Asian American and Pacific Islander Movements

Photo copyright © by Nikki Arai. Asian Ameriican radical activists speaking at International Women's Day rally in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1971.

The Asian American movement of the 1960s and '70s, like the other major civil rights/ethnic power struggles of the era, forever changed Asian American life in the US. The movement also had important internationalist alliances with figures in Asian and other Third World countries. As with the other major struggles of the 1960s, the movement became less visible and often less confrontational in later decades, but a wide range of community-based organizations have continued to fight for the rights of various groups collectively termed Asian American in a US context. New waves of Asian immigrants (the second largest immigrant bloc after Latinos in recent years) also have brought forth new exploitation and discrimination, and therefore new waves of activism.

Some Key Organizations and Activist Sites

• Asian American Activism. Web audiocast of 60s/70s activists panel based on Steve Louie's book, Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment.
• Asian American Movement. The Place for Radical Asian American Perspectives.
• Asian Americans United.
• Asian Left Forum.
• Asian Pacific Americans Labor Alliance.
• Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. Directory info.
• Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence.
• CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities. New York City.
• Congressional Asian Pacific American Congressional Institute.
• Filipino American Activism Across Three Generations.
• Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity.
• Gabriela Network. Philippine-U.S. Women's Solidarity Organization.
• Hawai'i - Independent and Sovereign.
• Hmong Homepage.
• Indian American (India Abroad) Center for Political Awareness.
• Japanese American Citizens' League.
• Japanese American Network.
• Khmer Girls in Action.
• Korean Resource Center.
• National Congress of Vietnamese Americans.
• National Korean American Service and Education Consortium.
• Organization of Chinese Americans.
• Pacific Islander Cultural Association.
• Southeast Asian Resource Action Center.
• South Asian Women's NETwork.
• Stanford Asian American Activism Committee.
• Yellow Rage. Political spoken word performance.
• Additional Links to Asian American Community/Political Organizations.

Cultural Resources: Literature, Music and Visual Culture

• Advertisements from the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.
• Anagram. Journal of Asian American Art and Literature.
• Angry Asian Man. Seriously funny commentary on anti-Asian racism.
• South Asian American Literature. From University of California, Berkeley.
• The Motion Picture Goes to War: The Spanish American War and The Philippine Revolution (American Memory Project, Library of Congress).
• Deep Focus Productions. The website for Arthur Dong, documentary director.
• Asian American and related videos at University of California, Irvine Libraries.
• Asian/Asian American Music.
• Asian American Studies Program Video List. University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• Asian, Pacific, and South Asian Video University of California, Berkeley.
• Filipinos at World's Fairs and Expositions.
• Foundation for Asian American Independent Media
• Images of War and Empire. Including Philippine-American War.
• Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA).
  • The MANAA Video Guide.
• NAAATA Film and Video Catalog.
  • International San Francisco Asian American Film Festival
• Neely's Photograph: Fighting in the Philippines.
• San Diego Asian Film Festival.
• "Suffering Under a Great Injustice: Ansel Adams Photographs of Japanse-American Internment at Manzanar.

Books and Articles on the Movement

Espiritu, Yen. Asian American Pan-Ethncity. Philadelphia: Temple U Press, 1993. Sophisticated study of the difficulties and successes of organizing across various Asian identities in the US.

Ho, Fred. ed. Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America. San Francisco: AK Press, 2001. Rich anthology of movement documents.

Michael Liu, Kim Geron, and Tracy Lai.The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2008. Traces movement from 1930s to 1990s to historicize and contextualize ongoing activism.

Louie, Steve, ed. Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment. LA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2001. Collection of important cultural and political texts from the movement.

Maeda, Daryl. Chains of Babylon The Rise of Asian America. Minneapolis: U Minnesota, Press, 2009. Innovative book on the Asian American movements.

Pulido, Laura. Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley: U California Press, 2006. Includes much on Asian American activism and coalition building.

Vo, Linda Trinh. Mobilizing an Asian American Community. Philadelphia: Temple U Press, 2004. Excellent, sophisticated but accessible study of interethnic Asian American organizing.

Wei, William. The Asian American Movement. Philadelphia: Temple U Press, 1993. Interpetively weak, but with some useful history.

Yamashita, Karen Tei. I Hotel. San Francisco: Coffee House Press, 2010. Typically brilliant postmodern novel set in the Asian American movement era in San Francisco.

Research Institutes, Programs, and Libraries

• Asian American Studies. University of California, Irvine.
• Asian American Studies Center. University of California, LA.
• Asian American Studies Program. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
• Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum.
• Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute. New York University.
• Association for Asian American Studies.
• Chinese Historical Society of Southern California .
• Chinese Historical Society. San Francisco.
• Chinese American Museum.
• Southeast Asian Archive. University of California, Irvine.