Library of Congress Welcomes APAs
November 2, 2007
Grace Baldaserri, Eleonor Castillo and Evangeline Canonizado Buell. Photo credit: Fatima Capinpin.
It was the spring of 1973. After participating in the Third World Strike that resulted in the formation of Asian American studies at San Francisco State and studying at the University of Chicago, Juanita Tamayo Lott experienced culture shock when she moved to Washington. For the first time, she saw “a sleepy Southern town with blue laws, women with pearls and white gloves, and men with Panama hats and white shoes.”
Juanita, who was homesick for an APA community and a home-cooked Asian meal, went to the Library of Congress to work on her master’s thesis. She borrowed 89 books on racial minorities and ethnic groups, including Asian and Pacific Americans, and listed every one in her bibliography.
Thirty-four years later, Dr. Juanita Tamayo Lott was a featured speaker at the National Conference to Establish an Asian Pacific American Collection at the Library of Congress, which was held October 4 and 5 at the Library of Congress. After describing the founding of Asian American studies, documenting critical APA sources at the federal level, and exploring little-known demographic, geographic and socio-economic data on Asian Pacific Americans that were developed outside of a university setting, she went on to describe the important place that the nation’s capital will hold for APA scholarship in the 21st century.
Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, chief of the Asian Division at the Library of Congress, celebrated the birth of a “nationally distributed and networked APA collection,” and announced the active partnership between the Library’s Asian Division and the University of Maryland’s Asian American Studies Program in the future development of the collection.
Underscoring the importance of this acceptance of APA history into the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the official research arm of Congress, conference participants came from all across the country and from government, academia and the community. Representatives Mike Honda, David Wu and Mazie Hirono joined Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Librarian of Congress James Billington and Wayne State Law Dean Frank Wu, as key speakers.
Other speakers included Dr. Betty Lee Sung of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute; Dr. Franklin Odo from the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacific American Program; professor L. Ling-chi Wang of U.C. Berkeley; professor Don Nakanishi and librarian Marjorie Lee of UCLA; Dr. Kent Ono from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Dr. Larry Shinagawa from the University of Maryland; professor Evelyn Hu-DeHart from Brown University; Dr. Prema Kurien from Syracuse University; Dr. Krystyn R. Moon from the University of Mary Washington; Gen. John Fugh (Ret.) of the Committee of 100; Ms. Ginny Gong and Dr. Michael Lin of the Organization of Chinese Americans; Ms. Katy Goring of the U.S. Indonesian Society; Lott and Dr. Jeremy Wu of the U.S. Census Bureau; Dr. Frank Joseph Schulman from the Library of Congress Asian Division Friends Society; Ms. Rama Deva of the Indian American community and former publisher of Indic Magazine; and Reme Grefalda, activist from the Filipino American community.
Asian Division staff compiled an Asian Pacific American Resource Guide to the Library’s APA materials, and all attendees were treated to a photo exhibition by Corky Lee and a children’s book exhibition. They also received a CD containing more than 500 pages of bibliographic sources and online resources.
The importance of having an APA connection to the Library of Congress was proven three weeks after this conference, when the Filipina Women’s Network held a conference in D.C. that included a reading of works by Filipina American authors at the Library on October 27.
The annual Filipina Women’s Network conference focused on helping Filipina Americans develop the contacts and skills to become leaders in political and public policy debates in the government, corporate and nonprofit sectors. It also featured the announcement of their list of the “100 Most Influential Filipina Americans.”
A sign of just how embedded into the American fabric Filipina Americans are came when Eleonor Castillo, president of the Filipino American Educators Association of California, stood up in the Library’s magnificent Asian Collection Room to introduce the Filipina American authors at the convention whose works already are housed in the Library’s collection.
Given the supportive leadership at the Library and the many new connections developed between the Library and the APA community, the number of Filipina American and other APA authors is sure to grow in the years ahead.
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