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                  ASIAN AMERICAN & PACIFIC ISLANDER MOVEMENTS

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. Indeed, the category Asian America arose in that era as a political term. The radical phase of the movement included street level groups like I Wor Kuen (NY) and the Red Guard (SF), both of which drew inspiration from the Black Panthers and like the Panthers sought both community improvement and a larger political agenda of opposing US imperialism in Vietnam and elsewhere. The Bay Area movement also included major student groups like the Asian American Political Alliance at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State that sought to unite the various Asian ethnicities. They played a major role in the creation of the field of Asian American studies that radically reshaped the story of Asian American life.

Asian American woman activist with bull horn           Hawaiian sovergnty demonstration.

Left: Photo copyright © by Nikki Arai. International Women's Day rally in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1971.                                                                       Right: copyright unknown. Hawaiian sovereignty movement protest;

The movement included a number of human rights issues, including most dramatically pushing through recognition of the injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In the face of the stereotype of Asians as the "model minority," the movement raised a host of issues about economic and social injustice towards many ethnic Asian populations.

The movement also made important cross-racial and international alliances with figures in Asia and Third World countries around the globe. 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. 

Hawaiians and Pacific Island peoples had both overlapping and differing concerns than mainland Asian Americans. This includes a long-standing Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Pacific island peoples also long protested nuclear testing in their region, and are now working against the climate change that is threatening to submerge many communities in the Pacific.

Some Key Historical & Contemporary Activist Organizations/Issues

Cultural Resources: Literature, Music and Visual Culture

Selected 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.
  • Fujino, Diane. Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance and a Paradoxical Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
  • Habal, Estella. San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007. One of the key movement issues of the 60s/70s era.
  • Ho, Fred, et al. eds. Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America. San Francisco: AK Press, 2001. Rich anthology of movement documents.
  • Ishizuka, Karen L. Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties. New York: Verso Books, 2016. Definitive history based on hundreds of interviews with activists. "Making and Unmaking of the Asian American Movement." Michelle Chen essay and interview with Ishizuka.
  • 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.
  • Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham NC: Duke U Press, 1996. Brilliant long-range view of the making of Asian Americans.
  • Maeda, Daryl. Chains of Babylon The Rise of Asian America. Minneapolis: U Minnesota, Press, 2009. Innovative book on the Asian American movements.
  • Maeda, Daryl. Rethinking the Asian American Movement. New York: Routledge, 2012.
  • 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 with other ethno-racialized Americans.
  • Trask, Haunani-Kay, dir Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation (1993). Documentary film on the continuing fight for Hawaiian sovereignty.
  • ___, From a Native Daughter : Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999.
  • Umemoto,Karen. “‘On Strike!’ San Francisco State College Strike, 1968–69: The Role of Asian American Students,” Amerasia Journal 15.1 (1989): 3–41. Key late 60s movement that helped birth Asian American studies.
  • 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. Interpretively weak, but with some useful history.
  • Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun. Radicals on the Road: Third World Internationalism and American Orientalism during the Vietnam Era. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.
  • Yamashita, Karen Tei. I Hotel. San Francisco: Coffee House Press, 2010. Novel is a profound evocation of the Asian American movement in San Francisco Bay Area and its relation to the whole range of progressive social movements of the 1960s and 70s. It captures both the lived experiences and ideological complexity of the era. Best approached after reading some of the relevant history books for context.
  • "Yellow Power: Origins of the Asian America."  article from Densho blog.

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