Editor’s Note

AAARI-CUNY Publishes Asian American Matters: A New York Anthology

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“A generation ago, scholars held out for the promise that, in addition to the West and the Pacific, Asian American studies could be anchored in communities that were ‘east of California.’ Asian American Matters: A New York Anthology delivers on that promise, with a collection of incisive writing by activists and educators that is necessary, timely, and vital.”

– Theodore S. Gonzalves, Ph.D.
Curator, Asian Pacific American Histories, National Museum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution
President, Association for Asian American Studies (2018-2020)

“Situated against a backdrop of increased xenophobia, reinvigorated nativism, rising Islamophobia, and intensified racism in the United States, Asian American Matters potently reminds its readers of the possibilities of coalitional activism and political dissent. Such capacious dynamics, consistently at the forefront of Asian American Matters, evocatively reflect and refract the revolutionary legacies which brought the very notion of “Asian America” into being.”

– Cathy Schlund-Vials
Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute
Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies,
University of Connecticut
President, Association for Asian American Studies (2016-2018)

“Students of Asian America should add Asian American Matters: A New York Anthology to their bookshelves. Editor Russell C. Leong brings together academics and writers to piece together the diverse strands that make Asian America a political possibility and a community of connections and intersections.”

– Deepa Iyer, Author, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future

Asian American Matters

“Why do Asian American matters, matter?” asks editor Russell C. Leong in his introduction to this pathbreaking collection of essays by forty New York and U.S. scholars, writers, artists, and activists. Asian American Matters, published by the Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI), of The City University of New York (CUNY), is the first national anthology to address post 9/11 issues around Asians, Asian Americans, South Asians, and Muslims in relation to Asian American Studies and communities.

Editor Leong contends that for 300 years, Asians have been migrating to the Americas beginning with the Spanish galleon trade and Manila sailors in the 16th century. From that time until the present, Asians in the Americas have developed a transnational relationship that spans nations on both sides of the Pacific. Through this “long lenses” of history, Asian American matters–from history, immigration, and community, to faith, gender and social justice issues, to art and literature–are addressed in this book.

Within Asian American Matters, the 50-year history of Asian American Studies as a scholarly and cultural discipline, together with video, open-source, and on-line educational sites, are provided by renowned writers, including Shahidul Alam, Meena Alexander, Tomie Arai, Moustafa Bayoumi, Sylvia Chan-Malik, John J. Chin, Margaret M. Chin, Loan Thi Dao, Mariam Durrani, Raymond Fong, Luis H. Francia, Molly Higgens, Yibing Huang, Tarry Hum, Shirley Hune, Allan Punzalan Isaac, Mary Uyematsu Kao, Peter Nien-chu Kiang, Prema Kurien, Peter Kwong, Son Ca Lam, Vinay Lal, Russell C. Leong, Robert Lee, Zai Liang, Vivian Louie, Erik Love, Joyce Moy, Kevin L. Nadal, Don T. Nakanishi, Phil Tajitsu Nash, Songkhla Nguyen, Glenn Omatsu, Vinit Parmar, Raymond Pun, David K. Song, Samuel Stein, Rajini Srikanth, Eric Tang, Shirley Suet-ling Tang, Antony Wong, Ming Xia, and Judy Yung.

Leong, a former CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at Hunter College, edited the first anthologies on Asian American film and video, and on comparative sexualities, etc. for UCLA, and is the founding and current editor of CUNY FORUM in New York.

Purchase Information
Asian American Matters (ISBN 978–692-94978-8, 256 pp., illustrated, $25) is available for purchase online at a limited time only special sale price of $15 (plus $5 S&H), until March 2, 2018, at www.asianamericanmatters.com. Bulk discounts are also available for schools and libraries. For book review copies, please contact Antony Wong.

AAARI-CUNY Publishes CUNY FORUM Volume 4:1

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CUNY FORUM 4:1

The Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI), of The City University of New York (CUNY), announces the publication of CUNY FORUM Asian American/Asian Studies Volume 4:1 – Fall/Winter 2016-2017. CUNY FORUM is an East Coast-based print and online commons for scholars, practitioners, artists and activists who are committed to writing and conducting research on Asian and Pacific Americans, and Asians.

AAARI’s fourth issue of CUNY FORUM is concerned with how Asian American Studies, as a radical education initiative begun forty-years ago, can become a “change-creator,” providing a counter narrative to what is already known or practiced. Here, East Coast scholars, activists, artists and institutions, through their work and research bring critical transcultural perspectives and uncommon meanings to both voice and practice.

This 152 page journal features three sections, each examining through essays, commentaries, and research:

I. Transcultural Voices

The Rise of the Individual through Tibetan Thangka Painting
Ming Xue

Joe Bataan on Heavy Rotation: Studying the Repertoire of a Mixed-race Composer
Theodore S. Gonzalves

Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt: Critical Perspectives on Carlos Bulosan
Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao

Ching Ho Cheng / 氧化 oxidation
Russell C. Leong

II. Asian American Studies

Origins: The First Asian American Course at the University of Maryland, College Park
Shirley Hune

The University of Maryland, College Park: Remembering AMST 298
Sam Cacas

Deep Roots and New Sprouts: The Growth of Asian American Studies at Maryland
Janelle Wong

Asian American Leadership at CUNY and in Higher Education
Joyce O. Moy

Asian American Studies Online: Digital Tools for Education & Open-Source Learning
Antony Wong

Asian American and African American Communities after the Peter Liang Case
Peter Kwong

III. Research & Reports
Consuming Gangnam Style: Nation-Branding in Koreatown, New York and Los Angeles
Angie Y. Chung, Jinwon Kim & Injeong Hwang

Obesity Risk Reduction Behaviors Among Chinese Americans in the New York Region
Doreen Liou, Kathleen Bauer & Yeon Bai

The Opposite of a Fairy Tale: A Commentary on Elder Abuse
Betty Lee Sung

Emile Bocian: Photojournalist for The China Post, NYC
Kevin Chu

Purchase Information
CUNY FORUM Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are available for purchase online at a limited time only special sale prices from $5 to $10 per issue (plus $3 S&H) at www.aaari.info/cunyforum. Bulk discounts are also available for schools and libraries.

Schema Asian America: New Realities

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ASIANS, FROM THE BEGINNING OF our settlement here, have had to write ourselves onto the script of a nation that has, for the most part, excluded our collective histories and occluded our individual voices. Because no one ever “gave America to us,” freely, we have had to collectively find it, rock by rock, wave by wave, one migrant at a time stumbling across the barbed wire of Arizona sands or steadfastly towing our bodies to reach the darkened shore of Rockaway Beach, Queens, or the foggy shores of San Francisco Bay. Yet after we found it, we had to build a city—no, rather a barrio or an enclave upon the rock.

Linking Asian Pacific Latitudes

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IN HIS EDITORIAL DISCUSSING the “knowledge economy,” Pico Iyer states that we “overestimate how much we understand the world” in relation to historical and contemporary events. Likewise, in our understanding of Asian and Asian American Studies, we produce knowledge, but we may not always understand the complex shifts and currents of scholarship in relation to other stories and voices of the community, and what they imply. For example, in this issue, Jess Delegencia links his experience as a student at UC Berkeley with the U.S. anti-apartheid movement, the People Power Movement in the Philippines, and the Los Angeles Uprisings with the forming of his own identity in the U.S. and South Africa. New Pacific connections also reveal themselves in this issue: indigenous writer Syaman Rapongan, together with scholar Hsinya Huang, offer an oceanic perspective to challenge current global/continental ways of positioning the world.

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Creating Forums: ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES TODAY

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SEVENTY-SIX YEARS SEPARATE Younghill Kang’s depiction of Korean immigrants in 1920s New York and Jennifer Hayashida’s observations on the practice of Asian American scholarship today. Yet the words of these two writers bridge the underlying struggles — and dreams — of the immigrant journey and of the historical experience of Asians in New York and the Eastern seaboard from the eighteenth century onwards.

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