For many of us, our stories start far before we were born. Before you take your first breath in a dimly lit hospital room, a number of historical events have shaped where you live, the kind of lunch you bring to school, and even the way you express discontent in an argument. And yet, it is often easy to neglect our histories in favor of the history we are forging in the moment, forgetting that the two are often deeply intertwined.
This could not be more true in the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. While many see the rise in AAPI hate as a modern issue linked to COVID, the phenomenon of attributing diseases to AAPI communities is not new. During San Francisco’s smallpox epidemic in the late 1800s, the government didn’t hesitate to blame local Chinese communities, accusing them of being unsanitary and even forcibly fumigating their homes (read more here).
Aside from disease, historical context continues to inform the work that we do in AAPI advocacy. When Kiran Bhalla from Stop AAPI Hate began her presentation to our cohort on July 24, she took special care to note the reasons that underlie the creation of AAPI Heritage Month. As May rolls around every year, we host cultural events and food festivals, but more hidden in the media are the less palatable components of AAPI identity. Invisible in mainstream media are the violent attacks on our community, the solidarity building and advocacy with other communities of color that has existed since Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X.
And yet, as Bhalla explained it, the month was born out of resistance to an act of AAPI hate. When Jeanie Jew, a former Capitol Hill staffer, shared the idea for creating AAPI Heritage Month with Representative Frank Horton, it was in part due to a story that had started far before she was born. Jew’s great grandfather, MY Lee, immigrated from China to California in the 1800s and worked to construct the transcontinental railroad, later becoming an important businessman. He was killed while traveling to Oregon in an act of AAPI hate amidst anti-Chinese and anti-Asian attitudes.
As Horton put it during the legislative hearing to create AAPI Heritage Month, “The revelations about Mr. Lee and the story of Asian Americans led this one woman to believe that not only should Asians understand their own heritage, but that all Americans must know about the contributions and histories of the Asian-Pacific American experience in the United States.”
AAPI Heritage Month does not begin on May 1st and end on the 31st every year. It begins with MY Lee in the 1800s, and lives on in federal legislation to this day.
Not only do the stories of our community live on in the form of AAPI Heritage Month, but in the very architecture that exists within the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Following Bhalla’s presentation, Bill Watanabe, the founding director of the Little Tokyo Service Center, led us through the history of Little Tokyo.
Watanabe explained everything from the Santa Anita Racetracks used as temporary internment camps throughout World War II to the kindness of the Far East Restaurant’s “pay when you can” policy to Japanese Americans post-internment, as we ventured down the historic town. As he spoke about his own experiences in and after internment I couldn’t help but remember thumbing through my grandmother’s yearbook filled with black and white photos of Manzanar, and her mother searching for coins everywhere she could look to piece together the money to buy one small hole-filled coat to shield her daughter from the harsh winters.
Manzanar was a place built on a foundation of racial prejudice and pain. And yet, in my grandmother’s coat, I see a mother’s devotion. In Far East Restaurant, I see solidarity. And in all of our histories, I see power and potential.
Both Bhalla and Watanabe showed me not only that I am a part of something much bigger than myself, but also that the change we create for the future cannot happen without careful consideration of the past. Watanabe’s work preserving Little Tokyo’s historic sites is informed by his knowledge of its history, as is Bhalla’s work combating anti-AAPI sentiments. As Bhalla said, “Hopefully [we] can push the needle forward for [the future generation] in the ways others have pushed the needle forward for [us].” As they have worked to push the needle forward, I will too.