Below are some recently-released books that highlight the connections between past and present in the lives of Asian Americans. As scholars and philosophers will tell you, knowing where a particular group or nation has been is the first step towards knowing where they are going. As always, a book’s inclusion is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily mean a full endorsement of its contents.

The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946, by Rick Baldoz (NYU Press)

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a wave of Filipino immigration to the United States, following in the footsteps of earlier Chinese and Japanese immigrants, the first and second “Asiatic invasions.” Perceived as alien because of their Asian ethnicity yet legally defined as American nationals granted more rights than other immigrants, Filipino American national identity was built upon the shifting sands of contradiction, ambiguity, and hostility.

Rick Baldoz explores the complex relationship between Filipinos and the U.S. by looking at the politics of immigration, race, and citizenship on both sides of the Philippine-American divide: internationally through an examination of American imperial ascendancy and domestically through an exploration of the social formation of Filipino communities in the United States. He reveals how American practices of racial exclusion repeatedly collided with the imperatives of U.S. overseas expansion. A unique portrait of the Filipino American experience, The Third Asiatic Invasion links the Filipino experience to that of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Chinese and Native Americans, among others, revealing how the politics of exclusion played out over time against different population groups.

Weaving together an impressive range of materials–including newspapers, government reports, legal documents and archival sources—into a seamless narrative, Baldoz illustrates how the quixotic status of Filipinos played a significant role in transforming the politics of race, immigration and nationality in the United States.

In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West, by Sue Fawn Chung (University of Illinois Press)

Both a history of an overlooked community and a well-rounded reassessment of prevailing assumptions about Chinese miners in the American West, In Pursuit of Gold brings to life in rich detail the world of turn-of-the-century mining towns in the Northwest. Sue Fawn Chung meticulously recreates the lives of Chinese immigrants, miners, merchants, and others who populated these towns and interacted amicably with their white and Native American neighbors, defying the common perception of nineteenth-century Chinese communities as insular enclaves subject to increasing prejudice and violence.

While most research has focused on Chinese miners in California, this book is the first extensive study of Chinese experiences in the towns of John Day in Oregon and Tuscarora, Island Mountain, and Gold Creek in Nevada. Chung illustrates the relationships between miners and merchants within the communities and in the larger context of immigration, arguing that the leaders of the Chinese and non-Chinese communities worked together to create economic interdependence and to short-circuit many of the hostilities and tensions that plagued other mining towns.

Peppered with fascinating details about these communities from the intricacies of Chinese gambling games to the techniques of hydraulic mining, In Pursuit of Gold draws on a wealth of historical materials, including immigration records, census manuscripts, legal documents, newspapers, memoirs, and manuscript collections. Chung supplements this historical research with invaluable first-hand observations of artifacts that she experienced in archaeological digs and restoration efforts at several of the sites of the former booming mining towns.

In clear, analytical prose, Chung expertly characterizes the movement of Chinese miners into Oregon and Nevada, the heyday of their mining efforts in the region, and the decline of the communities due to changes in the mining industry. Highlighting the positive experiences and friendships many of the immigrants had in these relatively isolated mining communities, In Pursuit of Gold also suggests comparisons with the Chinese diaspora in other locations such as British Columbia and South Africa.

Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory, by Cherstin Lyon (Temple University Press)

Prisons and Patriots provides a detailed account of forty-one Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans), known as the Tucsonians, who were imprisoned for resisting the draft during WWII. Cherstin Lyon parallels their courage as resisters with that of civil rights hero Gordon Hirabayashi, well known for his legal battle against curfew and internment, who also resisted the draft.

These dual stories highlight the intrinsic relationship between the rights and the obligations of citizenship, particularly salient in times of war. Lyon considers how wartime civil disobedience has been remembered through historyohow soldiers have been celebrated for their valour while resisters have been demonized as unpatriotic. Using archival research and interviews, she presents a complex picture of loyalty and conflict among first-generation Issei and Nisei.

Lyon contends that the success of the redress movement has made room for a narrative that neither reduces the wartime confinement to a source of shame nor proffers an uncritical account of heroic individuals.

Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs, by Rocio G. Davis (University of Hawai’i Press)

Relative Histories focuses on the Asian American memoir that specifically recounts the story of at least three generations of the same family. This form of auto/biography concentrates as much on other members of one’s family as on oneself, generally collapses the boundaries conventionally established between biography and autobiography, and in many cases—as Rocío G. Davis proposes for the auto/biographies of ethnic writers—crosses the frontier into history, promoting collective memory.

Davis centers on how Asian American family memoirs expand the limits and function of life writing by reclaiming history and promoting community cohesion. She argues that identity is shaped by not only the stories we have been told, but also the stories we tell, making these narratives important examples of the ways we remember our family’s past and tell our community’s story.

In the context of auto/biographical writing or filmmaking that explores specific ethnic experiences of diaspora, assimilation, and integration, this work considers two important aspects: These texts re-imagine the past by creating a work that exists both in history and as a historical document, making the creative process a form of re-enactment of the past itself. Each chapter centers on a thematic concern germane to the Asian American experience: the narrative of twentieth-century Asian wars and revolutions, which has become the subtext of a significant number of Asian American family memoirs.

Asian Refugees in America: Narratives of Escape and Adaptation, by Eleanor Herz Swent (McFarland Publishing)

When Eleanor Swent began teaching English as a Second Language in 1967 at a school for adults in Oakland, California, she soon learned that many of the Asian immigrants in her classes had remarkable tales to tell of struggles in their homelands and their efforts to make new lives in America. This oral history, based on interviews Swent conducted with her students over thirty years, documents the Asian immigrant experience as never before.

Here are the stories of desperate individuals who swam to escape from China to Macao and Hong Kong; of Chinese daughters considered worthless by their families; of political refugees from Vietnam; of ethnic Chinese who fled by boat from Vietnam; of refugees from the genocide in Cambodia. As these remarkable new Americans learn different words and customs, they also enlarge our national vision, enriching our culture while assuring us that human dignity can rise above terrible circumstances.

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Hailed as “irrepressibly spirited and entertaining” (Pico Iyer, Time) and “a fascinating cultural survey” (Paul Devlin, Daily Beast), this provocative first biography of Charlie Chan presents American history in a way that it has never been told before. Yunte Huang ingeniously traces Charlie Chan from his real beginnings as a bullwhip-wielding detective in territorial Hawaii to his reinvention as a literary sleuth and Hollywood film icon.

Huang finally resurrects the “honorable detective” from the graveyard of detested postmodern symbols and reclaims him as the embodiment of America’s rich cultural diversity. The result is one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year and a “deeply personal . . . voyage into racial stereotyping and the humanizing force of story telling.”

Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other related opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Call for Participants: BBC Documentary on Viet Nam War

Dear Sir,

I am a BBC journalist writing from London. I work on a history programme called “Witness”, which focuses on significant events in the recent past. The hundreds of subjects that we have looked at have included the trial of Nelson Mandela, the bombing of Hiroshima and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in America — to name just a few. Our programme is broadcast to a large audience around the world.

And in the weeks ahead we very much hope to focus on the stories of those who fled Vietnam by boat at the end of the war there in the 1970s. We are simply looking for interviewees who might be willing to tell us — in quite strong English — what they went through. I realise that, for some, remembering such traumatic events this will not be at all easy. But we would like to be able to remind our listeners around the world what the Vietnamese boat people endured. We want to record their story for our archive.

Would you, I wonder, be able to put me in touch figures in the Vietnamese refugee community who might be able to help in our search for interviewees? They can contact me through my email below.

Yours,
Alan Johnston
alan.johnston@bbc.co.uk

JACL Scholarships: Deadlines Approaching

The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) is kicking off its Scholarship Program for the 2011 academic year. At the national level, JACL offers over 30 awards, with an annual total of over $60,000 in scholarships.

JACL Membership, which is required for applications, is open to anyone of any ethnic group. Membership dues can be paid online or with the application. The 2011 National JACL Scholarship Program informational brochure and applications are posted on the JACL website.

JACL Scholarship applications for Undergraduate, Graduate, Law, Creative & Performing Arts, and Financial Aid. The deadline for these applications is April 1, 2011. These are to be sent directly by the applicants to: National JACL Scholarship Program, c/o Portland JACL, P.O. Box 86310, Portland, OR 97286.

For additional information regarding the JACL National Scholarship Program, please contact Patty Wada at (415) 345-1075 or ncwnp@jacl.org.

Youth Justice Leadership Program

Youth Justice Leadership Institute Seeks Applicants for 2011-2012 Program Year

The National Juvenile Justice Network seeks applicants for the pilot year of its Youth Justice Leadership Institute. The Institute’s mission is to create the foundation for a more effective juvenile justice reform movement by developing a strong base of well prepared and well trained advocates and organizers who reflect the communities most affected by juvenile justice system practices and policies.

The Institute’s inaugural year will focus on cultivating and supporting professionals of color. The Institute is a robust, year long program that includes leadership development, training in juvenile justice system policies and practices, and advocacy skills development. The Institute will bring fellows together twice during the year, attach each fellow to a mentor and envelope fellows within the larger juvenile justice reform community.

If you are a professional of color and are interested in applying for the Institute, please visit our web site to download our application packet or contact the Institute’s Coordinator, Diana Onley-Campbell, at diana@juvjustice.org. Applications are due on April 26, 2011.

Call for Papers: ‘The Chinese Shop’ Conference

The “Chinese shop” in all its manifestations (laundry, bakery, restaurant, general store, etc.) has been integrally connected to Chinese migration and the experience of overseas Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese shop has been both a site of economic and symbolic exchange – a complex locus of power and performative societal tensions and identifications. As such, the consideration of Chinese shop space provides an intriguing staring point from which to investigate many key socio-political issues for Chinese diasporic communities.

Hosted at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, this conference aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to investigate how the space and place of the Chinese shop (broadly defined) has been conceived of and experienced for overseas Chinese. In particular, it seeks to explore the transformative socio-cultural, economic and political processes that create the space and place of the Chinese shop both within Chinese diasporic communities and in terms of encounters between the Chinese and their host societies.

We encourage panels and papers with diverse disciplinary approaches to this theme, including those that consider the Chinese shop within transnational, hemispheric and/or comparative contexts. Topics might include, but are not limited to the following:

• The representation and imagination of shop space
• The political contestations and designations of shop space
• Theoretical deliberations on the spatial dimensions of the Chinese shop
• The shop as gendered space
• The shop as racialized space
• The historical, social and economic implications of the Chinese shop
• The impact of nationalism, globalization, colonialism, and/or imperialism on Chinese shop space

The deadline for abstracts is Friday, April 29th, 2011. Abstracts and CVs can be submitted online by clicking on the “Submit Abstracts” link in the menu on the right-hand side of the page. Additional questions can be addressed to Dr. Anne-Marie Lee-Loy at: aleeloy@ryerson.ca.

Scholarship, ICPSR Quantitative Methods Summer Program

A scholarship fund has been established in honor of Warren E. Miller for participation in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) 2011 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. Professor Miller was not only one of the most prominent figures in modern social science research. He was also the founder of both ICPSR and the ICPSR Summer Program.

The Warren E. Miller Scholarship Fund will provide financial support to outstanding pre-tenure scholars (assistant professors and advanced graduate students) in the social and behavioral sciences so they may attend one or both of the four-week sessions in the 2011 ICPSR Summer Program. Recipients of the Miller Scholarship will receive a fee waiver to cover Program enrollment and a stipend to help with expenses while staying in Ann Arbor. Applicants to the Warren E. Miller Scholarship should have professional interests in one or more of the following areas of research (or in related fields):

• Developing a common approach to understanding electoral behavior within or across nations
• Understanding the process of democratization in electoral systems
• Understanding the link between global politics and local electoral behavior
• Understanding how context influences political behavior
• Understanding how globalization causes change in political behavior

Application materials for the Miller Scholarship should be submitted electronically, through the ICPSR Summer Program’s online Portal on the Summer Program’s website. Applicants should register for the 2011 Summer Program using the online form and select classes in one or both of the four-week sessions. Note that course selections may be modified and changed later. But, the Miller Scholarship Committee may use an applicant’s preferred courses as a criterion in the selection process for the scholarship. Along with a completed registration, an application must include:

1. A current vita
2. A cover letter from the student, explaining how participation in the ICPSR Summer Program will contribute toward completion of the Ph.D.
3. Two letters of recommendation. For applicants who are faculty members, one of these letters should come from his or her Department Chair. For graduate student applicants, one of the letters should come from his or her faculty advisor or dissertation chairperson. Letters of recommendation should be e-mailed directly to sumprog@icpsr.umich.edu. Letter writers should include “MILLER SCHOLARSHIP RECOMMENDATION” and the applicant’s name in the subject line of the e-mail message.

The application deadline for the Warren E. Miller Scholarship is April 29, 2011. Further information about the ICPSR Summer Program, including course descriptions and the 2011 schedule, is available on the Program website. Also, you should feel free to contact the ICPSR Summer Program by e-mail (sumprog@icpsr.umich.edu) or by telephone (734-763-7400) if you have any questions.

Call for Papers: Critical Refugee Studies

Conference on Critical Refugee Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
November 3-4, 2011

Displacement of populations affects the uprooted as well as communities that receive them. Recognized by international proxy after World War II, the identity category of refugee has a history as long as the incidence of warfare and other crises that result in displacement. This conference uses the 20th century invention of the category of refugee as a means to compare the experiences of displaced persons across time and space.

We invite papers that chronicle and reflect on the experiences and representations of refugee populations. In particular, we are interested in work that expands the idea of the refugee to create comparisons and parallels with the experiences of other groups. Papers that define the term refugee broadly and creatively are most welcome. Among the questions we invite:

• How do refugee identities compare to those of other migrants?
• As local and global political contexts change, how do refugees conceptualize notions of citizenship and home?
• How are refugee identities in dialogue with concepts of place/displacement?
• What is the role of memory and the creation of refugee texts?
• How is the refugee experience mediated/mass mediated?

Abstracts by May 15, 2011 to: criticalrefugee-studies@uwm.edu.

Speakers:

• Michael Rios, Director, Sacramento Diasporas Project, University of California-Davis
• Romola Sanyal, Lecturer in Global Urbanism, Newcastle University
• Ghita Schwarz, New York Legal Aid, Author, Displaced Persons
• Shirley Tang, Asian American/American Studies University of Massachusetts, Boston
• Dinaw Mengestu, Author, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears; How to Read the Air (To Be Confirmed)

Call for Papers: Disability in Asian America

Amerasia Journal Special Issue Call for Papers: The State of Illness and Disability in Asian America
Guest Editors: Professor Jennifer Ho (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and Professor James Kyung-Jin Lee (University of California, Irvine)

We seek critical essays and articles as well as creative non-fiction and first-person accounts that engage with the intersections of Asian American discourse and illness/disability studies, for a special issue of Amerasia Journal, scheduled for publication in 2012.

Since, as scholar Michael Berube observes, “the definition of disability, like the definition of illness, is inevitably a matter of social debate and social construction,” we are interested in how these social constructions of disability and illness coincide, collide, and converge with those of ethnicity and race, along with other axes of intersectionality such as gender, sexuality, class, region, religion, age, and education.

Critiquing the narrow perspective of the discipline, scholar Chris Bell has noted “the failure of Disability Studies to engage issues of race and ethnicity in a substantive capacity, thereby entrenching whiteness as its constitutive underpinning.” One goal of this special issue is to provide another forum in which to challenge entrenched whiteness within Disability and Illness Studies as well as to bring to the foreground the state of illness and disability within the Asian American community. Contributors to this special issue may consider the following questions:

• What is the role of illness and disability within Asian American narratives—be they in fiction, non-fiction, or cinematic form—and/or how is the ill or disabled Asian American body represented within these narratives?
• How are illness and disability regarded within Asian American communities and cultural productions?
• What are the special needs of Asian Americans who face life threatening and chronic illnesses?
• What kinds of accommodations do Asian Americans with disabilities find most challenging in light of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds and/or as a result of their racialization as non-white Americans?
• How might Asian American experiences of disability and/or illness invite a reimagination of what constitutes a “good” life practice or way of living, and what kinds of social transformations would be necessary to make this so?

Submission Guidelines and Deadlines:
Due Date for one-page abstracts: June 15, 2011. Due Date for solicited final papers: January 2012. Publication Date: Fall 2012. The editorial procedure involves a three-step process: The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:

1. Approval of abstracts
2. Submission of papers solicited from accepted abstracts
3. Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission

Please send correspondence regarding the special issue on illness and disabilities studies in Asian American Studies to the following addresses. All correspondence should refer to “Amerasia Journal Disabilities Studies Issue” in the subject line.

Professor Jennifer Ho: jho@email.unc.edu
Professor James Kyung-Jin Lee: jkl@uci.edu
Arnold Pan, Amerasia Journal: arnoldpan@ucla.edu

Call for Papers: Mixed-Status Immigrant Families

“In Between the Shadows of Citizenship: Mixed Status Families”

Guest Editors: Mary Romero, Professor, Arizona State University, Justice and Social Inquiry and Jodie Lawston, Assistant Professor, California State University San Marcos, Women’s Studies

Despite the fact that immigration stories are increasingly featured in U.S. popular media discourse and an immigrant justice movement continues to strengthen, little scholarship has focused on the experiences of immigrants and their families, and especially, families who are mixed status in that they are comprised of both citizens and noncitizens. This edited volume aims to examine the experiences of immigrants and mixed status families in terms of work and education, raids, deportations, and detention, and resistance toward anti-immigrant sentiment. We welcome and encourage work that examines not just the experiences of immigrants in the U.S., but the experiences of immigrants around the globe.

The questions we are interested in exploring include but are not restricted to the following: What forms of work do immigrant women engage in to support their families? What are the struggles of undocumented students? How do raids, deportations, and detention affect families? How do such phenomena affect mixed status families? What are the experiences of immigrants, particularly women and children, in detention? How have changes in laws affected undocumented immigrants and their children? What strategies have justice movements used to protect undocumented men, women, and children? How are countries around the world approaching immigration and undocumented immigration, and how does that compare to U.S. policies? We seek explorations and answers to these questions that engage notions of gender, race and ethnicity, place, and culture as well as documentation and analysis of leadership and activism.

The following topical areas broadly outline the subject matter that we see as most relevant to this volume. These can be used as starting points for papers, but authors are not restricted to them:

• The effects of detention on immigrant families, particularly in separating those families
• The impact of family reunification
• The intersection of work and immigration status
• The effects of immigration status on students
• The effects of raids and/or deportations on families
• Changes in laws and resulting effects on immigrants’ lives
• Immigrant justice work
• Comparative studies of issues related to immigration in different parts of the world
• The intersections of race, class, gender, and with immigration status

We are interested in both academic papers and testimonies from immigrant women on the above topics.

Submission Process: Proposals for academic papers or testimonies, no longer than three pages, should be emailed to Jodie Lawston at jlawston@csusm.edu by Wed. June 15, 2011. Author(s) must include all identifying information on the proposal, including name, title, institutional affiliation, address, phone numbers, and email. After the deadline, we will review proposals and contact authors as to which manuscripts we are interested in reviewing for the book. Proposals must include the subject matter of the paper, methods used for your analysis, and the argument you plan to make based on your data.

Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other related opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Queer Southeast Asian Census

Today is the last day to help take the Queer Southeast Asian (QSEA) Census, March 1, 2011. As of now, we have collected 380 surveys nationally by Hmong, Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese and Cambodians who are LGBTQ living in the US. We need 20 more surveys to be taken to reach our goal of 400 and it would be fantastic if we surpass that goal!

I wanted to reach out to you all again in hopes that if you haven’t taken the survey yet, to please do so, as this is historical and ground breaking data that we have been needing to
help support our work and bring visibility to our communities that do exist for over 30 years in the US. And for those that have taken it or don’t fit the criteria, please help us outreach it to your family, friends and network until midnight via Facebook, social networks, website and email.

Our QSEA Census is directed towards Queer Southeast Asians that have been affected by the Vietnam War living in the countries of Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

(Paid) Internship: Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics

Leadership in Action (LIA) is an eight-week paid summer internship program designed to develop emerging young leaders by providing college students with practical leadership skills and the opportunity to work hands-on in the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community in Southern California.

Approaching its 14th year, the program takes learning beyond the classroom, and places the student interns in a range of API community based organizations in order to gain real-life experience working at nonprofits. The intern will be paid $2,000 for the eight-week internship.

The intern’s weekly schedule is comprised of 4 days at their assigned community based organization (CBO) and 1 day at LEAP. At the CBO, the intern works with their assigned supervisor on a meaningful project. At LEAP, the intern’s day is devoted to leadership development training, issue discussions, CBO site visits and a community impact project. Nationally recognized trainers deliver workshops in critical skill areas. Issue discussions are on local or timely topics of interest and are facilitated by local community leaders/activists and LEAP trainers.

The community impact project will give the students interns an opportunity to flex their leadership skills in a safe setting, as well as allow them to contribute a service that has lasting impact on to the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. The 2011 program will be held in Los Angeles from June 20 – August 12, 2011.

The application process for interns is now open. Applications are due Friday, March 11th, 2011. There are two rounds in the application process. The first round is where a committee reviews all the applications and decides who they want to come in for an interview. The second round is the actual interview either at LEAP or by teleconference. The results will be decided by the end of March and interns will be notified by the first week of April.

Junior Faculty Development Workshop, Penn State

On June 2-4, 2011, the East of California Caucus and the Pennsylvania State University will sponsor a junior faculty development workshop for early-career Asian Americanists. The workshop reflects EOC’s historical commitment to mentoring junior faculty and providing support to those working to increase the disciplinary and curricular visibility of Asian American Studies in higher education. Specifically, the workshop will help professionalize junior faculty by focusing on how to:

• Create extra-institutional networks of support
• Identify meaningful research projects and develop vocabularies for how to talk about such projects with a variety of audiences (department chairs, audiences outside of Asian American Studies, potential editors)
• Confront pedagogical challenges
• Establish effective collegial relationships
• Navigate the tenure process successfully

To accomplish these goals, the workshop will feature panel discussions, breakout sessions, and work-in-progress workshops. Please note that space will be limited to ensure a high level of interaction among all participants. Interested scholars should submit a brief letter of application outlining what the applicant hopes to gain by attending the workshop, a draft or excerpt of approximately 7-15 pages of the article or book chapter being proposed for workshop development (only work that has not yet been published is eligible), and a c.v. Please send materials to Tina Chen tina.chen@psu.edu and Eric Hung msumeric@gmail.com; questions should be directed to Tina Chen.

This event is funded by the Penn State Asian Studies Program (ASP) with additional support from the Center for American Literary Studies (CALS). The workshop will begin on Thursday evening (6/2) and conclude at 12:30 on Saturday (6/4). PSU will cover lodging and all meals during the event (specifically, 2 nights of lodging; dinner on Thursday; all meals on Friday; and breakfast and lunch on Saturday).

Application Deadline: March 25, 2011.

Conference: Asian American Activism

Out of the Margins: Asian American Movement Building. A two-day conference on the past, present, and future of activism and social change. March 25-26, 2011 at the University of Michigan.

Highlights:

• Conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Michael Hardt on the Next American Revolution (3/25, 4pm, Michigan League Ballroom)
• Asian American performers showcase with Geologic (from Blue Scholars), Kiwi and DJ Phatrick, comic Hari Kondabolu, and Nobuko Miyamoto (3/25, 7:30pm, Michigan League Ballroom)
• Panel discussions on immigrant rights, youth organizing, cultural activism, building multiracial coalitions and campus/community connections (3/26, 9am to 6pm, Trotter Multicultural Center)

Join students, scholars, artists, and community organizers from the University of Michigan and across the nation in this historic event. See our website for updated information and free registration.

Sponsored by:

• University of Michigan Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program
• Committee on Institutional Cooperation
• Asian American Association
• Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives
• Rackham Graduate School
• United Asian American Organizations
• Asian American Studies Program (Ohio State University)
• Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs, Asian/Pacific Islander American Heritage Month
• Michigan Community Scholars Program

(Unpaid) Internship: LGBT Refugees

Examining the Resettlement & Integration Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Refugees
Intensive Internship Yielding Thesis-Level Stand-Alone Report and Publication
[10-week Program from June 13th to August 19th]

ORAM (Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration) is a California-based non-profit organization with a mission to advocate for refugees fleeing sexual or gender based persecution. ORAM conducts international education and advocacy on behalf of these highly vulnerable individuals. It also provides legal counseling and representation as these persons struggle to find security and safe haven. We work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and with community-based groups in the U.S. and abroad to achieve our mission. More information is available at www.oraminternational.org.

Project: Conducting a Survey on the Resettlement Experiences of LGBTI Refugees
ORAM is looking for exceptionally committed and highly qualified interns to conduct and report upon a survey documenting the experiences of LGBTI refugees in the United States. Each intern will be assigned a geographic area corresponding to his/her location. After contacting local resettlement organizations and locating LGBTI refugees, the intern will conduct in-person interviews with the persons identified. ORAM will provide translation services on an as-needed basis. Basing their work on a survey designed by ORAM, interns will inquire into areas including the refugees’ access to medical and mental health care, ability to find employment, and access to safe housing.

Participants’ stand-alone papers based on these interviews will be appropriate for use as graduation theses, upon school approval. ORAM will utilize the information gathered to compile a high quality analytical advocacy report, along with extensive recommendations for organizations and government agencies resettling LGBTI refugees. As in all ORAM projects, student contributors will be fully credited in the final published work.

Requirements
Anthropology, sociology, gender studies, social work and journalism students are encouraged to apply. Applicants must have excellent interviewing, listening and writing skills. High-level fluency in a second language, including (but not limited to) Spanish, Arabic, French or Farsi is highly desirable. Applicants receiving academic credit for this internship are strongly preferred. Interns are unpaid. They will work a minimum of 20 hours of work per week during a 10-week period in the summer of 2011. Interns will report to an ORAM supervisor and will be required to attend a weekly meeting via Skype.

Application Procedures
Interested applicants should send (1) a resume, (2) a cover letter, and (3) an original, non-fiction writing sample to ORAM Internship Coordinator at internship@oraminternational.org. Please write “Resettlement Experiences Internship Application” in the subject line of the email. Applications will be evaluated on an ongoing basis until May 1, 2011.

Many of us know that politics in Asia can be a rough-and-tumble affair. Criticisms against China have been documented and continue to make the news. The nuclear threat from North Korea still hovers over much of the world also. Unfortunately, we now have to add Thailand to this list.

In recent months, more stories and examples of democratic and human rights abuses taking place in Thailand have made the news. This includes writers jailed and prominent international magazines banned for criticizing the Thai monarchy, and perhaps most disturbing of all as my colleague Andrew Lam reports, the Thai military directly responsible for the drowning of refugees:

For a country steeped in Buddhism, Thailand is accruing terrible karmic debts. News reports, including those by the Thai press itself, indicate systematic abuse of refugees fleeing from its neighbor, Myanmar.

Tourists have seen and photographed Thai troops abusing members of a Muslim minority group who were fleeing Myanmar by boat to Thailand’s southern shores. . . . CNN recently confirmed with a Thai military source that Thailand is practicing a dump-at-sea policy: towing boats back to the sea, often without giving refugees food or water.

UN refugee agency spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey expressed the gravity of the situation: “The reports that we are hearing are very alarming. That the [boat people] were detained in Thailand and then towed out to sea on unseaworthy boats and left to die basically.” . . .

Thailand’s long antipathy toward its neighbors is notorious. UN records are full of documents, describing how Thai pirates used hammers, machetes, and guns to massacre entire boats of refugees, including children and women [in the wake of the Viet Nam War]. . . . Despite international protest, the Thai government made few attempts to prosecute those accused.

During the Cold War, Thailand also supported the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime responsible for the death of more than 2 million Cambodians. . . . Last year, when the world condemned Myanmar for its inaction after the cyclone Nargis devastated half of its country, Thailand spoke in favor of the junta.

I must admit that I had not heard of these developments until now. Like most everybody else, I presume, much of my attention regarding news and current events in Asia center around China, Japan, and/or North Korea and the mainstream media doesn’t seem to mention much about Thailand, besides the occasional reports of popular uprisings and political instability.

If anything, the picture that many Americans have of Thailand is of a tourist vacation hotspot with warm, sunny beaches and a teeming nightlife in its large cities such as Bangkok. But news like this is a wake-up call for us to look beneath the surface and to examine Thailand’s history in more detail. In doing so, we see that Thailand is not always the tropical paradise we had imagined.

In fact, the incidents described are rather disturbing and prompts me to drastically alter my idea of Thailand as a true democracy. On top of that, as Andrew Lam points out in his article quoted above, as Buddhism is the official state religion, the Thai government and military seem to be failing miserably in living up to their Buddhist ideals of compassion and non-violence.

I hope its leaders find their way out of this karmic jungle soon, for everybody’s sake.