Research Guides: Ethnic Studies: Asian-American Experiences: Home

Introduction

The term "Asian-American" covers an incredible breadth and diversity of peoples. This guide is meant to give you a quick introduction to the extensive resources the Butte College Library has to offer on all aspects of Asian-American peoples, history, and culture. Find more by searching from the library home page with terms such as Asian-American, Hmong, Hawaii, or nisei, and combining them with other terms like history, art, immigration, activism, or whatever you need.

Why do colleges have ethnic studies classes and departments? Listen to The Long, Bloody Strike For Ethnic Studies, from the podcast Code Switch, to learn about the student activism that led to more ethnic studies classes in higher education.

China's earliest known Buddha statue, of gilded bronze, ~338 CE.

What databases should I use?

We subscribe to over 50 databases that collect articles, reference materials, ebooks, and videos for you to access. Here are a few good databases to try out when searching for articles on Asian-American history and culture.

Ethnic Newswatch (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
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Ethnic NewsWatch is a current resource of full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. The database now also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989.
Issues & Controversies In American History This link opens in a new window
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Journals, magazines, and newspapers throughout history to the present. Includes information from government sites such as the Library of Congress and historical societies.
America: History and Life with Full Text (EBSCOHost) This link opens in a new window
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Scholarly journals, professional journals, and magazines on the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present.
Alexander Street Video (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
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Online streaming of academic related videos.
eHRAF World Cultures This link opens in a new window
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Cross-cultural and ethnographic database that contains descriptive information on all aspects of cultural and social life. The information is organized by cultures and ethnic groups.

Getting Citations from Library Databases

Check out our full list of video tutorials!

Online Museum Exhibits

Libraries and museums all over the world now offer digitized collections, so you can see historical and artistic treasures from where you are. Explore some of these online exhibitions of Asian-American history:

Chico State Meriam Library: The collections of Northeastern California documents and photographs are general in scope and have some Chinese- and Japanese- American materials.
UC Davis hosts Pioneering Punjabis, a digital archive of South Asian history in California from 1899 to the present.
UC Berkeley: The Japanese-American News (Nichi-Bei) archive, Japanese American confinement oral histories, Chinese in California 1850 - 1925, and more...
Explore the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific American Center.
The Library of Congress has extensive collections that you can search. One sample is this primary source collection about Japanese internment.
Explore the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has many digitized items. Try out their search function.

Nagar Kirtan, Yuba City, 2010. Photo credit Jasbir Singh Kang.

Relevant ebooks

The library offers a wide variety of books, ebooks, and articles. Here are just a few ebooks, available with the click of a mouse. You can also check out our curated collection of books on Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage.

We also have a curated collection, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage, which includes both print and ebooks.

The Columbia Guide to Asian American History by Gary Y. Okihiro
Offering a rich and insightful road map of Asian American history as it has evolved over more than 200 years, this book marks the first systematic attempt to take stock of this field of study.
Asian American Chronology by Xiaojian Zhao
Key moments in Asian American history come alive in this concise and accessible chronology. Understanding the history of Asians in America is key to understanding the development of America itself.
Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness and the struggle to be human.
Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans by Huping Ling (Editor)
ISBN: 9780813546254
While a growing number of popular and scholarly works focus on Asian Americans, most are devoted to the experiences of larger groups. As the field grows, there is a pressing need to understand the smaller and more recent immigrant communities. Emerging Voices fills this gap with its unique and compelling discussion of underrepresented groups, including Burmese, Indonesian, Mong, Hmong, Nepalese, Romani, Tibetan, and Thai Americans.
Cooking from the Heart: The Hmong Kitchen in America by Sami Scripter; Sheng Yang
More than simply a recipe book for Hmong cuisine, this title sets out the culinary traditions of the South Asian Hmong people and at the same time examines the cultural significance such traditions hold. The recipes in the book are accompanied by anecdotes, aphorisms and poems that help place cooking at the centre of Hmong culture.
The Children of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920 by Wendy Rouse
Revealing the untold stories of a pioneer generation of young Chinese Americans, this book places the children and families of early Chinatown in the middle of efforts to combat American policies of exclusion and segregation.
Experiences of Japanese American Women During and after World War II: Living in Internment Camps and Rebuilding Life Afterwards by Precious Yamaguchi
Precious Yamaguchi examines the experiences of Japanese American women who were in internment camps during World War II and after. She follows these women after they were released and shows how they tried to rebuild their lives after losing everything.
New Roots in America's Sacred Ground: Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in Indian America by Khyati Y. Joshi
In this compelling look at second-generation Indian Americans, Khyati Y. Joshi draws on case studies and interviews with forty-one second-generation Indian Americans, analyzing their experiences involving religion, race, and ethnicity from elementary school to adulthood.
There's Something about Sweetie by Sandhya Menon
A romance novel, just for fun -- Ashish Patel didn't know love could be so...sucky. After being dumped by his ex-girlfriend, his mojo goes AWOL. Even worse, his parents are annoyingly, smugly confident they could find him a better match. So, in a moment of weakness, Ash challenges them to set him up....
Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement by Cathleen D. Cahill
From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin. In Recasting the Vote, Cathleen D. Cahill tells the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights.
Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang
A groundbreaking, breathtaking history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history until now. From across the sea, they came by the thousands, escaping war and poverty in southern China to seek their fortunes in America. Converging on the enormous western worksite of the Transcontinental Railroad, the migrants spent years dynamiting tunnels through the snow-packed cliffs of the Sierra Nevada and laying tracks across the burning Utah desert. Their sweat and blood fueled the ascent of an interlinked, industrial United States. But those of them who survived this perilous effort would suffer a different kind of death--a historical one, as they were pushed first to the margins of American life and then to the fringes of public memory.
Issei Baseball by Robert K. Fitts
Baseball has been called America's true melting pot, a game that unites us as a people. Issei Baseball is the story of the pioneers of Japanese American baseball, Harry Saisho, Ken Kitsuse, Tom Uyeda, Tozan Masko, Kiichi Suzuki, and others--young men who came to the United States to start a new life but found bigotry and discrimination. In 1905 they formed a baseball club in Los Angeles and began playing local amateur teams. Inspired by the Waseda University baseball team's 1905 visit to the West Coast, they became the first Japanese professional baseball club on either side of the Pacific and barnstormed across the American Midwest in 1906 and 1911.
This Is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah
In the linked essays that make up her debut collection, This Is One Way to Dance, Sejal Shah explores culture, language, family, and place. Throughout the collection, Shah reflects on what it means to make oneself visible and legible through writing in a country that struggles with race and maps her identity as an American, South Asian American, writer of color, and feminist.

Photo credit

Image by Phoua Vang from Pixabay