Asian American and Pacific Islander Archives

by Kamna Shastri

Since the beginning of the year, Asian Americans have come increasingly under violent attack. Elders have been assaulted in Chinatowns across the country from Oakland to San Francisco to New York City. In late February, Inglemoor High School Japanese teacher Noriko Nasu and her boyfriend were walking through Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (C-ID) and were attacked without provocation. Nasu was knocked unconscious, and her boyfriend required eight stitches. Asian American community members in Seattle had already been experiencing racial slurs and aggression at increased rates since COVID-19 began in 2020. Then, last week, a 21-year-old white man murdered 8 people at massage parlors 30 miles apart in Atlanta. Six of the victims were Asian women. The businesses were Asian owned.

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by Juanita Tamayo Lott

(This article was originally published by the International Examiner and has been reprinted with permission.)

This anthology, edited by Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura, is a timely contribution to acknowledge, understand, and document the rich complexities of Asian American and Pacific Islander women in the 21st century. It is a fitting sequel to the pioneering 1971 Asian Women, (Asian Women, U.C. Berkeley) and the 1989 Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women (Asian Women United of California). While the former gave voice to pioneering Asian American women — Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Korean — the latter included South Asian, Southeast Asian, and mixed-race women. Our Voices, Our Histories is even more expansive with the formal inclusion of Pacific Islander women.

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