UMass Boston Asian American Studies Program

06/08/2025

Paul Watanabe, director of the UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies and political science professor, anchored the initiative. A survey like this could have great implications for a demographic that’s often been treated as a monolith, advocates say. Without detailed data, elected officials often overlook AAPI voters as a key voting bloc, and policy recommendations that properly address the diaspora’s specific needs are difficult to make... The survey provides key insights into the growing AAPI community, which constitutes 8 percent of the state’s population, according to the most recent census data. It collected info from at least 1,400 respondents in March... AAPI residents polled also reported widespread racism and an overall lack of belonging. Roughly one in four said they experienced discrimination, one in five were called racist slurs, and 14 percent suffered verbal abuse in the past year. These trends are echoed on the national level. A separate report released Monday by Stop AAPI Hate on the state of anti-Asian racism in 2024 found that more than half of respondents experienced a hate-based act last year. For the Massachusetts survey, only 39 percent of respondents said they strongly agreed that they belonged in America — a sentiment that Danielle Kim, executive director of the Boston Foundation’s Asian Community Fund found shocking, but affirming nonetheless. “Even though AAPI residents have been in this country for many generations, so many in our community still don’t feel like we’re seen, visible, or celebrated,” Kim said. “This report is a call to action.”

A survey coordinated by a mix of stakeholders offers what could be some of the first disaggregated data on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Massachusetts.

06/08/2025

always cheering for and learning from IP, Tita Cris's legacy, and Myra's dedication. one more year to half century!

Founded in 1976, Iskwelahang Pilipino claims the title of the oldest continually operating cultural school for Filipino Americans in the country. During the school year, students from toddlers to teens gather for classes in Filipino music, dance, language, history and identity. The annual graduation doubles as a cultural showcase, with performances by Iskwelahang Pilipino‘s rondalla string ensemble, regional folk dances and original student projects. This year’s celebration, the 49th anniversary of the school’s founding, carried extra weight, as it was the first graduation since Iskwelahang Pilipino relocated from Bedford, its longtime home, to a new space in Watertown. After a year of moving between temporary locations and uncertainty about the school’s future... Iskwelahang Pilipino‘s executive director, Myra Liwanag, has been part of the school since 1986, was a member of the first graduating class and now leads the organization her niece is graduating from. Watching this year’s seniors perform, she said, was both joyful and bittersweet... Just as its dances reflect the country‘s diversity, Iskwelahang Pilipino‘s lessons dig into the history behind them. The curriculum includes history units on colonialism, Filipino resistance and lesser-known Filipino American figures. Lilly Bolandrina, a 2020 graduate who now volunteers with the school’s communications team, said the experience shaped her political worldview. “Growing up, we mostly learned history from one perspective,” said Bolandrina — a perspective that neglected the Philippines, also a US colony for almost 50 years, as well as Filipinos and Filipino Americans’ contributions to U.S. and world history. “But at IP, we saw the fuller picture. It gave me pride, and it gave me tools to stand up for myself.” As one of the few students of color in her elementary school, Bolandrina remembers being singled out and made to feel like she didn’t belong. “Being in a place that celebrates your differences, and treats you as important and valuable and special and interesting because of those differences, was just so empowering,” she said. Iskwelahang Pilipino also helped her understand that being Filipino American doesn’t mean existing halfway between two cultures — it means belonging fully to both. “No matter who you are, no matter how much Filipino you think you are — when you‘re here with us, we see you as a full Filipino, and we see you as one of us,” she said. That sense of empowerment has taken on new necessity in recent years, amid rising anti-Asian discrimination and political threats to immigrant communities. Bolandrina said the school has grown more protective of its members by limiting public promotion of its location and choosing not to ask about immigration status. “We want to stay open and celebratory,” she said. “But we also want to stay safe.” In spite of those challenges, Iskwelahang Pilipino‘s leadership remains resolute in preserving the school for the next generation of Filipino Americans. As the organization approaches its 50th year, Myra Liwanag said her focus is on building a foundation that can sustain Iskwelahang Pilipino for another 50...

Founded in 1976, Iskwelahang Pilipino claims the title of the oldest continually operating cultural school for Filipino Americans in the country.

06/08/2025

much love to jennifer nguyen and kids/grandchildren who have attended UMB including those who took AsAmSt courses. legendary legacy here:

If grit and determination could be found in a sandwich, it would be discovered inside every Banh Mi sandwich at Ba Le Restaurant on Dorchester Avenue. The shop, led successfully for almost 30 years now by Jennifer Nguyen, 64, has been staunchly traditional, and will remain that way as her youngest daughter, Baotran Le, and son-in-law, Hung Duong, take over more of the day-to-day operations during this year. On Tuesday, Ba Le was cited as one of the city’s 2025 Legacy Business Award winners – joining Dot favorites the Ice Creamsmith and Greenhills Irish Bakery among the 30 citywide winners...Nguyen is a Vietnamese War refugee who escaped on a boat in the 1980s while undertaking unthinkable measures to keep herself and her brother alive during the awful journey to, first, a camp in Hong Kong, and then to America “with no money at all and no English at all,” said Le. What Nguyen did have was a drive to succeed that was unstoppable. After working in fish cleaning factories, and starting and failing with four businesses, she quit a waitressing job to join her sister, who had opened Ba Le at a stall in Chinatown. Soon after, they expanded to the signature Ba Le Dorchester at 1052 Dorchester Ave., where Nguyen took full control in 1996...

If grit and determination could be found in a sandwich, it would be discovered inside every Banh Mi sandwich at Ba Le Restaurant on Dorchester Avenue. The shop, led successfully for almost 30 years now by Jennifer Nguyen, 64, has been staunchly traditional, and will remain that way as her youngest d...

05/30/2025

Full color 22-pp student profiles and AsAmSt news for 2024-2025 here:
https://www.umb.edu/media/umassboston/editor-uploads/asian-american-studies-program/asamst-grads25.pdf

Hearty congratulations to eight students from 2024-2025 who have completed at least six courses that satisfy our AsAmSt program-of-study requirements: Benjamin Chen (陈乃铭), Raymond Hang, Naomi Katrina Martinez Layon, Lily Tran, Thomas Duong Quan Tran, MyLin Tran Le, Allyson Tse, and Maylee You. They are the newest of 170 students who have graduated with AsAmSt concentrations since 2000.

04/30/2025

enormous appreciation to Linh-Phương Vũ and Ngọc-Trân Vũ for co-leading the 1975 Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative and to UMB AsAmSt Prof. Sơn Ca Lâm and all of our faculty, staff, alumni and students who have contributed to this ongoing community process!!
.. Tommy Lam, 24, works with the 1975 project, which is attempting to build a monument to the Vietnamese community in Fields Corner. He said a 2019 trip back to his father’s rural homeland opened his eyes to how far his family has come. “I was able to see the whole rice fields and really understand the root of where I am, and the privilege that I have to be born in America, given the opportunity and just kind of live that American dream,” Lam said. “My dad coming to America at 18 with the shirt on his back and nothing else, it’s crazy how much we’re able to grow.”
.. Saturday’s event at Boston College High School was a multigenerational affair, showcasing how much the war continues to affect Vietnamese families around Boston. Son Ca Lâm, a professor at the UMass Boston Asian America Studies Program, pointed out the dozens of young volunteers who scampered to set up and staff the various exhibit areas around the high school. ”It is not just the older generation who are sort of commemorating the ... displacement and their fleeing from the homeland,“ Lâm said, ”but the younger generation is also trying to carry on the torch and honor those stories and that experience and remembering where we come from.”

For some members of the Vietnamese community, Saturday’s commemoration was an opportunity to connect with a time their families don’t like to talk about. Kelly Tran, 22, is a senior at UMass Boston and one of the artists who installed an exhibition to amplify oral histories of the diaspora community. She said that growing up, she had not been exposed to much of her Vietnamese history. “A lot of my family members are very secretive or reluctant to tell the full story to me and my siblings,” she said. Tran knows both of her grandparents fought in the war, and were imprisoned for years in brutal Viet Cong “re-education camps.” Tran said her coursework in the Asian American Studies Program has given her further insight to her Vietnamese heritage...

print and audio link from WGBH:

At gatherings around the city, Vietnamese Americans spoke of the importance of preserving the stories and the legacy of the generation that arrived in the U.S. as refugees from a brutal war.

03/23/2025

AsAmSt Professor and Program Director, Peter Kiang, comments in the Sampan on historic legacies of Wong Kim Ark, Japanese American WWII redress and reparations, and Lau v. Nichols bilingual education victories:

“The remarkable, collective, intergenerational efforts by Japanese Americans to eventually win redress and reparations and a public apology from the U.S. government for the incarceration almost 50 years later are also so important to teach and learn, to really understand and internalize,” noted Kiang. Kiang also stressed a less well-known case in history: that of nine-year old Kinney Lau and his immigrant family and peers from San Francisco. They had argued that the San Francisco Unified School Board denied equal educational opportunity rights for students with limited English proficiency during the early1970s. “Based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled unanimously in 1973-74 that educational access to learning must be provided to all limited-English proficient students. Like Wong Kim Ark’s landmark case regarding citizenship rights, Kinney Lau’s historic case established the national basis for K-12 bilingual education in the U.S. which has created such profound, far-reaching opportunities for all populations during the past 50 years, not just Chinese immigrant families.” But, said Kiang, a new presidential executive order issued on March 1 designating English as the official language of the U.S. “will undoubtedly be used to systematically undermine multilingual access to government services and resources, including bilingual education in U.S. school districts, nearly all of which receive federal funds. Asian American families and communities as well as the general public in the U.S. need to much more clearly recognize the examples of Kinney Lau and Wong Kim Ark and many others as civil rights contributions through courage, advocacy, and long-term organizing that benefited all of U.S. society.”

Tens of millions of immigrants in the U.S. are now, as long promised, in the sights of the administration of Pres. Donald Trump, who is carrying out his threats of mass deportations. The administration is also using various executive orders in attempts to boot certain visa holders from the U.S. and....

09/06/2024

A Quincy man received an 18-month prison sentence on Wednesday for committing a hate crime, federal prosecutors said. John Sullivan, 78, had previously pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Acting US Attorney Joshua S. Levy said in a statement. On Dec. 2, 2022, Sullivan encountered an Asian American family with three children under 12 outside a post office in Quincy. He yelled at the family to “go back to China” and threatened to kill them, prosecutors said. Sullivan then hit an adult member of the family with his car, federal prosecutors said. The man landed on the hood and remained there as Sullivan drove about 200 feet, prosecutors said. Sullivan slammed on his brakes, causing the man to slide off the car, and then hit him again. The impact caused the man to fall face-first into a 10-foot-deep construction ditch. He suffered multiple injuries and a concussion.

Sullivan was “fueled by his hate of Asian Americans,” Levy said. “Every single man, woman and child living in Massachusetts has a fundamental right to be free from acts of hate and violence,” Levy said in the statement. “The conduct here is truly despicable and this office will dedicate whatever resources are needed to vigorously prosecute these types of hate crimes.” Sullivan was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2023. It was the first time the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts had prosecuted someone under the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Although federal guidelines recommend a sentence between 37 and 46 months, prosecutors recommended a two-year sentence due to Sullivan’s age and health, according to court records.

“A run-of-the-mill trip to the post office turned into a nightmare for this Vietnamese man when John Sullivan decided to target him because of the color of his skin and the country of his ancestors,” said Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division. “There is no way to undo the damage Mr. Sullivan caused with his hateful, repulsive, and violent behavior, but hopefully today’s sentence provides some measure of comfort.”

John Sullivan, 78, had previously pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, prosecutors said.

06/02/2024

As part of UMass Boston’s Commencement activities, AsAmSt Professor and Program Director, Peter Nien-chu Kiang (江念祖), was honored on 22 May 2024 with the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship, based on his career-long, 37-year scholarly record at UMB. He is the first “triple crown” winner in history to receive the university’s highest honors in all three domains of faculty contribution and impact—the Chancellor’s Awards for Distinguished Scholarship (2024), Service (2010), and Teaching (2007). At the award ceremony, Argentinian-born Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco referred to Prof. Kiang as “the Messi of Asian American Studies, he’s the Messi, he’s done it all...” while the crowd applauded with delight.

06/02/2024

the first national Association for Asian American Studies conference held on the East Coast was hosted by prof. Shirley Hune and Hunter College in 1989, supported by a national leadership group that included (L/R front and rear): lane hirabayashi, ray lou, margaret chin, marilyn alquizola, peter kiang, chung hoang chuong, john liu, gary okihiro, chalsa loo, greg mark, emu suzuki, lee c. lee, shirley hune, and steve sumida. photo: gail nomura.

rip gary okihiro with respect and appreciation.

06/02/2024

rip bob suzuki, a true pioneer and visionary who changed the course of history for Asian American Studies and Asian American educational leadership during his 10 years at UMass Amherst and through his long career in California higher education.

In Tribute to Dr. “Bob” Suzuki May 23, 2024 On May 1, 2024, we lost a great Asian American higher education leader, activist and agent of change. Dr. “Bob” Suzuki passed away surrounded by his wife Agnes Suzuki, their children and grandchildren. Bob was an early pioneer in fighting for civil...