Heritage Month: More Than Fan Dances, Chop Suey
Artist Mine Okubo passed away last Saturday in New York City, at the age of 88. She achieved higher celebrity status than most artists ever do, and received acclaim for her book, Citizen 13660.
Despite this, as I sat near her deathbed last Thursday, I was struck by the sadness of the situation. Here was a woman with tremendous gifts, passing away in relative obscurity. Her life was a reminder that we do not adequately nurture our own community artists, scholars, and organizations. We expect them to be there for us, but we don’t put our dollars behind them as they struggle to exist in a marketplace dominated by stereotypes, misogyny, violence and nativism.
Luckily, there is an opportunity to support our artists, scholars and groups using money and public relations resources of our non-Asian American jobs and institutions. Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) is fast approaching, and school, governmental and professional groups are starting to plan their activities. The month is officially celebrated in May, but some school groups, not wanting to conflict with exam schedules, plan events for late April.
APAHM grew out of a desire to educate fellow Americans about Asian American people, cultures, history and issues. Ever since the first events in the late 1970s, most activities start with food and cultural events, and most also include a speaker or other educational component. Education is the key for any well-organized event, because fan dances and chop suey alone are not enough to counter the systematic inequalities we all face every day.
If you haven’t planned an event as yet for your group, now is the time to get going. Either work with established groups in your city or state to put on an event, or start a new tradition in your company, school or agency. Here are some resources to help you get started:
- The Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS), ABCFLASH, Yahoo!, A. Magazine and AsianWeek last year collaborated in producing a Web site (www.abcflash.com/apa), featuring history, bios and other useful information. The seventh annual APAICS Gala, the preeminent place for Asian Americans from all across the nation to see and be seen in Washington during APA Heritage Month, will be held this year on May 10th.
- The Organization of Chinese Americans ( www.ocanatl.org ), Federal Asian Pacific American Council ( www.fapac.org ), and other D.C.-based groups have Web sites with the latest information on events and possible speakers. When inviting a speaker, especially one from the community, for goodness’ sake, please be sure to pay them an honorarium. Pay as much as possible, because good-hearted folks like these always recycle the money back to community-based projects.
- Across the nation, groups such as the Texas-based Asian Pacific American Heritage Association ( www.apaha.org ) are celebrating noteworthy individuals, such as Houston-based Pakistani-American novelist Bapsi Sidwha.
- New York-based educator, activist, and trainer Liz Young has created an informative one-day seminar to help Asian Americans learn the “unwritten rules” for success in American corporations. She is a powerful speaker and one of the earliest teachers of Asian American history, who has a lot to offer to nonprofits and campus groups as well (see http://interchangeconsultants.com/asian-pro-dev.htm).
- Those planning events in the Northwest are fortunate to have major resource centers at the University of Washington and Washington State University. WSU, for example, has started a Comparative American Cultures (http://libarts.wsu.edu/cac/news.htm ) program under the direction of internationally-recognized ethnic studies scholar Epifanio San Juan, Jr., and their Working Papers series highlights new scholars who would bring fresh insights to conferences and events.
- To serve the rest of the country, the Association for Asian American Studies (www.aasp.cornell.edu/aaas/AAAS_Cover_Index.html ) has scholars in many cities who could serve as speakers and conference participants. They are holding their annual conference in Toronto, March 28 to April 1, and have resources for those interested in starting Asian American Studies programs on their campuses.
- Dance, music, and other artistic events can be booked by contacting Asian American resource centers in your city. One of my favorite national organizations, founded by dancer/singer/ producer Nobuko Joanne Miyamoto, is Great Leap, Inc. (www.greatleap.org ).
- Videos and films on the Asian American experience can be bought or rented from groups such as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (www.naatanet.org/ ); you can also support artists making the latest videos and films through contributions and letters of support (www.asianamericanfilm.com/inproduction/ ).
- Numerous Asian American books have emerged in recent years (www.asianamericanbooks.com/). While Amy Tan, Helen Zia, and other big-name authors deserve our support, fascinating insights can be found by inviting lesser-known speakers such as David Palumbo-Liu (www.stanford.edu/~palboliu/ ) to your event. Professor Palumbo Liu, author of Asian/America: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier, teaches comparative literature at Stanford, and creatively challenges us to re-think our identities as Asians in a multicultural America.
In short, there is no lack of resources for a meaningful Asian Pacific American Heritage Month event. Those with other ideas should forward them to the editor at AsianWeek and share them with friends and colleagues via your listservs and mailing lists. |
