durham and Mission Blvds. in Fremont.
Editor's Message

Hello everyone. Happy New Year!

To all the new subscribers, thank you for your interest in AACP and the newsletter.

We invite all readers to give us your feedback and ideas for articles. I look forwards to a year filled with interesting books, news, and ideas to share with you.

Leonard Chan
Editor

You can contact us at -
aacpinc@asianamericanbooks.com

ADDITIONS TO OUR WEBSITE

The following books are discounted for subscribers to our newsletter. The discounts on these books end January 31, 2003.

Magdalena

By Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
2002, 164 pages, paperback.

The novel, Magdalena, is a powerful story about the lasting effects war has on people's lives. Playing with time and point of view, multi-award author, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, explores the loves and secrets of three generations of women in the Philippines from the time of the Philippine American War, World War II, and Vietnam War.

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ORDER -- Price $17.95

Yellow

By Frank H. Wu
2001, 288 pages, hardback.

Writing in the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and others who confronted the "color line" of the twentieth century, journalist, scholar, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the new century.

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ORDER -- Price $26.00

Raymond's Perfect Present

By Therese On Louie
Illustrated by Suling Wang
2002, 29 pages, hardback.

Winner of Lee & Low's New Voices Award Honor, Raymond's Perfect Present captures the innocence of a child's love for his mother as he struggles through a difficult time. This heart-warming story reaches out to all readers who have sought to give those they love the "perfect present."

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ORDER -- Price $16.95

Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas
An Illustrated History of the Nikkei

Edited by Akemi Kikumura-Yano
2002, 322 pages, hardback.

The Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive guide to the history of Japanese immigrants in the Western Hemisphere. Who are the Nikkei and why did they leave Japan over the past two centuries? The Nikkei (people of Japanese descent and their descendants) are described from early immigration to the present as they settled in the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States. Each chapter provides four primary areas of information: a historical overview, a bibliographic essay, an annotated bibliography, and supplementary materials such as demographic data and a selection of historical photographs. Contributing authors address common themes of work and recreation, family and community life. Noted scholars Gary Y. Okihiro and Eiichiro Azuma provide key introductory essays on the historical context of Japanese migration from 1868 to the present.

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ORDER -- Price $49.95


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