What You Could Be Watching, Listening to, and Reading for AAPI Heritage Month
Reminder: Durham Tech will be closed Monday, May 29 for Memorial Day. Have a nice long weekend and remember to incorporate some *real* self-care into your daily practices.
The previous link is to an article and an episode of NPR's Code Switch that talks about self-care with psychiatrist Pooja Lakshmin, who just published a new book . Also in honor of AAPI Heritage Month and related via the NPR podcast/audio breadcrumb trail, check out the KPOP Dreaming podcast, about growing up Korean-American during the 90s, music, family history, and identity. Oh, and loving KPOP.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Established in 1977 to elevate, highlight, and celebrate Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, May was chosen to commemorate the first documented Japanese immigrant from 1843 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869, which used many Chinese laborers. A rather broad term, Asian/Pacific encompasses all of the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island).
PBS has an excellent video playlist of their various documentaries for AAPI Heritage Month available for free. Films on Demand has the entire Asian Americans (2020) series in their AAPI playlist (off-campus, log in using your Durham Tech username and password).
Interested in reading some excellent books in all sorts of genres by Asian American and Pacific Islander Americans?
Keep reading to see some of our selection available or check out our physical displays of memoirs, fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, and cookbooks at the Orange County Campus, downstairs at the Main Campus, or ebooks and audiobooks online through Dogwood Digital Library (add us to your Libby app and sign in using your Durham Tech username and password).
Check out (literally!) a few of our excellent graphic novels written by AAPI authors--
Or maybe pick up a cookbook by an awesome AAPI chef--
Or a memoir? (Tastes Like War was the best book I read in 2021, albeit not a happy read.)
We have some great fiction, too-- contemporary, historical, allegorical, YA, and more!