Edited by Russell Jeung - Mountain Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies

of Asian American Studies At SF State,

UC Berkeley & UCLA

Russell Jeung

Karen Umemoto

Harvey Dong

Eric Mar

Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani

Arnold Pan

edIted by

yeaR s

Commemorating

mOu N tain

Mo vers

Student Activism & the emergence

of Asian American Studies

Mountain Movers

Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies st Edition, Pages, April 2019

Editors : Russell Jeung Karen Umemoto Harvey Dong Eric Mar

Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani

Arnold Pan

Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-934052-54-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935627

Copyright 2019 UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press

UCLA Asian American Studies Center

3230 Campbell Hall, Box 951546, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546

aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu

All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems without written permission of the publisher.

Educational resources related to this book can be found at: ucla.in/2ILk88H

Mountain Movers & the Emergence of Asian American Studies |

By Russell Jeung

SF State

People, Time, Place, Dreams |

By Malcolm Collier and Daniel Phil Gonzales

Irene Dea Collier, Life History

Jeff Mori, Life History

UC Berkeley

UC Berkeleys Asian American Studies:

By L. Ling-chi Wang

Still Relevant Today:

Harvey Dong, Life History

Lillian Fabros, Life History

contents

UCLA

By Jean-Paul R. deGuzman

Protests, Yellow Power, and the Emergence of Asian American Studies |

Amy Uyematsu, Life History

Pilipino Students & the Beginning of Asian American Studies |

Casimiro Tolentino, Life History

NEW VOICES IN ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES & ACTIVISM

Holly Raa Lim, Life History

Nkauj Iab Yang, Life History

A Grounded Perspective of Asian American Studies |

Preeti Sharma, Life History

T here are many people who are responsible for this publication. First and foremost, our gratitude goes to all of the mountain movers who took part in the movement for ethnic studies at campuses across the country. Without the collective actions of students, faculty and community supporters, Asian American and ethnic studies may not exist today. We also thank all of those who have shared their stories, some of which are featured in this book. The passing on of history is also a collective project.

The editors from SF State want to thank not only our featured interviewees, Jeff Mori, Irene Dea Collier, and Holly Lim, but also many others who contributed to the San Francisco State University content. Jensine Carreon, M.A., Asian American Studies (2018), helped conduct the interviews and meticulously transcribed them. Our faculty colleagues who were participants in the 1968 Black Student Union/Third World Liberation Front strike, Malcolm Collier and Daniel Phil Gonzales, wrote their account of the founding of Asian American Studies. This edited version first appeared in 2009 under the title, At 40: Asian American Studies @ San Francisco State: Self-determination, Community, Student Service. Richard Wada and Kenji Taguma also provided useful feedback and suggestions.

UC Berkeley editors would like to express our sincerest appreciation to Lillian Fabros and Nkauj Iab Yang for their willingness to share their stories with us, as well as L. Ling-chi Wang for his detailed historical account of the founding of Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Thank you to Elaine Kim and Jere Takahashi for their invaluable roles in the establishment of the Asian American Political Alliance/Asian American movement interview project, as well as Dharini Rasiah, Mike Tran, and Songvy Nguyen for their help with conducting and transcribing our interviews. Sine Hwang Jensen of the Ethnic Studies Library, Robert Javier of the Fremont Union High School District, Beatrice Dong, and Eastwind Books of Berkeley also provided important feedback and support throughout this effort. Lastly, we acknowledge our Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies students and colleagues who inspire us with their tireless dedication to this invaluable program.

At UCLA , we would like to acknowledge Jean-Paul R. deGuzman for his meticulous research in narrating the history of the UCLA Asian American Studies Centers founding, and Marjorie Lee for assisting in the assembly of original documents. Appreciation also goes to the UCLA Special Collections Library for making accessible additional materials. This would not have been possible without the willingness and generosity of Amy Uyematsu, Casimiro Tolentino, and Preeti Sharma, who shared their stories and memorabilia. We thank Susie Ling, Karen Ishizuka, Meg Thornton, and Valerie Matsumoto for conducting these and other interviews for the Collective Memories oral history project. We are grateful for the work of Janet Chen of EthnoCommunications, who coordinated and filmed the interviews of early founders, with the assistance of Emory Johnson, Christian Gella, Lian Mae Tualla, Marnie Salvani and Sarina Ngo. Our deep gratitude goes to Helen and Morgan Chu, Kenyon Chan and Carol Mochizuki for making this project possible.

The editors at all three campuses would like to thank HyunJu Chappell of Magna Citizen Studio for design and production, as well as Antony Wong for his artful copyediting.

a C kno W L edg m e nT S

mountain movers

Chicano Studies Program Records, CS ARC 2009/1 Carton Folder 14,

Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley

Third World Liberation Front leaders marching down Bancroft Way in front of UC Berkeley, c. 1969. From left to right: Charles Brown of the Afro-American Student Union, Ysidro Macias of the Mexican American Student Confederation, LaNada [Means] War Jack of the Native American Student Union, and Stan Kadani of the Asian American Political Alliance.