ASIAN AMERICAN MATTERS A NEW YORK ANTHOLOGY Tomie Arai | Artist Tomie Arai, Tomorrow’s World Is Yours to Build DITOR EONG | E (2017). Photo by Cheung Ching Ming RUSSELL C. L ASIAN AMERICAN AND ASIAN RESEarCH INSTITUTE THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AsiAn AMericAn MAtters Why Do Asian American Matters, Matter? Russell C. Leong, Editor 11 1 TAKING ON A Post-9/11 WORLD WITH ASIAN American STUDIES 19 Asian American Studies, the War on Terror, and the Changing University: A Call to Respond Moustafa Bayoumi 21 Who are Asian Americans? Prema Kurien 25 Seize the Moment: A Time for Asian American Activism Rajini Srikanth 28 ‘Why Do You Study Islam?’: Religion, Blackness, and the Limits of Asian American Studies Sylvia Chan-Malik 31 Caught in a Racial Paradox: Middle Eastern American Identity and Islamophobia Erik Love 34 Why Asian Americans Need a New Politics of Dissent Eric Tang 38 Coalition-Building in the Inter-Disciplines and Beyond Mariam Durrani 40 Beneath the Surface: Academic and Practical Realities Raymond Fong 42 2 Fifty YEARS OF Pasts & FUTURES 47 Demographics, Geographies, Institutions: The Changing Intellectual Landscape of Asian American Studies Shirley Hune 49 Betty Lee Sung: Teaching Asian American Studies at CUNY An Interview Antony Wong 53 Forty-Five Years of Asian American Studies at Yale University Don T. Nakanishi 57 Why Asian Pacific Americans Need Liberatory Education More Than Ever Phil Tajitsu Nash 67 Asian American Matters 5 Asian Americans at The City University of New York: The Current Outlook Joyce O. Moy 77 Steps Along the Curved Road Loan Thị Đào, Peter Nien-chu Kiang (江念祖), Sơn Ca Lâm, Songkhla Nguyễn & Shirley Suet-ling Tang (鄧雪齡) 83 Standing Beside: A Comparative Racial Critique Allan Punzalan Isaac 93 East Coast Asian American Studies Shirley Hune 97 3 WRITING Across, Against AND BeyonD BORDERS 99 A China Scholar’s Rendezvous with Islam Ming Xia 101 Impossible Grace: Poems and a Journey Meena Alexander 107 Journey to the West: Poems and Stories of Chinese Detainees on Ellis Island Judy Yung 117 “We’re Here Because You Were There”: Asian American Studies and Its Ambivalences Vinay Lal 127 A Third Literature of the Americas With Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Kathleen López, Maan Lin, Yibing Huang & Wen Jin Russell C. Leong 133 铜 Copper 麦芒 Mai Mang (Yibing Huang) 137 Requiem for the Common Tao and Other Poems Luis H. Francia 139 4 ACTIVISM, Art & MEDIA 143 Envisioning the Next Revolutions: How Today’s Asian American Movements Connect to Worldwide Activism Glenn Omatsu 145 Cultural and Racial Equity in Practice: Current Policy and Research and the Future of NYC Robert Lee 153 Momotaro/Peach Boy: A Portfolio Tomie Arai 159 6 AAARI-CUNY From Bihar to Brooklyn, to Berlin: A Quest for Sustainability and Soul Vinit Parmar 167 Save Sundarbans: Global Protest 2017 Shahidul Alam 177 Taking a Stand with Yuri Kochiyama Mary Uyematsu Kao 179 Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night and A Certain Korean American Space David K. Song 181 5 Community Research AND ONLINE METHODologies 187 Tales from the Field: Research Methods and Approaches to Studying Community John J. Chin, Margaret M. Chin, Tarry Hum, Peter Kwong & Zai Liang 189 Riding “Jitneys in Manila”: Down My Own Community Research Path John J. Chin 199 Gentrification and the Future of Work in New York City’s “Chinatowns” Tarry Hum & Samuel Stein 207 A Guide to Responding to Microaggressions: Revisited Kevin L. Nadal 217 Digital Archives on Asian America for Research and Teaching Raymond Pun & Molly Higgins 225 On-Line Tools for Education & Open-Source Learning Antony Wong 229 6 Passages: PETER Kwong 233 Why We Do This Work Vivian Louie 235 My Journey to Spirituality Peter Kwong 239 AAARI Videos Featuring Peter Kwong 244 CUNY FORUM Editorial Board (2017-2018) 245 2018-2019 Article and Essay Submissions 245 AAARI Board (2017-2018) 246 Asian American Matters 7 Why Do Asian American Matters, Matter? RUSSELL C. LEONG, EDITOR Asian America breathes, works, loves, fights, and challenges our notions of what is American and what is Asian today. The two words together do not form a hyphenated identity. Instead, they configure a whole entity, call for a new reality, and lead the way to social action. We contend that—Asian American matters—do matter. From Manila, to New Spain, to New York WE begin with the world that we know, as we unblind the past and open the future to thinking about Asian Americans in new ways. In the introduc- tion to her illuminating book, The Making of Asian America (2015), historian Erika Lee charts the passage of the first Asians brought to the Americas by the Spanish, beginning in the 16th century. “New Spain” encompassed the regions that Spain colonized and from whence it drew workers and slaves, including Mexico and Central America, and what is today the southwest- ern United States. Within Spain’s Pacific orbit was also the Philippines, Guam, and the Mariana Islands. Though Asians constituted a much smaller pool of labor than the earlier transport of enslaved Africans to the New World, the conditions of their servitude were similar. As Lee states, some “40,000 to 100,000 Asians from China, Japan, the Philippines, and South and “Panalangin No. 7” (Prayer No. 7) Southeast Asia crossed the Pacific from Manila and landed 2013, 2017 © Copyright by Artist: Jun-Jun Sta. Ana in Acapulco during the 250-year history of the galleon trade.” From this beginning rooted in Spanish colonization and the slave trade, Asians in the Americas during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries subsequently encountered various kinds of legal exclusion, racism, and discrimination that limited their choices and opportunities to work, to marry, to settle, and to worship. “Asian Americans,” Lee states, “continue to confront both American racism and global inequali- ties through their transnational lives, activities, and identities that are simultaneously effecting change in the United States and across the Pacific Ocean.” Thus, for three centuries, Asians have always “mattered” to the Americas and to Asia, and still matter, in quite different ways, today.1 Post-9/11 Thought, Activism & Culture This transnational optic of history provided by Erika Lee, together with contemporary responses by writers within this volume, provide the fulcrum and reason for publishing Asian American Matters: A New York Anthology. This book provides a national forum for over 40 writers, activists, artists, and academ- ics that have chosen, in various ways, to identify themselves as either Asian American, or who visualize, Asian American Matters 11 1 TAKING ON A POST-9/11 WORLD WITH ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES “We have been telling and selling the story of ‘good groups’ and ‘bad groups’ for over a century.” —Vivian Louie CUNY FORUM 2:1 (2014) Thousands of protesters fill the streets of Midtown Manhattan in massive rally on the eve of the presidential inauguration (January 19, 2017) Asian AmericanPhoto Matters by Alice Chung19 AT THIS very MOMENT of writing, the virulent an- ti-Asian rhetoric, and anti-Muslim violence within the U.S. demands a “call to respond” from those working within and outside of the university. Yet, such Amer- ican racialization is in fact nothing new, going back centuries as Moustafa Bayoumi points out in his lead ES? ES? essay: “Asian American Studies, the War on Terror, and DI the Changing University.” As a call to respond, we’ve U gathered here scholars and writers to discuss the rela- T tionship of Asian American Studies to Muslim, Islamic, N S N or Arab Studies, in light of today’s calls for exclusion, ho gets excluded— gets ho and to respond broadly to Bayoumi’s essay. W RICA Responders include: Prema Kurien, Rajini Srikanth, E Sylvia Chan-Malik, Erik Love, Eric Tang, Mariam Durra- M ni, & Raymond Fong. N A N For useful reading on South Asian and Muslim American activism, Islamic histories, and contemporary interpretations, see: IA • Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (New York: Penguin Books, 2008) N AS N • Sunaina Maira, The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the I War on Terror (New York: NYU Press, 2016) H • Deepa Iyer, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape our Multiracial Future (New York: The New Press, 2017) • Christopher de Bellaigue, WIT The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017) • Vijay Prashad, Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today (New York: The New Press, 2012) • Mohsin Hamid, Exit West: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017) Who gets included—And included—And gets Who 20 Asian American Studies, the War on Terror, and the Changing University A Call to Respond MOUStaFA BAYOUMI Who Gets Included—and Who Doesn’t? I believe it’S crucial we debate what the nature of Asian American Studies itself actually is and reflect on the changing nature not only of Asian American Studies, but also of the uni- versity, particularly during the age of the War on Terror. In fact, I would like us to consider those three things—Asian American Studies, the War on Terror, and the changing nature of the univer- sity—all together, and in so doing perhaps enlarge the purview of this discussion. I think this could lead us to reconsider the nature of Asian American Studies itself. How should we think of Asian American Studies? At bottom, is Asian American Studies driven by the pursuit of creating a more diverse and accurate vision of our country, or is there another reason why different Asian Ameri- can subgroups will come together under the umbrella of Asian Moustafa Bayoumi America? Is the motivation, unity, and force behind the concept of Asian American Studies largely due to the Asian geography of our different national origins, or is Asian American Studies more fundamentally about the organization and structure of power within the United States? To answer this question, we can begin with another, namely “who gets included—and who doesn’t get included—within Asian American Studies?” Muslim Americans and Arab Americans Let’s consider two different, yet overlapping groups, Muslim Americans and Arab Americans, in this question, and examine what their relationship is and should be to Asian American Studies.