Fall 2021 – Spring 2022

Passing for Perfect: College Impostors and Other Model Minorities

By

In her engaging study, Passing for Perfect, erin Khuê Ninh considers the factors that drove college imposters such as Azia Kim—who pretended to be a Stanford freshman—and Jennifer Pan—who hired a hitman to kill her parents before they found out she had never received her high school diploma—to extreme lengths to appear successful. Why would someone make such an illogical choice? And how do they stage these lies so convincingly, and for so long?

Read more

Kulintang Kultura: Danongan Kalanduyan and Gong Music of the Philippine Diaspora

By and

Co-produced by Theodore S. Gonzalves and Mary Talusan Lacanlale, Kulintang Kultura, from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, pays homage to the late Danongan “Danny” Kalanduyan, a talented musician and generous teacher who championed traditional Filipino kulintang gong music in the United States, helping to keep the memory and practice alive.

Read more

Refusing Death: Asian and Latina Immigrant Women Activists on Race, Class, and Morality

By

Prof. Nadia Kim in her new book, ‘Refusing Death,’ chronicles how Asian and Latina immigrant women activists for environmental justice in Los Angeles—namely cleaner, more breathable air—redefine racism and classism as a result of their struggles with environmental racism and classism, and their specific social positionings under neoliberal capitalism and white supremacy.

Read more

Uncle Rico’s Encore: Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle

By

From the 1950s through the 1970s, blue-collar Filipino Americans, or Pinoys, lived a hardscrabble existence. In this collection of autobiographical essays, acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Peter Bacho centers the experiences of the Pinoy generation that grew up in Seattle’s multiethnic neighborhoods, from the Central Area to Beacon Hill to Rainier Valley.

Read more