Asian American studies

I think there is a sense of complacency within our school.

It's more of a, we're going to put the ownership and responsibility on our Asian American Studies teachers to be able to teach that history.

Lee and Singh are working to create a space for the next generation to consider a more comprehensive version of history.

The question is what other teachers and lawmakers and schools will do to support that.

I'm your host, Jennifer Najera, and today I am speaking with Dr. Isabella Songlang Quintana.

Dr. Quintana is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, with affiliations in Culture and Theory and Chicane Latine Studies.

Her work explores the interconnected histories of Asian Americans and Chicanes Latinas centering women and children within the U.S. borderlands and recovering unarchived voices.

Quintana also co-directs the Five Chinatowns Project at the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, a community-based research initiative documenting Chinese American Los Angeles, through oral histories, archival creation, and youth mentorship.

Like that was, there was a lot of expertise in that area.

And I definitely build on that base of, you know, knowledge of my training.

But in Asian American studies, we talk about borders, but it's not quite in the same way.

And in Asian American studies, there's, you know, we talk about crossing the border or we talk about these border checkpoints, but they are right there usually on the coast.

Though he was the third son, the expectation of filial duty was still a priority.

The first time Fred Korematsu spoke publicly about his experience was in 1969, when a professor at UC Berkeley invited him to speak to an experimental class, Asian American Studies 100X.

Fred was reluctant, but agreed.

It was sitting in on that class that Fred's daughter learned about Ida.

In reality, few were able to provide receipts for lost property or damages.

And of course, the act didn't compensate those in turn for the emotional, psychological, professional damage and social damages of the long-term illegal detainment.

After years of silence, organizations, many led by students who took those experimental Asian American Studies classes at universities around the country, put pressure on the government to make real redress for the injustice of internment.

In addition to pushing for federal-level attention to the issue, the National Council for Japanese American Redress and other Nikkei organizations demanded redress from the government and reopened court cases like Fred's.

As Bo wrote in his piece for SFGate, quote, "...conditions in the factory were a far cry from the utopian ideals of the hippie founders." In 1974, factory workers struck, alleging poor working conditions, including delayed pay and racist treatment.

Among one of the more obscene restrictions Doug had imposed was forcing its 135 workers to ration toilet paper at a rate of two rolls a day, according to Harvey Dong, an Asian American Studies lecturer at UC Berkeley.

Two rolls of toilet paper for 135 women.

Well, the factory workers went on strike and Doug was so moved by the strike that he decided Esprit would clean up its act.