CUny forUm 1:1 - Asian American / Asian Research Institute

Volume 1:1 Fall / Winter 2013-2014
CUNY FORUM
ASIAN AMERICAN / ASIAN STUDIES
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Asian American Studies
Betty Lee Sung
Jennifer Hayashida
Kenneth J. Guest
Ke Liang
Susan Wong
Global Thinking
Peter Kwong
Kyoo Lee
Joyce O. Moy
Community Research
John J. Chin
Tarry Hum
Paul M. Ong
Jonathan Ong
Chhandara Pech
Silvia Jimenez
Trevor J. Lee
Antony Wong
Cuneiforms
Meena Alexander
Luis H. Francia
Russell C. Leong
communities
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cultures
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commons
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CUNY FORUM
For um of A sian A mer ic an and A sian Studie s
CIT Y UNIVERSIT Y OF NEW YORK
WWW.AAARI.INFO/CUNYFORUM
The FORUM is a New York-based print and online commons
for scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists who are
committed to writing and to doing research on Asian and
Pacific Americans.
The FORUM encourages multidisciplinary perspectives from
writers who contribute to comparative scholarship and
literature on the Americas, the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Published by the Asian American and Asian Research Institute
(AAARI), of the City University of New York (CUNY). Access to
selected FORUM materials, AAARI videos, books, educational
materials, and conferences can be found online.
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CUNY FORUM IS COPYRIGHTED © 2013 BY ASIAN AMERICAN AND ASIAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE, CIT Y UNIVERSIT Y OF NEW YORK.
INDIVIDUAL ESSAYS ARE COPYRIGHTED BY THE AUTHORS WHO GRANT PERMISSION TO CUNY FORUM TO PUBLISH THEIR WORK.
EDITOR
RUSSELL C. LEONG
Staff
Assistant Editor: TREVOR J. LEE
Production Manager: ANTONY WONG
Graphic Design Production: WILLIAM TAM
Journal Design: RUSSELL C. LEONG, WILLIAM TAM & ANTONY WONG
Proofreader: J. MAYOR
Information Technology: ZHU-HUI WU
Distribution and Mailing: SHASHI KHANNA
PUBLISHER
JOYCE O. MOY, Executive Director, Asian American and Asian Research Institute
EDITORIAL BOARD (from Spring 2014)
MEENA ALEXANDER, Professor, Hunter College/CUNY & CUNY Graduate Center
MOUSTAFA BAYOUMI, Professor, Brooklyn College/CUNY
LUIS H. FRANCIA, Professor, Hunter College/CUNY, New York University &
University of Hong Kong
JENNIFER HAYASHIDA, Professor and Director, Asian American Studies
Program, Hunter College/CUNY
EVELYN HU-DEHART, Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Race and
Ethnicity in America, Brown University
PETER KIANG, Professor and Director, Asian American Studies Program,
University of Massachusetts Boston
AMITAVA KUMAR, Professor, Vassar College
PETER KWONG, Professor, Hunter College/CUNY & CUNY Graduate Center
KYOO LEE, Professor, John Jay College/CUNY & CUNY Graduate Center
KONRAD NG, Professor and Director, Smithsonian Institution Asian Pacific
American Center, Washington D.C.
BETTY LEE SUNG, Professor Emerita, City College/CUNY
JOHN KUO WEI TCHEN, Professor and Founding Director, Asian/Pacific/
American Studies Program and Institute, New York University
DAVID K. YOO, Professor and Director, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA
COVER PHOTO: GROUND ZERO FLAG, 60' X 30' EXACT REPLICA OF THE FLAG DISPLAYED AT GROUND ZERO AT THE TIME OF 9/11 TERRORIST
ATTACKS. FLAG HAS BEEN ON DISPLAY AT 116 MOTT STREET ANNUALLY SINCE SEPTEMBER 2002 IN HONOR OF THOSE LOST DURING 9/11.
PHOTO BY ANTONY WONG
II
AAARI-CUNY
CUNY FORUM
VOLUME 1:1
FALL 2013 — WINTER 2014
FROM THE EDITOR
Creating Forums: Asian American Studies Today
RUSSELL C. LEONG VII
ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Asian American Studies
BETTY LEE SUNG 1
CUNY Asian American Studies: “Not Just to Survive but to Thrive”
JENNIFER HAYASHIDA 5
CUNY’s New Chinese Immigrants Navigate a Precarious Path to
Upward Mobility
KE LIANG & KENNETH J. GUEST 15
The Challenge for New Immigrant Students at Baruch College/CUNY
SUSAN WONG 23
GLOBAL THINKING
My Journey to Spirituality
PETER KWONG 27
“Had He Lived Always among the Chinese or with Savages”: A Musing
on a “Chinese” Descartes of Modernity in the Discourse on Method
KYOO LEE 33
Nurturing an Ethos and Mind-set: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China
JOYCE O. MOY 39
COMMUNITY RESEARCH
Caring for Spirits and for Bodies: Working with Chinese Immigrant
Religious Institutions to Increase HIV Knowledge and Reduce HIV Stigma
JOHN J. CHIN 49
“From Dump to Glory”: The Transformation of Flushing’s
Downtown and Waterfront
TARRY HUM 59
Manhattan’s Chinatown at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century
PAUL M. ONG, JONATHAN ONG, CHHANDARA PECH & SILVIA JIMENEZ 67
Pacific Sovereignty Movements and Asian Americans:
Communities, Coalitions, and Conflicts
TREVOR J. LEE 79
CUNY FORUM
III
AAARI Education Online: Open Access Media
ANTONY WONG
— Top 50 AAARI Videos
— Thomas Tam Way: A Digital Memento
89
CUNEIFORMS
Impossible Grace — Poems and a Journey
MEENA ALEXANDER 97
Three Poems
LUIS H. FRANCIA 107
A Third Literature of the Americas: With Evelyn Hu-DeHart,
Kathleen López, Maan Lin, Yibing Huang & Wen Jin
RUSSELL C. LEONG 111
Asian Pacific American Timeline
TREVOR LEE, ANTONY WONG & ZHU-HUI WU 116
IV
CUNY FORUM Contributors and Editorial Board
122
2014 - 2015 Article and Essay Submissions
127
Stylesheet
128
Asian American and Asian Research Institute Mission Statement 130
AAARI-CUNY
Prof. Peter KWong & His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama at Hunter College Ceremony (Oct 19, 2012)
Photo by Antony Wong
“People have asked me what is a leftist scholar engaged with civil rights and labor issues
doing with a religious leader like the Dalai Lama. My answer is — it came naturally.”
— Prof. Peter Kwong, Hunter College/CUNY
26
AAARI-CUNY
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 27-31
My Journey to Spirituality
During the past three years, I have
met His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama three
times: twice as his host at Hunter College in
New York and once as his guest in Dharamsala, on the Indian side of the Himalayas, the
site of Tibetan government-in-exile. People
have asked me what is a leftist scholar engaged with civil rights and labor issues doing
with a religious leader like the Dalai Lama.
My answer is — it came naturally.
In the winter of 2010, a representative from the Office of Tibet in New York
approached me to help organize a forum at
Hunter College, where His Holiness could
meet with American academics of Chinese
descent. I accepted the request without
hesitation, because I consider the question of
Tibet a critical national minority issue that
needs to be resolved by China. Two years
earlier, I wrote a commentary in the Globe
and Mail and Metro News entitled “Direct
Talks Will Benefit Both China and the Dalai
Lama.” In it, I urged the Chinese leaders to
resume direct negotiations with the Dalai
Lama, in the aftermath of a major riot by
Tibetans in Lhasa in March 2008, to agree
on the repeatedly postponed attempts to
establish an autonomous rule for Tibet.
China could use the occasion, just before her
“coming-out party” — the Olympic Games, to
show the rest of the world her good will and
determination to build a harmonious society,
which she claimed to want to do.
Unfortunately, the Chinese government
chose to pass up the opportunity and continued its repressive measures. A number of
Chinese dissidents risked persecution and
Peter Kwong
spoke out against the government’s Tibetan
policy. But by and large, Chinese people were
not, and are not, informed about the situation in Tibet. From an early age in school,
they have been taught that Tibet has always
been a part of China and that the Dalai Lama
is a “splittist” bent on Tibetan independence.
Never mind that China’s own historical records show Tibet through the centuries has
been an ally, an opponent, a tributary state,
and occasionally a region within Chinese
control. Moreover, the Dalai Lama has again
and again publicly renounced the struggle
for independence, stressing that his aim is
negotiated autonomy for Tibet under Chinese
rule. But in China, factual information that
deviates from the official position is simply censured. The people are told that any
moderate position on Tibet plays right into
the hands of colonial Western and Japanese
powers determined to divide China.
Prolonged inaction on the part of the
Chinese government has only encouraged
extremist positions on both sides, resulting in
some of the Dalai Lama’s followers pushing for
independence and continuing violent suppression on the part of the Chinese local government in Tibet. As the official Chinese propaganda continued, the Dalai Lama thought of
engaging in dialogue with members of the
overseas Chinese communities as a way of
presenting his side of the story. He hoped
that whatever insights and understanding he
could provide would hopefully filter back to
China through Chinese language media, the
blogosphere, and overseas scholars.
For His Holiness’s forum at Hunter
Peter Kwong, Distinguished Professor, Asian American Studies, Urban Affairs
and Planning, Sociology, Hunter College/CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center
2013 © Copyright by Peter Kwong
CUNY Forum
27
"Streetwise"
Photo 2013 © Copyright by Nina Kuo
“Wait, What, Chinese?”
32
AAARI-CUNY
— Prof. Kyoo Lee, John Jay College/CUNY
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 33-38
“Had He Lived Always among the Chinese or
with Savages”: A Musing on a “Chinese” Descartes of
Modernity in the Discourse on Method
Kyoo Lee
“I took into account also the very different character which a person brought up from infancy in France
or Germany exhibits, from that which, with the same mind, this individual would have possessed had he
lived always among the Chinese or with savages…”
— (Part II, Descartes, 1637, Discourse on Method)
Thinking “With the Same Mind”
Wait, what, Chinese?
What’s happening? What was “China” or
“Chinese” for René Descartes, “the father
of modern philosophy”? Why is he stitching those “Chinese or savages” into his
semi-autobiography, Discourse on Method?
There, you might say, he is just making some
‘multi-culty’ comparative point on how come
‘we are the world,’ how we are just all of “the
same mind (son même esprit),” “charactological” differences or divergences notwithstanding. Sure, simple enough. Then what
kind of or which cliché is being recruited in
this “characterization” of those Chinese or
savages or French or German — and to what
end? Where and when did that caricatured
passage click into a position on this map of
thinking drawn, hypothetically, together
with all others at work or play? Where does
the “or” of “the Chinese or savage” come
from? When and where, at what point, does
such exclusionary or optional thinking begin
to matter at all? Indeed, you might still ask,
what’s the matter?
Should we fuss? Yes, at least a bit.
Below, let me explain why and how I got to
thinking around such China/Chinese passages in Discourse, why I pause there — for now.
Descartes, the Method Man
Famously in his Discourse on Method (of
Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking
Truth in Sciences), a book presented as the
manifesto-style preface to a collection of
lengthy technical articles each titled Optics,
Meteorology and Geometry, Descartes proposes four steps of thinking which, he says,
he himself used as the methodological foundation for his philosophical and scientific
search for truth, a set of rules he considered
modern, new: “first, never to accept anything
as true if I did not have evident knowledge
of its truth”; “second, to divide each of the
difficulties into as many parts as possible”;
“third, to direct my thoughts in an orderly
manner, by beginning with the simplest and
the easiest”; “last, to make enumerations
as complete as possible.” Completely armed
with thoroughness, this self-styled method
man thought he could quickly and efficiently
solve any ancient or scholastic errors and
mysteries surrounding metaphysical matters
such as the soul, God, the mind, the body,
pains, emotions, etc., simply the world and
beyond. And to an extent, he did… seem to.
Yet, most readers of Descartes 101,
‘the father of modern “Western” philosophy,’
tend to forget or gloss over one simple truth,
Kyoo Lee, Associate Professor, Philosophy and Women’s Studies, John Jay College
of Criminal Justice/CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center
2013 © Copyright by Kyoo Lee
CUNY Forum
33
"You and Me," Graffiti Art on Bowery, New York City
Composite Photo by Zhu-Hui Wu
“Religious institutions, because of their role in defining community values,
can be effective partners in improving community health around HIV/AIDS.”
— Prof. John J. Chin, Hunter College/CUNY
48
AAARI-CUNY
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 49-57
Caring for Spirits and for Bodies:
Working with Chinese Immigrant Religious
Institutions to Increase HIV Knowledge
and Reduce HIV Stigma
John J. Chin
Because of their respected role in
communities, religious institutions have the
potential to be important partners in improving the health of the communities they
serve. Religious institutions may be especially important in immigrant groups, where
language and cultural barriers make accessing more mainstream sources of information
and support more difficult. A wide range of
research suggests that religious institutions
play an instrumental role in helping immigrants cope with the practical challenges
of daily life. But the work of these religious
institutions has been limited in public health
initiatives and even more limited in work related to HIV/AIDS education and support. We
were particularly interested in immigrant
religious institutions’ potential role in HIV/
AIDS work because of the high level of stigma
that surrounds the condition. We thought
that perhaps religious institutions, because
of their role in defining community values,
could help not only to provide HIV/AIDS
education and support, but also to reduce
stigma, which often gets in the way of HIV/
AIDS work. We also wanted to evaluate the
extent to which religious institutions might
contribute to HIV/AIDS stigma by promoting
negative messages about groups that are
stereotyped as having HIV/AIDS, such as
gay men. Our previous and current research
suggests that negative views of homosexu-
ality constitute much of the basis for HIV/
AIDS stigma in Chinese immigrant religious
institutions, but stigma and taboos related
to disease and sex in general and unfounded
fears of HIV infection through casual contact
also contribute.1, 2
Although HIV/AIDS rates are relatively low in Asian American communities,
research suggests that Asian Americans
continue to be at risk for HIV infection. Asian
Americans have low knowledge about HIV
and are significantly less likely than the
general U.S. population to be tested for HIV,
despite reporting similar rates of risk behavior. 3 Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic through 2010, 8,457 Asian Americans
have been diagnosed with AIDS nationally
(these are reported cases of full-blown AIDS
rather than HIV infection). 4 In recent years,
each year there have been about 800 newly
reported HIV infections among Asian Americans nationally and about 100 in New York
City alone. 5 According to the limited surveillance data available, foreign-born cases
make up the majority (72 percent) of Asian
American AIDS cases in NYC. 6 Although a
high proportion of infections among Asian
Americans have occurred through male-tomale sexual contact, transmission has also
occurred through heterosexual contact and
sharing needles during injection drug use.
Some epidemiologic data also suggests a rap-
John J. Chin, Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, and Graduate Program Director of
Urban Planning, Hunter College/CUNY
2013 © Copyright by John J. Chin
CUNY Forum
49
"Weekend Walk" Event on Mott Street, Chinatown, New York City (June 2, 2013)
Photo by Chinatown Partnership
“Communities are not merely passive victims of predetermined history —
thus effective action requires knowledge.”
— Prof. Paul M. Ong, UCLA
66
AAARI-CUNY
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 67-76
Manhattan’s Chinatown at
the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century
Paul M. Ong
Jonathan Ong
Chhandara Pech
Silvia Jimenez
“The End of Chinatown,” so proclaims
the Atlantic Magazine, is a sensationalized
assertion based on new population counts
showing a moderate decline from the previous decade. Negative growth could predict a
long-term slide, but as demographers know,
projections are fraught with uncertainties.
The dismal forecast of waning enclaves, of
course, is not new. In 1949, Rose Hum Lee in
a much more scholarly fashion declared “The
Decline of Chinatowns in the United States.”
A little more than a decade later, Chinatowns
embarked on a four-decade expansion, driven by an unforeseen historical development
on the immigration front. The inaccuracy
of the earlier declaration, however, is no
guarantee that today’s assertion is wrong.
Too many unknowns cloud even the best
crystal ball. Among the factors that influence
the future trajectory are the decisions and
actions taken by stakeholders. Communities
are not merely passive victims of predetermined history, thus effective action requires
knowledge. The purpose of this essay is to
inform the political and policy discourse on
the future of these neighborhoods by examining the economic factors transforming New
York City’s Chinatown in recent times.
We spotlight the economic elements
shaping material outcomes. This does not
deny the importance of politics, social relations, culture, and individual subjectivity.
Each domain of human activity plays a role in
defining the nature and character of Chinatown, its place in people’s lives, and individual and collective actions. At the same time,
it is impossible to ignore the centrality of
market forces in everyone’s daily activities.
Such outcomes determine income and purchasing power. This is seen in the exchanges
between sellers and buyers, landlords and
renters, and employers and workers. These
face-to-face interactions, however, are only
the immediate interface between economic
agents, often final steps of a complex and
enormous process. Far more important are
the larger impersonal forces and structures
embedded in nearby and distant markets,
operating largely as unseen linkages that
transcend boundaries. Economic dynamics
are at work regardless of whether they are
recognized, acknowledged, or consciously felt.
What is possible, however, is to gain a better
understanding of their nature and magnitude.
Market forces are at the heart of New
York City Chinatown’s recent population
trajectory, which is depicted in Figure 1.
This neighborhood, located in Manhattan’s
Paul M. Ong, Professor, Asian American Studies, Luskin School of Public Affairs,
and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA
Jonathan Ong, Research Consultant, UCLA
Chhandara Pech, Research Consultant, UCLA
Silvia Jimenez, Research Consultant, UCLA
2013 © Copyright by Paul M. Ong, Jonathan Ong, Chhandara Pech & Silvia Jimenez
CUNY Forum
67
Separation Wall in Bethlehem, Palestine
Photo by Meena Alexander
“Preparing for my journey I started dreaming of the separation wall. It invaded
my dreams. All over the world walls were coming down, and here was one that
was built to cut a people away from the earth.”
— Prof. Meena Alexander, Hunter College/CUNY
96
AAARI-CUNY
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 97-104
Impossible Grace — Poems and a Journey
Meena Alexander
I.
IT KEPT RINGING IN MY HEAD: I am going
to Jerusalem. I was a child again, sitting
between my parents in the car, speeding past
no man’s land. The U.N. flag fluttering. I remember stones, dry earth, barbed wire. And
in the city we had left behind, tiny streets,
the glowing hunched buildings, donkeys
with their burden, pilgrims stooped on Via
Dolorosa, the misty darkness and glory of
the church of the Holy Sepulchre. In those
days with an Indian passport there were two
countries one couldn’t travel to: South Africa
and Israel. So we came through Jordan. My
parents wanted to attend Easter services in
Jerusalem. After that came the Six-Day War. I
left my childhood behind and moved on.
While Jerusalem remained with me in
memory, I had no hope of going there. Then
quite by chance, in May 2010, in the mountains of Shimla at the Indian Institute for
Advanced Studies, I met the philosopher Sari
Nusseibeh. We were all gathered there for a
conference on History and Memory. I remember a group of us riding up in a minivan
through the twisting mountain roads. Sari
was sitting near me.
Do you know the poetry of Fadwa Touqan? I asked him. The memoir Mountainous
Journey was vivid in my mind. Do you teach
her work at your university?
I must find out he said, if we teach her work.
Then he counseled me to read Al Khansa’s
poetry. There is something mystical about
it, he said. She had a very close relationship
with her brother.
I would love to come to Palestine someday. I said this never thinking it could happen.
You will come as our guest, he said.
So it was that time opened up and with
his kind invitation I was able to spend a month
in Palestine — as Poet in Residence at Al-Quds
University. And I was invited by my friend the
Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Souief to join the Palestine Literary Festival which was to take place
towards the end of my month in Palestine.
*
Preparing for my journey I started
dreaming of the separation wall. It invaded
my dreams. All over the world walls were
coming down, and here was one that was
built to cut a people away from the earth.
*
Sometimes poems have a life of their
own. So it was with ‘Impossible Grace.’ On
the night of April 4, 2011, just a few days after I arrived in Jerusalem, I wrote the poem.
I wanted to evoke the many gates of the city
of Jerusalem, and for each gate I wanted a
flower, but in the end the poem turned out
differently and there is only the wild iris in
it, its color blue-mauve like the sky in the
early morning above the hills of Jerusalem.
In some ways it’s a love poem. I wrote
it in the dead of night in the Indian Hospice
where I was staying, my bedroom cut out of
Meena Alexander, Poet and Distinguished Professor, English and Women’s Studies, Hunter College/CUNY
and CUNY Graduate Center
2013 © Copyright by Meena Alexander
CUNY Forum
97
Mixed-Descent Chinese Cuban Opera Singers (Havana, Cuba, 2012)
Photo by Kathleen López
“Everyone lives in a story … because stories are all there are to live in,
it was just a question of which one you chose.”
­— Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines (1988)
Distinguished Professor of Queens College/CUNY
“America is a hemispheric concept — it includes Central, North, and Latin America.” — Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University
110 AAARI-CUNY
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 111-115
A Third Literature of the Americas:
with Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Kathleen López,
Maan Lin, Yibing Huang & Wen Jin
Russell C. Leong
Literature changes as it travels,
creating new languages, new ideas, and new
critics. Literature may even create a “third
space” for telling stories differently than
before. Thus, as Amitav Ghosh has stated,
"stories are all there are to live in, it was just
a question of which one you chose."
Forty years ago, writers including
Maxine Hong Kingston, David Henry Hwang,
Frank Chin, Bienvenido Santos, Hisaye Yamamoto, Jessica Hagedorn, Milton Murayama
and others through their creative works laid
the groundwork for what is now broadly —
and generically — termed “Asian American
literature.” Such literature was limited to
writing in English solely within the borders
of the United States. Since then, novels,
poetry, and plays by Filipino, South Asian,
Korean, Burmese, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, Samoan and other Asian and Pacific Americans
have been produced across the Americas.
No longer generic, the complexity of writers’
backgrounds together with the stories they
tell raise new questions, including:
a. What and whom should be included as Asian
American?
b. Does this just include writing in English — or
can it include literatures in other languages such
as Spanish — or Vietnamese — or Pidgin?
c. What is the history of Asians in the Americas
— Central, North and South, and how does the
literature reflect this?
d. What are the implications of “third literature”
that reflects more than “East” or “West?” For example, Chinese in Cuba may draw upon both their
Chinese and African American roots.
e. What is the relationship between Asian American, Pacific Islander, and diasporic literatures?
This report focuses on the realm of Chinese
American literature. We hope that our efforts
will spur others to examine the literatures
of other Asian and Pacific groups of the
Americas and the Pacific region, thus helping
to form and augment what we have broadly
named “A Third Literature of the Americas.”
It is fitting that the term “third literature” was inspired by — and derived from
— the late Teshome Gabriel’s writing on
“Third Cinema” which broke new ground in
looking at cinema from a decolonized, post
1950s Third World perspective. Gabriel was
an Ethiopian poet and literature and film
scholar at UCLA, and I was fortunate to take
graduate film classes from him in the ’80s.
Gabriel had a vital role in introducing African, Asian, and Latin viewpoints on culture,
cinema, and literature to his students and
colleagues internationally. Thus his legacy
lives on in the works that Asian, Asian American, and African scholars, filmmakers, and
activists create.
Today, readers and scholars alike have
discovered that “Chinese American literature” can no longer be confined to works
written in English alone. Due to a number
of factors including the rise of China, the
ascendance of Latin America, the institutionalization of ethnic studies, and new critical
scholarship on both sides of the Pacific, we
are finding that the twenty-first century
signals a “third Chinese literature of the Americas” — novels, stories, and poems written
in English, Chinese, and Spanish.
These new
Russell C. Leong, Editor of CUNY FORUM and the senior editor for international projects at the
UCLA Asian American Studies Center
2013 © Copyright by RuSSell C. Leong
CUNY Forum 111
CUNY FORUM 1:1 (2013) 116-121
Search for Gold Mountain
1758
Thirty-two South Asian seamen are
stranded in Baltimore, Maryland.
1783
Saint Malo settlement in Louisiana is
established as early as 1763 by Filipinos during
the Manila Galleon Trade.
Asian Pacific American
T im e lin e
Trevor Lee
With
The Lacustrine Village of Saint Malo, Louisiana
1883
Antony Wong
ZHu-Hui Wu
1834
Afong Moy arrives in New York harbor for
the Carne brothers.
P.T. Barnum exhibits foreign “curiosities”
in the American Museum in New York City.
Attractions include Miss Pwan-Ye-Koo and
Chang and Eng Bunker.
Chinese-American playing Chinese checkers with
a Jewish friend at her Flatbush, Brooklyn home.
New York City, 1942
1848
Gold is discovered at Sutter’s Mill, CA,
drawing Chinese labor to "Gold Mountain."
1854
People v. Hall, the California Supreme
Court rules that the testimonies of Chinese
Americans and Chinese immigrants are
inadmissible.
1858
Ah Ken, a Cantonese businessman, opens a
cigar store on Park Row in New York City.
1861
Birth of Jose Rizal in the Philippines, a
Filipino nationalist and reformist.
1865
Transcontinental Railroad hires its first
Chinese workers.
1871
He Thien (original name Thien Hee or
Phraya Sarasinsawamiphakh) is the first
student from Thailand to graduate from
Columbia Medical School.
1882
The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
Association (CCBA), established in 1882
in San Francisco, is founded in New York as
a governing body for Chinese Americans in
New York City.
www.aaari.info/aatimeline
New York / East Coast
United States
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is
passed and renewed every decade until 1943.
1898
116 AAARI-CUNY
United States v. Wong Kim Ark: Born in
the United States to Chinese parents, Wong
Kim Ark’s American citizenship is confirmed
by the U.S. Supreme Court.