Ru Freeman and her new book “On Sal Mal Lane.” Photo by Peter Hurley.

Ru Freeman’s new novel On Sal Mal Lane is a tour de force imagining of a quiet street in Sri Lanka just before the start of the country’s tumultuous civil war. Named “Best New Book of the Week” by Publisher’s Weekly, called “stupendous” by Smithsonian’s own BookDragon reviewer Terry Hong, the novel is a crucially important contribution to our understanding of the war and the human lives within it. Come hear Ru Freeman read from her novel for a Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center special Asian Pacific American Heritage Month seminar.

Click to download the PDF flyer.

What does a Jewish American nurse, a Tuskegee Airman, Japanese American internee, a Chinese American Women Airforce Service Pilot, a Navajo code talker, a Filipino American infantryman, and a Mexican American medic have in common?

Their Fight for Democracy.

Fighting for Democracy: Who is the “We” in “We the People”? traces the real-life stories of seven young men and women whose lives were forever changed by the events of World War II.  Denied their fundamental rights, each of them, in his or her own way, chose to fight for equality, freedom, and justice overseas and at home.  Their compelling stories connect powerfully to current debates about immigration, citizenship and civil rights in America.

Join us for a stirring performance about the real-life experiences of a diverse group of seven Americans who bravely fought for equality, freedom, and justice overseas and at home during World War II.

Each 35-minute performance will include a post-show discussion with the audience and artists.

Credits

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center presents Fighting for Democracy, an original performance by the National Constitution Center in partnership with the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, an educational program of the Japanese American National Museum funded in part by the U.S. Army Center of Military History.

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is a hands-on museum, national town hall, and civic education headquarters celebrating the United States Constitution and the story of “We the People.” Learn more at constitutioncenter.org

GW Law’s Asian American Law Alumni Association (AALAA) is proud to support the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

Underwriting/Sponsorship Opportunities:
Starting at $250. For sponsorship information, please contact Amy “Emiko” J. Hever at (202) 633-2812 or HeverA@si.edu.

Video: Fighting for Democracy exhibition trailer. This performance was inspired by this exhibition.

Printed version of the 2013 Presidential Proclamation.

ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER HERITAGE MONTH, 2013

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Each May, our Nation comes together to recount the ways Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) helped forge our country. We remember a time 170 years ago, when Japanese immigrants first set foot on American shores and opened a path for millions more. We remember 1869, when Chinese workers laid the final ties of the transcontinental railroad after years of backbreaking labor. And we remember Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who have made our country bigger and brighter again and again, from Native Hawaiians to the generations of striving immigrants who shaped our history — reaching and sweating and scraping to give their children something more. Their story is the American story, and this month, we honor them all.

For many in the AAPI community, that story is one also marked by lasting inequality and bitter wrongs. Immigrants seeking a better life were often excluded, subject to quotas, or denied citizenship because of their race. Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders endured decades of persecution and broken promises. Japanese Americans suffered profoundly under internment during World War II, even as their loved ones fought bravely abroad. And in the last decade, South Asian Americans — particularly those who are Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh — have too often faced senseless violence and suspicion due only to the color of their skin or the tenets of their faith.

This year, we recognize the 25th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act’s repeal — milestones that helped mend deep wounds of systemic discrimination. And with irrepressible determination and optimism, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have prevailed over adversity and risen to the top of their fields — from medicine to business to the bench. But even now, too many hardworking AAPI families face disparities in health care, education, and employment that keep them from getting ahead.

My Administration remains committed to addressing those disparities. Through the White House Initiative on AAPIs, we are working to ensure equal access to Federal programs that meet the diverse needs of AAPI communities. We are standing up for civil rights, economic opportunity, and better outcomes in health and education. We are fighting for commonsense immigration reform so America can continue to be a magnet for the best and brightest from all around the world, including Asia and the Pacific.

Meeting those challenges will not be easy. But the history of the AAPI community shows us how with hope and resolve, we can overcome the problems we face. We can reaffirm our legacy as a Nation where all things are possible for all people. So this month, as we recognize Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who are fulfilling that promise in every corner of our country, let us recommit to giving our children and grandchildren the same opportunity in the years ahead.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 2013 as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I call upon all Americans to visit http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/aapi and http://www.AsianPacificHeritage.gov to learn more about the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.

Text from The White House, click here to view the original press release.

What happens when you bring together Lisa Ling, Angry Asian Man, the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center? A seriously amazing conversation about Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! We’re going to chat about the significance of APA Heritage Month and this year’s theme, I Want the Wide American Earth, and we’ll take questions from you – our supporters and fans.

Send us questions by including #may1apa in your tweet or by emailing us at APAC@si.edu. Join us on May 1 from 3:00pm – 3:45pm (EDT) for the Smithsonian’s first Google+ Hangout.

The video link will go live at the start time. You can watch via YouTube as these panelists participate in the Hangout. The video will be archived on YouTube following the Hangout.

Panelists include:

• Konrad Ng, Director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.
• Kiran Ahuja, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI).
• Phil Yu, the blogger behind Angry Asian Man.
  Lisa Ling, journalist, writer, and host of “Our America with Lisa Ling” on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.

Moderator:
Gautam Raghavan, Associate Director of Public Engagement at the White House.

This Google+ Hangout is a partnership between the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

You may be wondering: What is a Google+ Hangout?
Google+ Hangout is a free video chat service from Google that enables both one-on-one chats and group chats with up to ten people at a time.

Handmade storybook activity. Photo taken during the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Family Day 2011.

We are looking for volunteers who will be in the Washington, D.C. metro area on the weekend of May 4-5 to help with our upcoming two-day Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Family Festival. The festival is inspired by two new exhibitions: I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story and Nam Jun Paik: Global Visionary. This two-day kid-friendly event includes interactive performances, hands-on activities, presentations by local authors, conversations with a curator, gallery tours, a scavenger hunt, and much more.

Click here to view the full schedule
Click here to download the flyer (PDF)

Examples of tasks we need help with on May 4:

• Talking to the public about their experiences during the festival and using a new evaluation system with iPads
• Handmade book projects (view photos)
• Video recording children and participants sharing their handmade books
• Monitoring a video presentation station

If you think you would like to help out on either day, please contact Lydia Alcock at AlcockL@si.edu as soon as possible.  Please also feel free to forward this page to friends, family, and colleagues who may be interested in helping out.

May 4, 2013

I Want the Wide American Earth
Volunteer Orientation: 10:30am
Event: 11:30am – 4pm
Location: National Museum of American History
Address: 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
Metro: Smithsonian, Federal Triangle
Website: http://apa.si.edu/heritage/

May 5, 2013

PaikBot Family Day
Volunteer Orientation: 10:30am
Event: 11:30am – 5pm
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kogod Courtyard
Address: 8th and F Streets, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
Website: Click here

Click to visit our mini-site

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month recognizes the history, concerns, contributions and achievements of Asian Pacific Americans and their role in the American story. While the Asian Pacific American experience reaches across borders and spans oceans, with roots in the Asian continent and archipelagos across the Pacific Ocean, the Asian Pacific American story reflects the American spirit. Like so many other communities in America, Asian Pacific Americans worked to expand frontiers, forging the iron rails that linked sea to shining sea. They shed blood to defend the nation and stood up to preserve its cherished values, in classrooms and courtrooms, in legislatures and in the streets.

This quintessentially American story—the story that the Smithsonian seeks to tell—has yet to be fully told.

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has selected the title of a poem by Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan (1913–1956) as the theme for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2013. Born after the end of the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), when the relationship between the Philippines and the United States remained uncertain, Bulosan came to America in search of opportunity. But, like most Asian Pacific Americans of his time, Bulosan’s life in America was defined by hardship and discrimination. In spite of this experience, however, Bulosan continued to believe in America as a powerful symbol of freedom for the world. Bulosan’s poem, I Want the Wide American Earth, captures how the Asian Pacific American experience is aspirational—in spite of the challenges that define a particular era, generations of Asian Pacific Americans have remained steadfast in their belief in America.

As Bulosan so eloquently writes:

“Before the brave, before the proud builders and workers,
I say I want the wide American earth
For all the free.
I want the wide American earth for my people.
I want my beautiful land.
I want it with my rippling strength and tenderness
Of love and light and truth
For all the free.”

For Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2013, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center is proud to open the exhibition, I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story, at the National Museum of American History on May 4, 2013. Taking Bulosan’s poem as inspiration, this exhibition tells the stories of the brave, the proud builders and workers of Asian Pacific America. The exhibition will then travel to museums and cultural institutions across the country.

The Smithsonian Institution will celebrate I Want the Wide American Earth and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with the annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Family Festival on May 4, 2013.

Please join us in celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2013.

I Want the Wide American Earth exhibition was made possibly by a generous grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and is a collaborative initiative with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). Click here for information about the national tour of the exhibition.

Click for more photos.

By Emilio Eusebio, Spring 2013 intern

Wearing his trademark glasses and hat, Dennis Kamakahi is a descendant of the slack key guitar sound that was brought to Hawai`i by Mexican and Spanish cowboys in the late 1880′s and later adopted by Hawaiian paniolos. Dennis started his career with the Na Leo Nuuanu group, but after the departure of the legendary slack key guitarist Gabby Pahinui, he found more prominent success with the group Sons of Hawaii. With the Sons of Hawaii, he wrote, performed, and played many Hawaiian songs that became classics. After several years playing in the Sons of Hawaii, he branched off and recorded his own solo material. His music garnered favorable acclaim and he won several awards and honors including three Grammys. His music continued to reach a wider audience when both him and his son contributed to the original soundtrack for Disney’s animated movie Lilo and Stitch 2. The melodic and tranquil sounds that emanate from Kamakahi’s guitar leave no question to the listener of the mastery of his craft.

Through Dennis’ generous donation to the museum, we are able to expand our collection and highlight different genres of music within the United States.   Among the items that Dennis donated include: an Ovation Ultra Deluxe-6 string guitar, sheet music, albums, and photos. Dennis performed with this guitar during his time with the Sons of Hawaii from 1986-1992.

Downloads: Podcast and Teacher’s Guide

• Click here to download the podcast (mp3 file, 11 minutes, 7mb)
  History Explorer: Discovering Slack Key Guitar History with Dennis Kamakahi
  What do British cattle and Mexican cowboys have to do with the history of Hawaiian folk music? A lot, as it turns out. Slack Key guitar master Reverend Dennis Kamakahi explains in this episode of History Explorer. The episode features songs Rev. Kamakahi played during a ceremony in which he donated one of his guitars to the museum.
  
• Click here to download the Teacher’s Guide

Related Links

• May 7, 2013: Hawaiian Musician Dennis Kamakahi Donates His Guitar — Smithsonian Magazine

Want to be part of Beyond Bollywood? Donate a pair of new or gently worn shoes. They can be for any season, style, age, and gender. But please do not mail us your shoes, first send us photos of the shoes to indianamerican@si.edu. You will be contacted via email if your shoes are selected.

Please note that submissions are not guaranteed in the exhibition. There is no compensation for the donation and shoes will not be returned if they are chosen.

The Indian American Heritage Project of Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center is looking for artists to create works that use the visual of the H1-B visa as a motif or inspiration and comment upon the experience of temporary and tenuous immigration status for Indian immigrants in the United States.  Themes such as migration, transnational identity, diaspora, economy, outsourcing and the role and reach of technology can also be explored.

Final works should be no larger than 6’ by 6’ and must mount on a gallery wall.  All media are welcome, including:

• Graphic Design
• Painting
• Drawing
• Printing
• Collage
• Photography
• Mixed Media

Interested artists should submit a concept, including a detailed written description and sketches/images by midnight EST on Sunday, March 31, 2013 to Curator Masum Momaya at MomayaM@si.edu with the subject line “H1-B”.

Upon review of concept submissions by Smithsonian curatorial staff, a small number of artists will be asked to create the final work and submit digital representations of it by 5pm EST on Friday, May 31,2013.

Digital representations will be displayed by Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center in an online gallery, and the winning work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition, Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation at the National Museum of Natural History from December 2013 through January 2015.

The Indian American Heritage Project at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) present a brown-bag book talk by Dr. Nalini Natarajan, Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on her new book Atlantic Gandhi: The Mahatma Overseas.

Atlantic Gandhi examines Gandhi’s experience as a traveler moving from a classic colony, India, to the plantation and mining society of South Africa and argues that his diasporic life resonates with recent perspectives on the Atlantic, as an ocean that not just transported the victims of a greedy plantation system, but also saw the ferment of revolutionary ideas.

Related Links:

• Official Smithsonian Press Release