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Resistance can take many forms - from education to litigation, from within a small community to throughout the globe. Though I have omitted highly important figures like Yuri Kochiyama and Fred Korematsu, I wanted to spotlight lesser-known individuals who resisted injustice in a variety of ways. They demonstrate that we too can act against oppression and inequality, however we are able.

[Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga] [Ina Sugihara] [Mitsuye Endo] [Norman Mineta] [Aki Kurose] 

Many thanks to The Densho Project for the research materials

I’ve put a printed zine version of these drawings and stories on my Storenvy for preorder, all profits from sales of the zine will be donated to the ACLU. Zines will be shipped out in early March. 

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A piece of home.

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Community Feature #2 - Stephanie

Me: What was it like growing up Asian American and what did the Asian American identity or experience mean to you?

Stephanie: Growing up Asian American within my community it was instilled with a lot of proud. So like quote unquote "white washing" was super looked down upon. Valued being able to speak your language it was kind of like a secret code and so I felt a lot of pride and like I value my culture very much. Ummm for me it represents the love my parents have for me and their whole past and how I have to experience the world. And also like the life I grew up with and the life I am going into.

Me: and do you identify strongly with your cultural background more or like the general title of Asian American and the experience that comes with that?

Stephanie: I feel like as I am losing my ability to speak my parent's tongue, I identify stronger with the general Asian American experience because I am losing a little bit of my ties…. But when I do see my parents or my relatives it strengthens how I feel about my ethnic background.

Me: Okay so its like going between this back and forth of being Asian American but then also you're Taiwanese American when you feel closer to home.

Stephanie: Another thing is that I feel like my Asian-American identity, I feel like in college has become really politicized for me. Umm because of my involvement with the Asian and Pacific-Islander Student Alliance, which teaches like a lot of social justice so that definitely has shaped my perception.

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Community Feature #1 - Eduardo

Part 1:

Me: Why did your family immigrate to the United States at that moment? And how old were you.. when you immigrated?

Ed: My mom immigrated here to basically find a better job because in the Philippines it was very common knowledge that the U.S. would offer better job prospects and pay better. And also that sort of thinking was around already so it was very common to study in the Philippines and immigrate to the US. I immigrated here when I was around 12 years old. I actually came here first for vacation, but after a few months, my mom just decided to keep me here.

Ed: And…. Yeah.

Part 2:

Me: How was it like growing up with a parent that was not originally born in the US and how has shaped the way you view things whether it was what you valued, the way you grew up and etc.

Ed: I think the Philippines and the US in general are very different and so that shaped the way I was brought up. Cause I lived in a very rural area and my grandfather was basically the only doctor in my town. I think he did a very good job in raising me and my sister as upstanding citizens and stuff, but definitely when I moved here I noticed that there were differences between how my mom would treat me and my sister as opposed to other folks…

Ed: … My mom was not, I guess she wasn't different in like the way she raised us from other folks, but definitely the values she had while growing up in the Philippines she definitely tried to instill that in us, like independence, and trying to navigate the world without her. Because I mean she moved here and didn't know the US like the very many nuances of the US

Me: Mmhmm

Ed: She was very frustrated at times when she tried to help us because that was her first time trying to navigate that stuff.

Part 3:

Me: What was it like growing up as an Asian American or Asian American immigrant here in the US and do you think the people you hung out with or the people hung out with influence that sense of being Asian American, being Filipino American?

Ed: so when I moved here from the Philippines it was very apparent that what I experienced there was very different from what people experience here…… one example could be um the type of people listen to…..

Ed: Also when I moved here I went to school in a very white neighborhood… and I couldn’t really relate to the white folks living here because it was in the suburb and most of the people there were pretty affluent.

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“Being an Asian-American woman often feels like being at a crossroads. I am expected to be both demure and domestic. However, after adolescence spent wishing I were anything but a Southeast Asian American girl, I’m not finished raising my voice. The solidarity of other art makes who refuse silence compels me to continue. I came to San Francisco for education; I discovered that the most empowering education is not given within the institution.” – Nina Vichayapai, painter and interdisciplinary artist

What Inclusive Feminism Looks Like: Huffington Post

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Names

I always wondered about names and the significance they have in our lives. A name gives you a sense of identity and a way to say “This is who I am”. Last names from parents, passed down from generation to generation. However, sometimes these names are lost in translation, with (im)migration. There is a significance and story behind how a name is given to you or passed down. When my mother came to the US, she gave me the name “Whitney”, the name of the main character of a book she had first read when she came to the US. She wanted to me to grow up to be courageous and embody all of the positive qualities of this other “Whitney”. My mother’s name had been mixed up when she immigrated to the US from China. Her first name became her middle name. Her middle name became her first name. A part of her identity was reconstructed overnight. My own last name “La” is romanized in Vietnamese from its Chinese character of 罗. If it had been romanized from Chinese to English first, it would have been spelled “Luo”. This complexity of translation adds another layer to my identity as being Chinese-Vietnamese. 

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This was one of the first videos on Teochew Identity I had ever seen on the internet. Other videos I had seen before this one were home videos, how to speak the language or in Teochew. I remember when I first found out about this video, I was ecstatic because a key part of my identity and narrative was finally being talked about on a large social media platform in a professionally made video. However, as I watched this several more times, I can’t help to wonder why aren’t there more videos like this? Teochew people are known to have had migrated to many countries in South East Asia in several large diaspora. My own grandfather migrated from Shantou to Vietnam due to poverty during the communist control in China and many other economic/social factors before fleeing with the rest of the family to the United States during the Vietnam War. As a result of a part of my family strongly identifies as Teochew while the other part identifies more with being Vietnamese.

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Chinese-Vietnamese - Twice Minorities

" [H]ow does one classify a Chinese who grew up in Vietnam, attended Chinese school and cannot speak Vietnamese fluently? Does it matter to the Chinese, he is perceived as Vietnamese and to the Vietnamese, he is perceived as Chinese? Is self-definition of ethnic identity preferable to racial or biological definitions of identity? (as cited in Trieu, p. 48)”

Chinese-Vietnamese Americans are sometimes considered being twice minorities due to being a minority in Vietnam and then a minority once again when immigrating to the United States. It is hard to do research on this dis-aggregated ethnic population because it is not a straightforward ethnic identity. You could be ethnically Chinese and born in Vietnam or have parents born in Vietnam. You could also be like me whose grandfather migrated to Vietnam from China and married my grandmother who was both ethnically Chinese and Vietnamese. 

Growing up, I didn’t feel like I belong in either Vietnamese or Chinese identities or enough. Sometimes it felt validating to be in this somewhat different and unique category, but other times it didn’t. I think that not speaking either languages was a huge part of the reason on why I felt this way. I spoke the Teochew Chinese Dialect at home, but I did not know that many other people who did. Therefore, identifying in a general “Asian American” identity felt more comfortable to me for most of my life. However, it was mainly because at times I found it easier to connect with my peers that way rather than become specific and then having to explain what the whole Chinese-Vietnamese experience was like.

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=jsaaea

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Model Minority Myth and Racial Triangulation

When I was younger I always felt out of place. It was a feeling I could not describe. To be put into this category of a “minority” with other folks like the Latinx community or black community but then having the API community always being portrayed as doing “so well” compared to other folks. I had internalized the stereotypes of Asians as “smart”, “hardworking”, and essentially facing less discrimination than other folks. However, my foreignness was always made apparent to me whether it would be strangers asking me “Where are you from?” or people complimenting “Your English is so good.” It was weird how even at a young age I started internalizing all of these different forms of racializing Asians and when I didn’t meet up to the expectations of these stereotypes, I felt bad. It wasn’t until later on when I was finally able to label this unnameable feeling of being out of place.

The model minority myth is the racial discourse that AAPI are hardworking, doing well, independent, docile, and self-regulating. It encompasses many neo-liberal ideas. The model minority myth is rooted in anti-blackness because in order to have a model minority, you need a group to be the opposite. It was used to call black people lazy and non deserving so that they wouldn’t be able to get the resources they needed despite the institutional barriers. The myth ignores the fact that there are over 1.3 million undocumented Asian Americans in the US and Southeast Asians have the highest high school drop out rates. Racial triangulation is a tactic that puts Asian Americans between whites and blacks in the order of racial superiority, valorizing them, but also ostracizing them by putting them as the perpetual foreigner. 

Resource:  "Racial Triangulation" by Clair Jean Kim

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Mom, Ma, Mẹ

At 21 you married dad,

hoping to find a new life and home.

At 23 you immigrated to the US ,

and had my brother at 24, me at 25.

In that time you learned a second tongue not your own, 

for your new family,

while struggling to learn another to navigate this foreign country you came to.

At 32 you had three kids,

a son born with a thick tongue of Chiu Chow

now the only sound that comes out are in English.

a daughter who calls you niang and tries to learn your mother tongue

but struggles with her sense of identity.

a baby boy still too young to speak and learn the importance of language.

At 46 you now feel trapped,

living in this country for half of your life time,

now as a stay at home mom with four kids of different ages

still trying to find your own sense of identity.

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‎Asian American identity, as conceptualized by Asian American feminists, is a radical stance of re-inventing and restructuring both American and Asian cultures. It means more than being just Asian and more than being just American; it means understanding and bridging both cultures in a way that undermines the patriarchy and racism of both cultures. This process necessitates contesting white racism that demeans and devalues Asianness as well as Asian patriarchy that demeans and devalues women. Thus the transcendence of Asian American feminist identity is a process fraught with pain, loss, and struggle against racism and sexism, both from within the Asian community and from the mainstream white community. There is no easy path.

“Race and Gender: The Co-Optation of Asian American Feminism” (1995) by Sonia Shah (via siminator)

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Asian American as a Political Identity

“Contrary to connotations of the term as simply representing immigrants from a region of the world, Asian American emerged as a political identity in the 1960s and 1970s. The term symbolized Third World internationalism that struggled against US imperialist and neo-colonial policies in Asia and expressed solidarity with domestic nationalism inspired by Black power movements such as the Black Panther Party (Maeda 2005). United under this banner, Asian Americans rejected assimilation and their caricature as the model minority. Asian American activists ‘viewed racial oppression as a systemic, rather than aberrant, feature of American society,’ ‘believed that the racial oppression of Asian Americans stemmed from and served to justify their economic exploitation,’ and ‘sought to build Asian American power and culture autonomous of White approval’ (Maeda 2005, 1084).”  

-  “Asian American as a political–racial identity: implications for teacher education” by Thomas Phillips  http://tmp.bol.ucla.edu/Philip_REE.pdf

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My Dad’s Story Pt. 2 unedited

The second time dad tried to escape, dua co sewed a thin gold chain in the lining of his underwear. He and his cousin tried to leave by boat. However, the waves were too big and the owner was afraid for his family that was on their so he turned back. They walked all night, but his cousin was so slow so dad kept waiting for him. The other people made it home, but dad and his cousin got caught by the village officer. He was in a temporary jail. He looked very sad and one of the officers that liked him told him the details of not escaping on the road because they had motorcycles and that if he gets caught to say he was visiting a teacher friend. At night dad was too tired so he decided to sleep on the creeky bench, but his cousin woke up and didn't give up. They decided to escape but his cousin waited for him. He was going to use his excuse of going to restroom which was in the back if the guy woke up. His cousin fled by road so he made it home first but dad went through the field. Dogs chased him so he ran and jumped over the fence and traveled from midnight for hours. He made it a valley with only three houses. He watched each owner watering their plants from the trees. The first two guys did not have friendly faces. The third guy did so he asked for directions and used the teacher story. However, he realized he was still in the same village, so he told the truth. The guy told him his parents must have been good people because the other two houses were owned by communist. He told dad to change and follow his brother and mom to the next village at his sister's house. The same officer from the night before stopped them and he pretended to be the lady's nephew. The officer almost recognized him. At the sister's house, one of her friends told her not to send him to the city they were heading to because they were capturing teenagers to join the army. So dad changed again and the guy let him borrow his clothes, but it was a patchy country side shirt. It was his only shirt. The guy's mom walked with dad all the way to his uncles house and then dad sold the gold chain he was hiding and gave 6000/7000 Vietnamese dongs to the lady to repay her and buy a new shirt and food for the guy he borrowed the ID from. He didn’t immigrate to America until much later after his parents and siblings already did.

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My Dad’s Story Pt. 1 unedited

I remember as a child, the stories that would stick by me the most were my dad’s stories on how he immigrated to the U.S. during the Vietnam War. The story I am sharing below is one that he was willing to share with me after watching “The Journey From the Fall”, with my mom and I, a year and a half ago. There may be some historical inaccuracies in the way I understood it due to language barriers, amnesia, and words lost in translation. 

Words to follow along: Ah ma = grandmother on dad’s side Ah gong = grandfather on dad’s side Duo co = Eldest aunt on dad’s side

After the Vietnam war, when dad was 18, he was captured and forced to serve in the communist army that took over Vietnam. They brought him to a camp to for three days and two nights before they would transfer him to a training camp to learn how to fight [this could have also been a re-education camp or nationalist one]. There was a fence that separated him from ah ma and ah gong. They visited him every day and dad was very broken hearted. He told them that he was old enough to know what to do in this situation and to stop visiting him because he was so broken hearted. On the last day, they were all waiting in the transport truck to go onto the big ship that would transfer him to the new camp. However the new camp had a river and the best way to escape was by swimming there which he couldn’t do. Acting fast, he decided to tell the commanding officer he needed to use the restroom. The officer didn't let him, so dad told him that his clothes were there so he couldn’t leave anyway and he already accepted joining the army because if he didn't he would have hid in his home town of can tho. The officer liked the idea so he did. When he went to the restroom which was outdoors and public, he saw that there was a road of vendors so he asked a lady a favor and she brought him to her house to hide in her daughter's room. Her house was built over a river. In her daughter's room there was basement with water. If she knocked he would hide. The communist searched all of the houses and beeped when the ship came. Eventually they left him but he stayed longer just in case. The daughter walked dad to the nearest bus stop. On the way to dua co's city, he bumped into one of his neighbors and told her he couldn’t go him yet because he still had things to do. When dad made it to dua co's house, ah ma visited him and told him that she yelled really loudly in the whole street that she saw her son in another city. Ah ma was very scared because they didn't know he was forced into the joined the army/a re-education camp.

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41 years after the Fall of Saigon...

When I was younger my dad used to tell me stories about the Vietnam War and what my family went through. It was a refugee narrative that was very familiar to me. In fact most of the people I knew in my community and hometown of San Jose shared the same narrative. If they were Vietnamese and lived in East or South Side San Jose, the likelihood of them being or having a family member that was a Vietnam War refugee was high. San Jose currently has one of the largest Vietnamese American community outside of Vietnam. That number only continues to grow. That period of time prompted one of the largest diaspora of Vietnamese immigrants in history. 

After 1975, the “Vietnam syndrome” was something that Americans tried hard to end. The failure that occurred in Vietnam was a reminder that many did not want to remember. Following the end of that war, US media sought to highlight the ending of the Persion Gulf War in 1991 as a victory and the lifting of the US trade embargo against Vietnam in 1994 as an important milestone to open up Vietnam to the West. These narratives sought to erase America’s failures in Vietnam as the media also continued depict that those left created much better lives in the US as was depicted in the 25th anniversary coverage by major news outlets. Vietnamese Americans/immigrants became the new model minority. This created a narrative of winning even when losing (Espiritu). 

I find that even in my own family, “forgetting, but not forgetting” at the same time has become a reoccurring theme because of the trauma that they went through. I remember when I would ask my dad or uncles about it, they would get irritated, question why I wanted to know that stuff, and then relent, but only telling me fragmented parts of their oral history. The trauma of the war has left to a lot of fragmented parts of mine and many other family histories that are too painful to remember or have tried to be forgotten so hard that it becomes hard to recollect. 

**Some information from:

The "We-Win-Even-When-We-Lose" Syndrome: U.S. Press Coverage of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the "Fall of Saigon"  by Yen Le Espiritu