CONCLUSION
On January 27, 2021, photographer Corky Lee died due to complications from COVID-19. He was seventy-three years old. The loss was deeply felt by so many in the Asian American community. For the past five decades, Lee had captured key moments of Asian American history, many of which sparked awareness and resistance against violence and injustice.
Among his most well-known photographs is a 1975 photo of Peter Yew with a bloody face as he is dragged away by police. According to writer and scholar Hua Hsu, “They had beaten him after he had tried to stop them from assaulting a teenager who’d been involved in a minor traffic incident.”1 The photo made the cover of the New York Post and catalyzed thousands of Chinatown residents to protest police brutality in their community.
A few days after the 9/11 attacks, Lee went to a candlelight vigil in Central Park that raised awareness about the surge in harassment and violence against South Asian Americans, most notably Sikhs, who were being conflated with the terrorists. Lee’s photograph of a Sikh man wearing a red turban with a flag draped around his body garnered a New York state journalism award.2
Lee’s passion for documenting Asian American histories was sparked by an appalling historical omission. In 1869, the completion of the first transcontinental railroad heralded the emergence of the United States as a modern nation. It connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and hastened economic expansion across the continent and beyond. By 1865, Chinese workers made up the vast majority of the Central Pacific Railroad’s labor force that built the western portion of the railroad. They placed their lives at risk by working through the blizzards and snowstorms of the 1866–67 winters and tunneling through the Sierra Nevada by blasting rock and carving out tunnels through solid granite. According to the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, the Chinese workers numbered between ten thousand and fifteen thousand, and perhaps as many as twenty thousand between 1865 and 1869. They made up as much as 90 percent of the workforce for much of the construction.3 Yet, in one of the most egregious examples of the erasure of Asian American history, Chinese railroad workers were excluded from the photograph celebrating the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869 at Promontory Summit in Utah.
Lee saw this photograph when he was in grade school. He had read that Chinese laborers had worked on that railroad. However, when he examined the photograph, he couldn’t find a single Chinese person in it.4 Not a single Chinese worker.
As I have argued throughout the book, over time, this erasure would form an Asian American historical pattern. It included representing Asian American women as objects of fantasy instead of human beings. It involved the redevelopment of historic places to put up nondescript buildings and parking lots. Historical plaques paid tribute to war veterans under the guise of liberation. Critical photographs were impounded and tucked away in an archive. The passage of dozens of anti-miscegenation laws tried to diminish the presence of interracial families and communities, and the establishment of motion picture codes kept them out of view. News media and social media circulated narratives of Asian and Black enmity when empirical evidence suggested otherwise.
Secret treaties, secret wars, and secret armies contributed to our national amnesia. We have become a nation of not knowing. Not knowing the faces behind the production, preparation, and presentation of our food. Not knowing how the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 has changed the face of America. Many Americans cannot name one well-known Asian American. Many don’t see Asian American health workers as Americans even though they are literally dying to save us in the age of COVID-19. Many Americans don’t see Asian Americans as fellow human beings, but rather as convenient scapegoats in times of crisis. And grave violence, another historical pattern, ensues.
Writing in these years of great hatred, I greeted each chapter of this book with a heavy heart. While I am deeply grateful for the many privileges of my work, confronting histories of violence is emotionally and psychologically difficult. I admit that there were moments when I wished that I could forget the horrors of our past and present. The uncertainty of these pandemic times is so stressful and exhausting. In the most difficult moments, despair creeps in. I worry about what kind of world we are leaving our children and future generations.
And, yet, with the writing of each chapter, I have also encountered something or someone that leaves me in awe. I am especially moved by the creative ways that so many Asian Americans have resisted omission, dismissal, and denigration. They include the organizers who work to stop AAPI hate; the artists who are reminding us that there is more than one way to be Asian American; the students who continue to demand ethnic studies at their schools; the creators of digital platforms that enable immigrants and refugees to share their experiences; the descendants of internees who build memorial gardens where we can remember and reflect; the congressmembers who advocate for our well-being with courage and grace.
They include Corky Lee, who, in 2014 on the 145th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion, gathered a group of Asian Americans, including the descendants of Chinese railroad laborers, at the same spot in Promontory Summit where, in 1869, the celebratory photograph had been taken without the Chinese workers. Herb Tam, curator and director of exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America, noted that “the transcontinental-railroad project was him trying to heal a big wound.”5 The group of Asian Americans included young and old, wearing contemporary as well as period clothing. They were smiling big. The joy was palpable. Lee took a photograph. He called these moments “photographic justice.”6
The erasure of Asian American histories is painful to confront because they expose wounds, both literal and metaphorical. Yet, for so many Asian Americans over time, knowing what has been omitted has sparked something else. A question can transform into an idea. An idea can inspire the courage to make change. And these actions present multiple ways forward, illuminating a path toward healing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
How do you write a book about Asian American histories during a pandemic and a period of intense anti-Asian sentiment? First, have an extraordinary editor. My deep thanks to Gayatri Patnaik, my editor at Beacon Press, for her thoughtful insights on every chapter, steadfast encouragement, and her belief in my writing even when my own confidence waned. I’ve marveled at how she always knew the right things to say to motivate me to keep writing. Thank you to the Beacon Press team for putting this book out in the world. I’m honored to be part of Beacon Press’s ReVisioning History series.
Second, learn from the mentorship of pathbreaking scholars. Thank you, Barbara Posadas, Paul Spickard, Vicki Ruiz, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Josephine Lee, Elaine Tyler May, Valerie Matsumoto, Michael Salman, Karen Brodkin, George Sanchez, Sidney Lemelle, Antonia Castañeda, Dorinne Kondo, Samuel Yamashita, and Deena González. I have tried and continue to try to emulate your scholarly innovativeness, generosity, and graceful example.
Third, trust the foundation you have gained from having outstanding teachers in your youth. Since an important part of this book is the use of different writing styles, I must acknowledge my teachers at Stuyvesant High School—Barbara Solowey, the late Jacob Irgang, and the late Frank McCourt—for caring about young people’s writing and well-being, and nurturing my interest in the craft.
Fourth, listen to and learn from your students. I’m grateful for the engagement of the many undergraduate and doctoral students in my Asian American history classes at UC Berkeley, where I have taught since 2004. My discussions with the students in my seminar, Asian American History in the Age of COVID-19, during the spring 2021 semester moved me, reminded me of how much Asian American history matters in the present moment, and inspired much of the subject matter of this book. I’ve had the great fortune of advising many doctoral students—including William Gow, Gladys Nubla, Ethel Regis Lu, Joanne Rondilla, Eric Pido, Jason Oliver Chang, and Ligaya Domingo—with admiration and awe of their achievements in ethnic studies and Asian American history.
Fifth, engage with the media with passion and purpose, because it takes a village to raise public awareness and understanding. In 2020 and early 2021, I communicated with Agnes Constante, Alexander Gonzalez, Anne Brice, Brian Watt, Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil, Cat Sandoval, Catherine E. Shoichet, Charissa Isidro, Charley Lanyon, Christina Thornell, Corryn Wetzel, Currie Engel, David Pierson, Emily Pandise, Ernabel Demillo, Fiona Kelliher, Frank Shyong, Gabrielle Berbey, Ivan Natividad, Jana Katsuyama, Janelle Bitker, Jill Cowen, Jo Ling Kent, Joe Rocha, Josie Huang, Julia Chang Wang, Kimberly Adams, Kimmy Yam, Marc Abizeid, Mina Kim, Mollie Riegger, Nina Martin, Paulina Cachero, Rosem Morton, Saadia Khan, Sarah Titterton, Timothy McLaughlin, Tracie Hunte, Yudi Liu, and more. Thank you for publicizing Asian American history and the insights of Asian American studies scholars.
Sixth, find colleagues and friends who will support you even when things don’t go your way, and who will revel in those times when they do. Thank you, Miroslava Chávez-García, Weihong Bao, SanSan Kwan, Laura C. Nelson, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, the late Ronald Takaki, Sau-ling Wong, Michael Omi, Carolyn Chen, Carlos Muñoz Jr., Thomas Biolsi, Shari Huhndorf, Beth Piatote, Raúl Coronado, Juana María Rodríguez, Keith Feldman, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Jennifer Ho, Theo Gonzalves, Tammy Ho, David Martinez, Walt Jacobs, Valerie Minor, Barbara Yasue, Leighton Fong, Anna Presler, Max Leung, Jeanette Roan, Jeannie Wang, and Milton Tong, for the great conversations often tinged with laughter. How I miss being in the company of the late Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, Jeffrey Hadler, Yun Won Cho, and Yuji Yasue. UC Berkeley, and its historic Department of Ethnic Studies, has been my professional home for the past seventeen years. I’m grateful to the entire campus community for supporting my research and teaching in Asian American history over many years.
Finally, be grateful for the family—it can be the one you’re born into, grow into, and/or the one you create—who loves you. To my mother Patria Ceniza, aunts Lucy Ceniza, Vicky Paragas, Betty Maniego, Onie Ceniza, sister Caroline Ceniza-Levine, and father-in-law Howard Choy, thank you for your support. I write in fond memory of Auntie Mary Hernandez, Lolo Braulio Ceniza, Lola Soledad Ceniza, Uncle Terry Ceniza, my mother-in-law Nellie Choy, Auntie Alice Wong, Auntie Mary Wong, and Uncle Phillip Choi.
I dedicate this book to my husband, Greg Choy, and our children Maya and Louis. Never forget how much I love you. Greg, thank you for being a patient listener and an astute reader, and, perhaps above all, for helping me learn to laugh at myself. Maya and Louis, thank you for simply being who you are—curious and compassionate young people who want to make a difference. You give me hope.