The AAPI Oral History Project Support internship is a blended (remote and in-person), unpaid project support and coordination activity in research, outreach, transcription and editing, drafting papers, and assisting with funding identification and development potentials.
Project Concentrations
1. “Chasing the Legacy of the ‘Chinese Marxist Left’ of San Francisco”
The ‘‘Chinese Marxist Left’ is the term coined by H. Mark Lai, the dean of Chinese American history, who had begun documentation of Chinese progressives during the 30’s/40’s/50’s encompassing three groupings: intellectuals, labor activists and small businessmen. Much attention centered around the Chinese American Democratic Youth League (Mun Ching in Cantonese shorthand), a literary and cultural group that supported the determined War of Resistance to Japanese occupation, and later the Chinese civil war led by the Chinese Communist Party. These groups enjoyed mutual intersections and came under intensive McCarthy-era government harassment; and many suffered mental breakdowns, suicides, deportations, and lost of citizenship.
2. Spinning Off the Social Justice Campaigns Fueled by Yuri Kochiyama
Have you heard about the David Wong Case? This was spurred by the late Yuri Kochiyama, whose work with many Black political prisoners, had heard about a Chinese immigrant New York State prison inmate who was wrongly accused for a prison murder he had nothing to do with. Through determined and tenacious work by the David Wong Support Committee (DWSC), after several years of outreach, mobilizations and investigations, Wong was exonerated, served out his original sentence, released and returned to Hong Kong. The work to free David Wong was very likely the most important Asian American social justice campaign of the 1990’s. Yuri Kochiyama’s leadership was a significant factor in maintaining the momentum of the David Wong case as it sought social justice traction through several years. The DWSC also incubated several other Asian American justice initiatives, e.g. Asians for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Asians for October 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, the Chaplain James Yee Support Committee and supporting Hawai’i native Ehren Watada, the first US army officer to refuse duty to the 1st Iraqi war — much of which involved intersections with veterans of the Black liberation struggle. This project will involve organizing a documented retrospective among the DWSC activists and its legal team, who are now dispersed throughout the U.S.
3. Further Elements of Asian American Oral Histories to be Excavated.
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The historic precedence of ‘Jazz At Pearl’s’. The late Pearl Wong (and her daughter, vocalist Cookie Wong) lofted a jazz venue from within her family run restaurant in the SF Chinatown community. It soon grew into a renowned cultural institution whose reputation reached beyond the confines of the Chinatown ghetto during a period of societal shifts and community transformation.
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One Japanese American Family’s Pilgrimage to the Topaz Internment Camp. Three sansei siblings of the Hedani family of San Francisco gathered a three generational family convergence (Japanese, Chinese, Filipino & Vietnamese) to tour the internment camp which incarcerated their Nisei families in the desert of Utah during WW2.
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The Arizona Chinese: the Ongs & Tangs. The great-grandparents of one family settled in Arizona at the beginning of the 20th century leaving roots there today as well as an lasting imprint on US history. This is the to-be-uncovered story of the maternal side of one family.
Support / Assistance Duties include
- Transcription and editing of oral history recordings
- Conduct interviews with subjects in-person and remotely
- Website development and narrative writing
- Budget development and research for project funding potentials
Experience & Qualifications
- An upperclassman or graduate student with a keen interest in the broad scope of Asian American history accompanied with technical literacy.
- Must be able to maintain confidentiality.
- Fluency in Cantonese is a plus but not required.
Skills Acquired and Intern Supervision
Student(s) will develop their research, writing, interviewing skills; project management; event planning and execution; experience in conducting a scientific assessment. Supervision will-include an initial orientation, weekly, or bi-weekly supervision meetings to go over progress, issues, and further guidance.
About the Principal: Steve Yip
Steve Yip is a recently retired management professional who seeks interns with passions for Asian American oral historical documentation. A veteran of the Asian American Movement and of Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley, Steve maintains a long term commitment to social justice resistance, and actively supports building a Movement for Revolution focused for the emancipation of all humanity. He was one of the co-editors of the 2000 anthology, Legacy For Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America, and served 23 years as director of operations at the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), the country’s largest Asian American nonprofit service organization.
Expectations and Requirements
This internship is NOT a paid position, but students can arrange for academic credit, scholarship or intern stipends from various academic programs. Interns are expected to work between 8 to 15 hours per week. Many tasks can be held in the evenings and weekends. Spring Internships are 14 weeks and correspond with the academic semester, beginning around January 25 and ending May 11.
To Apply
Interested applicants must submit a resume and cover email to AAPIHistory@email.com, with: “Internship: AAPI History” in the Subject Line. The cover email serves as an introductory overview to the individual, and should also state the number of hours the intern is able to work per week and any bilingual ability.
