This month, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting commemorates Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by honoring the rich history, culture, and perspectives of these communities. Explore the AAPB’s extensive collection of programs dedicated to AANHPI history and perspectives and celebrate the diversity of voices in our archive.
Collections
Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Collection
The AAPI Collection features more than 230 public radio and television programs from 1965 to 2019 that highlight Asian American and Pacific Islander cultures in the United States. The programs include conversations with artists and writers, readings by authors, documentaries on a wide variety of topics, and news coverage on a wide range of subjects, including immigration, Japanese internment, hate crimes against members of the Asian American community, race in America, and affirmative action.
The collection additionally spotlights conversations around the representation of Asian Americans in the media and the kinds of discrimination they have faced as a result.
The Biography Hawai‘i collection contains interview footage shot between 2002 and 2009 for use in Biography Hawai‘i, a series of documentary films that focused on the life stories of Hawai‘i residents whose lives have had a lasting impact on the state of Hawai‘i.
Featuring people from different ethnic groups and walks of life, but with an emphasis on native Hawaiians, Biography Hawai‘i episodes in this collection include interviews about Ma‘iki Aiu Lake, a kumu hula and Hawaiian renaissance icon; Harriet Bouslog, a labor and civil rights attorney; Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani, Kingdom of Hawai‘i ali‘i and Hawai‘i Island Governess; and Koji Ariyoshi, a labor activist and watchdog journalist. Besides the on-camera interviews with scholars, family, and friends of the series’ subjects, the collection’s footage also features images of rare photographs from personal and family collections.
For an inside look at the digitization of this collection, hear from PBPF Fellow Kimo Nichols on his experience.
The Center for Asian American Media
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) Collection contains over 100 videos from 1982 to 2010 that speak to the Asian experience through the lens of history. The collection consists of documentaries, series, and dramas that feature Asian American experiences and create opportunities for audiences to gain new perspectives and understand diverse stories of Asian Americans.
The collection speaks to the complexities of Asian American life, culture, and experiences, evoking the universal struggle and resilience of the human condition. Researchers can access the CAAM collection on location at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and WGBH in Boston, MA. Additionally, the documentaries In No One’s Shadow: Filipinos In America and Silk Screen: China, Land of My Father are available in the Online Reading Room.
Focus 580, a live public radio call-in talk show produced from 1988 to 2005 at the University of Illinois, focused on Asian American history, culture, and discrimination in several episodes.
Most notable are a discussion with historian Ronald Takaki, speaking about his recently released book Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans; Racial Profiling and Asian Americans; The Politics of Asian Americans: Diversity and Community; Affirmative Action; Japan Today; and author Sheridan Prasso about her book The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient.
The AAPB is a proud home to over 150 digitized programs from PBS Guam stretching back to the ‘80s. With a plan to make more of these programs available to the public in the future, the programs currently in the Online Reading Room feature programs from Viewpoint, a public affairs magazine with episodes focused on local community issues affecting Guam.
Topics include homelessness; hospital development; growing military presence; and the legal status of Guam as a territory.
Explore over 50 episodes of Spectrum Hawaii in the archive and learn about Hawaiian life, art, culture, and perspectives in the ‘80s. Topics range from Hawaiian T-shirt art and the history of the shave ice industry to Okinawan culture and Polynesian anthropology.
The United States and the Philippines Interviews Collection
This new collection consists of 94 raw interviews shot between 1985-1988 for the three-part documentary series The United States and the Philippines: In Our Image, which aired on public television in 1989. The series examined the historical relationship between the U.S. and its colony the Philippines from 1898, when the U.S. acquired it from Spain in the Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War, up through the 1986 “People Power” uprising.
Interviews feature former President Ferdinand Marcos, First Lady Imelda Marcos, former President Corazon Aquino, Vice President Salvador Laurel, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, and many others.
Documentaries
Becoming American: The Chinese Experience
This Emmy-nominated three-part documentary explores the historic saga of Chinese immigrants. Veteran journalist Bill Moyers shows how the Chinese – like other immigrants to this country – have pursued the American dream. Theirs is a compelling tale of struggle and triumph, progress and setback, separation and assimilation, discrimination, and achievement. It is a story of the collision of two cultures, and a narrative that has been largely left out of history books.
China, Land of My Father is a 1983 documentary that follows Chinese American journalist and filmmaker Felicia Lowe on her journey to discover her Chinese roots. Through insightful interviews with women, Lowe delves into various aspects of life in China, including the cost of living, career pursuits, and childcare. Additionally, the documentary captures Lowe’s reunion with relatives in the very place her father once called home.
Other documentaries by Felicia Lowe coming to the archive include Carved in Silence and Chinese Couplets.
Indochinese Refugees: A Second Look
This 1978 documentary looks back at Vietnam to learn more about the people and culture. The film incorporates footage from the Vietnam War, alongside poignant interviews with refugees as they share their experiences resettling in the United States and leaving behind their homeland. Community members express concerns about refugee assimilation into American culture, while also highlighting various support services provided, such as vocational training, housing assistance, and language education.
Produced by WGBH, this 1973 documentary chronicles Joyce Chen (chef, television personality, and restaurant owner) and her children’s visit to the People’s Republic of China. Chen’s family trip to China represented a unique opportunity to see the country that until 1972 remained a total mystery to almost all Americans, and to see it through the eyes of someone who grew up there, someone whose relatives still live there, and through the eyes of her children, who don’t share her memories. Following the film, Joyce, Helen, and Stephen Chen sit down to dinner to discuss their observations with John Kenneth Galbraith (Professor of Economics, Harvard University) and Newsweek’s Edward Klein (Foreign Editor, Newsweek magazine).
Produced by Maryland Public Television between 1991 and 1993, this documentary series explains Asia’s rising dominance of global markets through an examination of its economic powers. Each hour-long program focuses on a different place, including Hong Kong; Indonesia; Malaysia; Singapore; South Korea; Taiwan; and Thailand.
Vietnam: A Chicagoan Goes Home
In 1989, WTTW aired a groundbreaking documentary that marked the first time the Vietnamese government permitted a former South Vietnam soldier to return to his homeland since the war’s end. The documentary follows Lam Ton, a Vietnamese refugee who had settled in Chicago and achieved success, as he journeys back to Vietnam. Accompanied by a WTTW camera crew, Lam Ton travels across his native land, offering poignant observations and reflections on the changes his native land has gone through in the years since he left.
A follow-up discussion, Lam Tom and the Vietnamese Community, allowed members of the Chicago Vietnamese-American community to express dissenting and appreciative responses to the film.
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