NOW Live from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program hosted a group of distinguished APA scholars and community leaders to gather their input for an upcoming exhibition about the Asian Pacific American experience in the U.S. The exhibition, sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is still in its early development stages and is based on a script commissioned to Gary Okihiro, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University in New York City and the founding director of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

In rooms strewn with pages from the original draft, guests gathered in our conference room, in our library, and in our director’s office to build upon existing ideas and concepts and generate new ones vital to the development of the exhibition.

Amid voices from different backgrounds, specific insights and general ideas arose to contribute to the project. The task of reshaping the draft is far from being an easy one, as one of our interns, Xiang Siow, observed.

“[The Asian Pacific American experience] is a very diverse, multifaceted, ongoing history. Trying to tell a coherent story was a herculean task facing the advisory group. Specifically, they pointed out some things that were lacking in the original script and raised some major issues with the writing style and the way information was presented. [The script is] not a finished product, but rather an important stage in an iterative process. To tell a story like this, sometimes you need to revisit even the most foundational elements of the whole exhibition. Nevertheless there was progress made.”-Xiang Siow, Summer 2010 intern.

The meeting of the minds within the advisory group is an inspiration for what the project will become and for those of us in attendance.

“I found the process really fascinating, that people from such diverse backgrounds can come together to produce, create, dissect such a complex and dynamic topic. I feel as though that awesome level of collaboration can only take place when individuals in the group see the bigger picture, share the same set of values, and recognize the scope of the project in order to meet its greater objectives. It was such an inspiration because my field (community-based museum initiatives) encompasses outreach and collaboration, but oftentimes my experience has not been the case. This experience and others I’ve witnessed through APAP give me assurance-more than hope-that I will be able to build meaningful, lasting partnerships, not just with like-minded individuals, but also with everyone who believes in a much larger unified goal for social change.”-Joy Liu, Summer 2010 intern.

Many thanks to the invited guests who took their time to participate in this project. Members of the advisory group included:

• Pawan Dhingra, Associate Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College and author of Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities.
• Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University and co-founder of the Little Manila Foundation.
• Eric Nakamura, publisher and editor of the Asian American pop culture magazine, Giant Robot.
• Manuwai Peters, advocate and practitioner for Hawaiian language revitalization and language-teaching programs.
• Marguerite Ro, Deputy Director of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum.
• Jeff Yang, Asian Pop columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and business/media consultant for Iconoculture, Inc.
• Helen Zia, activist, scholar, journalist, and author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People.
• Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Asian American Literary Review.
• Reme-Antonia Grefalda, librarian and curator for the Asian American Pacific Islander Collection at the Library of Congress and Director of Programs for the Asian Division Friends Society.
• Tim Johnson, Washington, DC Bureau Chief in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
• Soohyun Julie Koo, Executive Director of the Office on Asian Pacific Islander Affairs for the Mayor’s Office in Washington, DC.
• Christina Lagdameo, Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and former chair of the national board for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.