The AACP Newsletter
Since 1970 Asian American Curriculum Project, Inc. - Books for All Ages July 2002

AACP to Attend CHCP’s Ninth Chinese Summer Festival

AACP is going to be at two festivals in San Jose this coming weekend of July 13 and 14. We were only schedule to attend the San Jose Obon Festival, but due to our valued supporters' suggestions, AACP has added The Chinese Historical and Cultural Project's Ninth Chinese Summer Festival to our list of events that we will be attending.

AACP has some open dates in the months ahead. If you have some events that you think that we should attend, please feel free to suggest them. In the next feel months we hope to be at a convention or festival near you.


JACL Convention

The biennial Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) convention was held in Las Vegas, Nevada during the last week of June. AACP, as well as several other different organizations, participated in the convention as exhibitors, each of us bringing our own flavor of information to the mix.

The exhibitors included a variety of organizations from those that shared information on how we as individuals can contribute to the Asian American community to those with information on good places to visit this summer and learn just a little bit more about our history.

One way that you can help the Asian American community is by becoming a bone marrow donor. There are very few Asian Americans registered as donors with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), which is why the Asian American Donor Program (AADP) was created why they were in attendance at the JACL convention. We can all do our part in helping to save lives by registering to become a donor. For more information, please visit www.aadp.org.

Or, if you would like to learn more about Japanese American history or experience the internment camps firsthand, some great places to visit would be the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), Bainbridge Island, Manzanar, and Minidoka. For more information, please visit the respective websites:

The JACL convention also received local coverage from a Las Vegas TV station that has created a link page of special interest stories on Asia and Asian Americans. You can find their page at the KLASTV website.

Minidoka and Manzanar Exhibit Picture
Minidoka and Manzanar Exhibit at the JACL Convention

Other Up Coming Events

Here are some other events that AACP will soon be attending. Invite us to your events.

Date/TimeEventLocation
July 13-14San Jose Obon FestivalSan Jose Buddhist Temple
San Jose, CA
July 14
10am-5pm
CHCP’s Ninth Chinese Summer FestivalHistory Park at Kelley Park
San Jose, CA
July 20
10am-4pm
Books by the BayYerba Buena Gardens
San Francisco, CA
Aug. 4-9Lake Tahoe Fellowship ConferenceZephyr Point, NV
Sept. 7
9am-4pm
Midori Kai
Arts & Craft Show
MV Buddhist Temple
Mountain View, CA


Editor's Message

Thank you JACL and the Mountain View Buddhist Temple (for the Nakayoshi Gakko summer school) for inviting us to your events. Both events were well worth attending.

Special thanks to Alisa Lynch of the National Park Service at Manzanar for making the trip to the JACL convention all worth it. Alisa Lynch made a sizable purchase of books to stock the library that they are creating at Manzanar (site of one of the Japanese American Internment Camps during WWII). The opportunity to meet people like Alisa Lynch - librarians and educators - is a major reason why we go to conferences, conventions, and festivals.

Coming soon - we will have an archive of our past newsletters on our website along with some of your feedback and responses. Watch for it.

Leonard Chan
Editor

Give Us Your Feedback

Please feel free to send us your reviews, comments, and book suggestions. You can contact us at -
aacpinc@asianamericanbooks.com
Leonard Chan Editor
Jaime Young Assistant Editor
Philip Chin Contributing Editor

Today's Youth is Tomorrow's Future
Editorial by Jaime Young
If you look at today's youth, particularly those still in high school or younger, what do you see? You see young girls wearing too much make-up and young boys wearing extremely big clothing. And lately, we've been seeing something else as well. We see a lot of today's youth spending far too much time on the computer playing games such as the ever-popular Starcraft. This is something that I see everyday. I see it when I go into my younger brother's room or when I go over to a cousin's or a friend's house. This is what technology has done to our youth.

My brother and younger cousins always ask me why I am so active in the Asian American community, especially on the UC Berkeley campus. They ask me why I care so much about issues that to them seem non-existent. To them, racism and discrimination no longer exist. They were a thing of the past. It's the new millennium and people think differently now. Nobody thinks like that anymore.

Having participated in the Abercrombie & Fitch protest this past April, the younger ones in my family only saw that incident as something that Berkeley "had done to me." That Berkeley had turned me into a liberal and a radical.

They did not understand why the Asian American community was making such a "big deal" out of a few t-shirts. They believe that we live in a "colorblind" society now, especially here in the Bay Area, a place full of immense diversity.

However, the question we need to ask now is why are Asian Americans so apathetic? It is because society has made them focus on other things, other "more important" things. The parents are now focused primarily on putting their children through school and making sure that they receive a good education. After all, one cannot achieve success without an education. Although unaware of this, Asian American parents are helping their children perpetuate the stereotype of the Model Minority.

Most of the time, when we hear the word "racism", the first thing we think about is blatant racism. Therefore, it is no wonder that today's youth do not think that such a thing still exists. However, what they are not seeing is the not-so-blatant racism. The racism that lies in sweatshops, for they target immigrant or illegal women of color making them work long hours for little or no pay at all. We need to show today's youth that they should be proud of who they are. They should be proud of their heritage and culture. We need to make today's youth see that the computer can offer so much more than just games; there is a world of information out there just waiting to be discovered.

ADDITIONS TO OUR WEBSITE

Bookcover for Ten Visits Ten Visits
By: Frank & Joanne Iritani

Brief accounts of the Iritani's visits to all ten Japanese American Relocation Centers of World War II, Internee and Non-Internee Recollections, Struggle for Redress, Internment of Other Groups, Our Non-Nikkei Friends, and other essays.

View Additional Information
ORDER -- Item #2233, Price $15.95

Bookcover for Exploring Chinatown Exploring Chinatown
A Children's Guide to Chinese Culture

By: Carol Stepanchuk & Leland Wong

Would you like to learn more about the Chinese culture and discover the history of how Chinatowns all over the country came to be? Join us on this journey through these historic neighborhoods as we explore the culture and traditions that have thrived for more than 2,000 years.

View Additional Information
ORDER -- Item #3049, Price $22.95

Bookcover for A Time To Choose A Time To Choose
By: Edward Blight

The lives of several hundered thousand Japanese Americans changed forever when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. A Time to Choose describes these changes through two Japanese American families, one living in the US and one in Japan. Come and discover how each of these families dealt with racial prejudice, assimilation and discrimination by their government. Find out to which country each family chose to be loyal.

View Additional Information
ORDER -- Item #3050, Price $15.95


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