Virtual Bookshelf: Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month
NEH-supported projects on the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander experience
Korean-American siblings Ralph, Philip, and Susan Ahn in military uniform in 1942. Their family story is among the many personal histories featured in the NEH-supported documentary series Asian Americans.
Courtesy of of the film, Asian Americans, PBS
Korean-American siblings Ralph, Philip, and Susan Ahn in military uniform in 1942. Their family story is among the many personal histories featured in the NEH-supported documentary series Asian Americans.
Courtesy of of the film, Asian Americans, PBS
May is Asian American, Native Hawiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month, a time to celebrate the contributions that generations of AANHPI have made to American history, culture, and society.
NEH is proud to have supported the following projects that provide perspective and insight on the AANHPI experience. Join us in celebrating the history and accomplishments of these diverse communities with this selection of NEH-funded grant projects on AANHPI history.
NEH-supported projects and resources on the Asian-American and Pacific Islander experience:
NEH-supported books:
Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor by Steve Kemper (Mariner Books, 2022) This NEH Public Scholars book offers a behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through the eyes of Joseph C. Grew, the American ambassador who attempted to stop the slide to war.
America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present, by John Ghazvinian (Knopf, 2021). Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, this NEH Public Scholars book traces the history of relations between the United States and Iran back to the Persian Empire.
Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination by W. Anthony Sheppard (Oxford University Press, 2019). Written and researched with support from an NEH Fellowship and Summer Stipend, Sheppard’s Extreme Exoticism details over 150 years of American musical history and the impact Japanese music had on American composers.
American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901–1949 by Charlotte Brooks (University of California Press, 2019), reveals how in the 20th century, many Chinese Americans born in the United States emigrated to China to flee racism and seek better opportunities.
Asian Americans
Now streaming on PBS, this five-hour documentary series chronicles the ongoing role Asian Americans have played in shaping our nation’s history. The series spans 150 years of immigration, racial politics, international relations, and cultural innovation, told through individual lives and family stories.
Museum of Chinese in America
NEH grants have supported the digitization of records and artifacts documenting the personal and family histories of the Chinese-American community, assisted in the preservation of the museum’s collections, and supported the museum in recovering from a devastating 2020 fire.
From Immigrants to Citizens: Asian Pacific Americans in the Northwest
This summer the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle will hold two NEH Landmarks of American History workshops for K–12 educators on the history and culture of Asian and Pacific-Islander Americans in the Pacific Northwest.
Unladylike2020
This series of short films on 26 women who changed America features profiles of Margaret Chung, the first American-born Chinese female doctor, Anna May Wong, trendsetting movie star, Queen Lili‘uokalani, the first sovereign queen and last monarch of Hawai‘i, and Tye Leung Schulze, an advocate for trafficked women and the first Chinese-American woman to become a federal government employee.
Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and the Japanese American Incarceration
This summer, educators for grades 5–12 will attend an NEH Landmark of American History workshop at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, one of ten incarceration sites for Japanese Americans forced from the West Coast during World War II, to learn about the Japanese-American experience in the U.S.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
Streaming at PBS American Experience, this 2018 documentary examines the origin, history, and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America, and for Chinese nationals already here to become U.S. citizens.
Who is American?
This NEH grant-supported a 12-month public humanities project at the Center for Asian American Media, fostered understanding and dialog on the history and impact of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and brought Americans from all backgrounds together to reflect on themes of immigration, citizenship, national identity, civil rights, globalization, labor, democracy, and other issues of ongoing relevance.
Seattle Asian Art Museum
An NEH Challenge Grant supported the renovation and expansion of the Seattle Asian Art Museum to help protect, preserve, and showcase the museum’s extensive collections of art from China, Korea, Japan, India, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia.
The Hmong Heritage Project
An NEH grant supported community digitization days and related public programming to capture the memories and artifacts of Hmong community members in Catawba County, North Carolina, home to the fourth largest population of Hmong immigrants in the U.S.
Weaving a Net(work) of Care for Oceanic Collections: A Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Museum Summer Institute
An NEH grant is supporting a summer institute to provide training to Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders working in museums and heritage centers throughout the Pacific on museum management and care for Oceanic collections.
Louisiana’s Hidden History of Japanese Internment
An NEH grant to Louisiana State University is supporting work on a digital archive of materials on the histories of Camp Livingston and Camp Algiers, where Japanese prisoners of war and U.S. civilians of Japanese ancestry were interned during World War II.
Chinese American Mothering Across Generations: Toy Len Goon and the Creation and Recirculation of the Model Minority Myth
Supported by an NEH Fellowship, Andrea Louie, a scholar at Michigan State University, is researching and writing a book about Toy Len Goon, a Chinese immigrant who was selected as U.S. Mother of the Year in 1952.
Kani’aina, the Hawaiian Spoken Language Repository
NEH has supported the digitization and transcription of recordings of Native Hawaiian for inclusion in a digital repository for use in researching and teaching the Hawaiian language.
L.A. as Subject: Community Histories Digitization Project
The L.A. as Subject project at the University of Southern California is using an NEH grant to digitize photographs, records, and other cultural objects held by six Los Angeles community archives. These include collections documenting the experiences of post-WWII Filipino immigrants; oral history interviews with Japanese-American WWII veterans; records of the daily lives of late 19th and early 20th century African-American, Asian-American, Latino communities, and Jewish women's groups in Southern California.
The Collective Memory of the Korean Community
An NEH grant to the Korean American Historical Society is supporting community digitization events to collect family records and materials documenting domestic life, immigration, small businesses, and community organizations within Korean-American communities across the U.S. The resulting digital collection will be made available online through the Wing Luke Museum.
Behind Aiiieeeee!: A New History of Asian American Literature
Scholar Tara Fickle at the University of Oregon is using an NEH Fellowship to prepare a book examining the publication history of the first anthology of Asian-American literature, Aiiieeeee!
National Humanities Medalist
In March the White House awarded the National Humanities Medal to Asian-American author Amy Tan. Read more about Tan’s work and the stories she tells about the Asian-American experience here.
Humanities magazine reading list:
Guam’s Kimberlee Kihleng Helps Elevate the Diverse Voices of the Island’s Community
The Chinese Exclusion Act Raised the Price of Becoming an American
Ka‘iulani Haunts Empire in Waikīkī
The Original Miss Turnstiles: Sono Osato Starred on Broadway
History and the Empathetic Imagination
The Story of the 1947 Partition as Told by the People Who Were There
EDSITEment resources:
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage and History in the U.S.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Perspectives within Humanities Education
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage and History in the U.S.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
The New Order for "Greater East Asia"
Japanese American Internment Camps during WWII
Additional resources from NEH partners:
The “Reading Together Book Project” at Minnesota Humanities Center seeks to address the lack of children’s books that speak to the experience of being an Asian Pacific Islander (API) child or youth in the United States.
Read entries from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ magazine and Louisiana encyclopedia, 64 Parishes, on the Vietnamese in Louisiana and New Orleans’ Chinatown.
Newcomer Legacy: A Vietnamese-American Story in West Michigan: produced with a grant from Michigan Humanities, this documentary follows the lives of nine Vietnamese refugees who settled in West Michigan following the Communist overthrow of South Vietnam in 1975.
FREE CHOL SOO LEE, a new documentary from Humanities California, tells the story of a Korean immigrant who was sentenced to life in prison but freed once his conviction was overturned. Stream the documentary on PBS. In Nebraska, the “Righting a Wrong/Preserving a Legacy” exhibition is on display at the Nebraska History Museum until October 1, 2023.
The Smithsonian Asian Pacific Heritage Center “Standing Together Against Hate” portal provides links to exhibitions and resources from across the Smithsonian museums focusing on Asian-American and Pacific Islander voices.