May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month during which we celebrate the history and culture of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and their contributions to our country. Throughout this month, various events such as exhibits, talks, cultural programs, lecture series, book signings by authors, movie screenings, workshops, etc. are held to celebrate their traditions, customs, and culture. The Smithsonian is hosting several events, including a lecture on the Visual Culture and Social Upheaval: Imaging Change in Late Edo Period Japan at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. There is even an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Family Day. The Library of Congress has a special website that provides access to many research resources. The National Park Service features stories of Asian Americans and the 19th century Japanese and Chinese photograph collections at Longfellow National Historic Site.
Would you like to look at our library’s holdings about these ethnic groups? We have many books that focus on the history of both Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in our country. If you would like to focus on this topic as a potential area of research, you can search the library holdings for different immigrants’ histories such as, Filipino Americans, South Asians Americans, Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Amercians, Vietnamese Americans, and so on.
If you are working on a paper about Asian American history, you may want to check
out some great resources available from various libraries – The Chinese in California, 1850-1925 from the Library of Congress, the Online Archive of Japanese American Relocation during World War II from the Occidental College Library, the Korean American Collection from the University of Southern California Libraries, the Documenting the the Southeast Asian American Experience from the University of California, Irvine Libraries, and the South Asian American Digital Archive from a non-profit in Chicago.