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May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. To celebrate, we’re reprising some of our best content on the history and cultures of Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, and South Asian descent.

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Making Asian and Pacific America

Photograph: Chinese workers  on the Oregon and California Railroad, circa 1888.  

Source: Getty

The Chinese Exclusion Act: Annotated

The passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 marked the first time the United States prohibited immigration based on ethnicity and national origin.
Licensed under Public Domain via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_American_Fishermen_b.jpg#/media/File:Chinese_American_Fishermen_b.jpg" target="_blank">Commons</a>

The Making of Asian America

Asians are on track to become the fastest growing U.S. population by the next half-century. We look at the history of Asian immigration, past and present.
Khmer Rouge guerilla accepts a gift of cigarettes from a waiting French official, May, 1975.

How the Vietnam War Shaped US Immigration Policy

The makings of our modern resettlement system can be traced back to the fallout of the Vietnam War, a cascade of international crises stoked by the U.S.
Ho Chi Minh, 1921

The First Vietnamese in America

Before 1945, many Vietnamese migrants to the United States were laborers. One was Ho Chi Minh.
Portrait of a woman looking at the camera

On Hyphens and Racial Indicators

The AP dropped hyphens from expressions of heritage such as "Asian American." Some scholars are asking, with or without hyphens, aren't we all "American"?
The interior of a Chinese pharmacy in Los Angeles, 1907

The Allure of Chinese Medicine 

Capitalizing on stereotypes earned Chinese-American practitioners patients, but it also helped keep them confined to the margins of American society.
A poster used in Japan to attract immigrants to Brazil. It reads: "Let's go to South America (Brazil highlighted) with families."

Asian South America

The migration of Asian people—from India, from China, from Japan—to South America and the Caribbean began as early as the sixteenth century.

Racism and the Myth of the Model Minority

Two Filipino men in Los Angeles

1930s Filipinos Were Hip to American Style. There Was Backlash.

Filipinos, newly arrived to West Coast cities, displayed a mastery over American cultural life thanks to their knowledge of Hollywood films.
Police officer Peter Liang leaves the courtroom at the end of the day in his trial on charges in the shooting death of Akai Gurley, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016, at Brooklyn Supreme court in New York. Jurors are scheduled to start discussing their views of Liang’s actions as soon as Tuesday. Closing arguments are expected in the morning, and deliberations are likely to begin in the afternoon. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

The “Model Minority” Myth and the Hidden Discrimination of Asian Americans

Identifying Asian Americans as a "model minority" often erases the continued discrimination faced by Asians in America. 
An image of lettuce from 1926

The Lettuce Workers Strike of 1930

Uniting for better wages and working conditions, a remarkably diverse coalition of laborers faced off against agribusiness.
Native Hawaiian schoolchildren around 1900.

How Public Schools “Americanized” Hawai‘i

Colonial education administrators recruited teachers from the mainland, but soon realized another strategy was in order.
Photograph showing Waldemar Mordecai Wolffe Haffkine (1860-1930), Bacteriologist with the Government of India, inoculating a community against cholera in Calcutta, March 1894.

Anti-Asian Racism in the 1817 Cholera Pandemic

We should learn from, instead of repeating, the racist assignations of the past.
Japanese American school children

Lessons From a Japanese Internment Camp

Trump ally Carl Higbie recently cited Japanese internment camps during World War II as a “precedent” for a proposed registry of Muslims in the U.S.
Uncle Sam holding paper "Protest against Russian exclusion of Jewish Americans" and looking in shock at Chinese skeleton labeled "American exclusion of Chinese" in closet.

How the Chinese Fought Discrimination in 19th Century Arizona

Chinese immigrants in the American West faced legal discrimination and fought back against it using other laws.

Arts and Culture, Literature and Sport

Close up of a basketball players feet

Playing Girls’ Basketball in 1930s Chinatown

Chinese American girls played an innovative style of basketball on the playgrounds of San Francisco, and dominated the court.
Jade Snow Wong beside the cover of her book, Fifth Chinese Daughter

Jade Snow Wong’s Cold War World Tour

In 1953, the US Department of State sent ceramicist and author Constance Wong—known professionally as Jade Snow Wong—on a four-month goodwill tour of Asia.
Anna May Wong

Hollywood’s Asian American Heroes

Asian American detectives played by actors Anna May Wong and Keye Luke had a minor but notable place in 1930s and 40s Hollywood.
The cover of Jessica Hagedorn’s 1990 "Dogeaters"

The Filipino Novel That Reimagined Neocolonial Gender

Revisiting an essential Asian American work, beloved for its synthesis of neocolonialism, postmodernism, and central queer and female characters.
Kim Jong-hyun

What Exactly is K-Pop, Anyway?

Since the late 90s, K-Pop has been one of South Korea's most important cultural exports. Fans have a deeply emotional attachment to the music.
Eddie Aikau

Eddie Aikau: The Rad Life of a Hawaiian Surfing Legend

Eddie Aikau was a surfing legend during a time when Hawaiian legends were being resurrected. As a lifeguard, he attempted more than 500 daring rescues.
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu, the First Lady of Physics 

Chien-Shiung Wu disproved a fundamental law of physics—a stunning achievement that helped earn her male colleagues (but not her) a Nobel Prize.
The covers of Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker (2004), and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007).

American Immigrant Literature Gets an Update

Despite the historical gulf between canonical and recent immigrant writing, one constant is the mark that new immigrant artists leave on US literature.

Food and Cooking

Table top view of Indian food on table.

How do South Asian Americans Remember Home Cooking?

Culinary discourse—whether in fiction, memoir, or cookbook—sets in motion an extended discussion about food, nostalgia, and national identity
Steamed dumplings Dim Sum

The Cookbook That Brought Chinese Food to American Kitchens

The groundbreaking 1945 cookbook, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, that introduced Chinese cooking to white American cooks.
Chicken Tikka and lamb samosas

Indian Food is Not a Monolith

When you eat Indian food, what are you really eating? Chicken tikka masala was originally created to appease the palates of the British during the Raj.
A postcard for Ruby Foo's Den in Boston

Have Chinese Restaurants Always Looked “Chinese”?

In some places, that red-and-gold flair might not fly.