@asianamericana.com
Asian Americana is a podcast about slices of distinctly Asian American culture and history. Founding member of the Potluck Podcast Collective. Hosted/produced by @Quincetessence.bsky.social You can find and listen to our stories at asianamericana.com
If you live in Seattle, 140 years ago to the month in Feb 1886, a mob started forcibly rounding up and violently deporting Chinese migrants. This is immediately after a similar mob did the same in Tacoma a few month before.
Remind you of anything?
www.historylink.org/File/2745
Two children of the Mochida family who, with their parents, are awaiting evacuation bus Centerville, CA, May 8, 1942 photo by Dorothea Lange
5 yo in bunny hat and checked flannel shirt taken by ICE from his school
“There are no sidelines any more, friends.” - @philtajitsunash.bsky.social
1942. Mochida Family awaiting deportation in Centerville, CA. Photo by Dorothea Lange.
2026. Five year old Liam Ramos taken away by ICE returning home from pre-school, Photo via Columbus Heights Elementary, Minneapolis.
Chinese people were driven out with murder and threat of murder. There were repeated massacres.
That is what happened.
In the 1870 census, Boise, Idaho was almost 50% Chinese. Just...think about that. Think about Boise, Idaho today and what you think about it racially.
What happened after that was, to put it bluntly, repeated violence against the Chinese population in the West.
Anytime I see numbers showing that Asian people are less underwater than others, I wish we were actually fucking teaching the history of Asian people in this country.
Instead, maybe people are told that Chinese laborers built the railroads in the mid-1800s and then... like, nothing at all.
Author Gale Galligan executing a years-too-late kneeling dab next to a standee of the cover for FRESH START (2025).
HELLO!! 2025 is drawing to a close, people are buying gifts for the tweens in their lives, and DID YOU KNOW that a graphic novel named Fresh Start came out THIS YEAR?
⭐THREE starred reviews!
⭐about a kid who moves around a lot AND THEN HAS TO STAY IN ONE PLACE OH NO
⭐VERY FUNNY, LOTS OF DRAWINGS
Alice Wong, writer and disability activist, has died. She was an educator and a communicator and a warrior who lit the way. I’m grateful to have crossed paths with her. Rest in peace.
Thank you Alice for being my friend and comrade. You have been a beacon, a badass crip auntie who modelled incredible boundaries and offered the world such incisive wisdom and grace. We are all better for having known Alice.
#ConnectingGaza
‘Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, & full of love.’
—Alice Wong
I don’t want to formulate words yet, but my friend Alice Wong, @sfdirewolf.bsky.social of the Disability Visibility Project, has passed.
Here are the words she left behind:
www.instagram.com/p/DREMDNBjnq...
Found in the Densho Digital Repository
A photograph of two Japanese American soldiers posing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Date unknown, the photograph was likely taken by George Nakamura.
🗃 #skystorians
Today #ICE and Border Patrol descended on the plaza of the Japanese American Nat'l Museum. The very spot where Japanese Americans, including my family, were rounded up and sent to concentration camps with no due process in 1942.
The community wasn't having it. Read JANM's statement bit.ly/4oDsjng
The teen-led Chinatown Oral History Project documents struggle and amplifies the voices of elder residents.
Chinatown teens, with support from librarian Lynn Nguyen and Conectopod, documented seniors’ stories and local activism through film, podcasts, and public forums.
Found in the Densho Digital Repository
A photograph of two Japanese American men on a row boat at Bass Lake, California. The photograph was taken sometime between July 28-30, 1941. Caption in album: "Camping at Bass Lake"
We are deeply disappointed by Congress' vote to take back funding for public media. But we remain committed to elevating Asian American stories.
"Andrea Chu, the Midwest organizing director for Asian American Advancing Justice Chicago, said that Wu’s death shows the “devastating” impact of the China Initiative."
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/07/04/n...
Such a hard story to read about a woman in science who was clearly passionate about what she did — and excellent at it — and had that taken from her because she was Chinese.
May she rest in peace. 🧪
Asian Americans have been here — and erased here — for so long. Researching the history of Asian American journalism was the first time I felt empowered by U.S. history. (Read it here: drive.google.com/file/d/1UaX5...)
A thread on the identities of those told our stories, and kept our history:
I just gave, and I'm happy to support Asian American-run journalism doing SUCH important coverage!
Time for some real talk: @thexylom.com, the only Asian American-run news outlet covering science, climate, and the environment, will run out of funding in July if we don't secure $7,500 by the end of the month. I might lose my job at a time while waiting for a visa extension -- a nightmare scenario.
Approximately one in every ten Indian immigrants in the United States experienced a violent expulsion in the early twentieth century.
We're taking WhatsApp's misinformation ecosystem head-on. You can be the difference by helping us get to 100 text subscribers by the end of the month!
It does not escape me that this area is in Little Tokyo, the neighborhood and home of another community that's been rounded up and locked away by the government without due process before.
The city of Tulsa, home to one of the most horrifying racial-terror massacres in U.S. history and the people who tried to cover it up, has announced a $105 million reparations package.
Infuriating - just learned from Renee Tajima-Peña that #PBSLearningMedia has disappeared the Vincent Chin teaching module.
In 1885, white miners brutally murdered 28 Chinese miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Producer Harrison Vijay Tsui goes to Rock Springs to unearth this dark chapter of U.S. history. We’ll hear from Chinese Americans in Rock Springs today and the descendants of the Massacre across the country.
Today is Yuri Kochiyama's birthday.
The print is a collaboration with Agnes & Sherman, a new Asian American diner in Houston (co-founded by a friend). Felicia said she read my essay on Houston Asiatown as she worked on this print. ❤️ www.houstoniamag.com/news-and-cit...
Drawing of Vincent Chin, young Chinese American man - with flowers in background
Remembering Vincent Chin who should be 70 years old today.
Learn more about the story of Vincent and the ongoing movement for justice and the fight against anti-Asian hate in this handbook from the Vincent Chin Institute
www.vincentchin.org/legacy-guide
#APAHM
