She’s talking about, of all things, a textbook. But not just any textbook. It’s a first-of-its-kind documentation of Asian American and Pacific Islander history, packaged in one place and targeted to an audience that almost never gets to learn about this demographic: American high schoolers.
Fong, a continuing lecturer of Asian American studies at UCLA, saw the need for an AAPI text when there was a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic; Karen Umemoto M.A. ’89, the director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, agreed. We wouldn’t have seen the level of vitriol we did, Umemoto says, if people had an understanding of the key part Asians have in the fabric of American society.
