Library Guides:  Ethnic Studies
Asian American Peoples

Developed by Connie Fly, Librarian

This guide will help you in your journey of discovery for information on your topic.  In addition to the Reference Books, Internet Sites and Periodicals listed below the COS Library has a large number of books that you can check out.  An HSI/Listo grant purchased books for the library on your topic which you can check out.  Please look for additional books by using our online catalog.

Places to Start | Art & Culture | Authors & Literature | Biography | Health | History | Military Service | Periodicals | Religion | Sports | Statistics

Places to Start

  Reference Books

• American Immigrant Cultures; Builders of a Nation (2 volumes) - Call # R 305.8 A512

• Asian American Encyclopedia - Call # R 973.0495 A832

• Encyclopedia of American Social History - Call # R 301.0973 En56

• The Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America (3 volumes) R #323.1 En56

• Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology - Call #  R 306.03 En56

• Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America (2 volumes) Call # R 305.8 G151

• Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups - Call # R 973.04 H339

• Multiculturalism in the United States:  a Comparative Guide to Acculturation and Ethnicity - Call # R 305.8 M961

    The Internet

• Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library - The best place to begin your research.  Links broken down by region and country.  Search Engine for locating specific information in this web site.

• Asian Nation -  Asian-Nation provides information source on the historical, political, social, economic, and cultural elements and issues that make up today's diverse Asian American community.

• Ancestors in the Americas -  This website is based on the PBS Television Series, Ancestors in America.  It offers an in-depth historical understanding of one of the fastest growing -- and least known groups of  immigrants in the U.S.-- Asian Americans. They take as a point of departure, that the diversity of Asian groups in America - Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese, Asian Indians, and Southeast Asians - all have fundamental historical experiences in common, both in Asia and in America.

• Asian American Studies:  Resource Guide - provided by U.S.C. library archives and offering information on reference material and its own holdings.

• Asian-Nation:  The Landscape of Asian America - This website seek to:  Educate those who would like to know more about the Asian American community, provide general and specific information about different topics and issues that affect the Asian American community, and  identify other sources of information related to the Asian American community.

• WWW Hmong Homepage

Art and Culture

    The Internet

• AARising - This commercial site serves as an entertainment resource about Asian Pacific Americans.

• Asian American Art Alliance - Asian American Arts Alliance was founded in 1983 by a group of artists, activists, and community leaders to raise public awareness of Asian American arts.

• Asian American Film

• Asian American Music - This is a personal site of the former host of an Asian American radio show called "Gold Mountains." He offers reviews of Asian and Asian American music.

• SAWNET - South Asia Women's Network.  This website provides a variety of links having to do with legal issues, wedding customs, domestic violence, authors and cinemas- films and reviews

Authors and Literature

    The Internet

• Asia Through a Glass Darkly:  Stereotypes of Asian in Western Literature 

Health

• MEDLINEplus: Asian American Health - This is the best place to start your research on any aspect of Asian American health or disease.

• Asian American Health - An information portal to issues affecting health and well-being of Asian Americans in the United States. Covers major Asian populations, medical journals, communicating with Asian children about health issues, statistics, complementary and alternative medicine, and other health topics. Includes many related links. From the National Library of Medicine.

• Asian-American Health

• SPIRAL: Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages  - SPIRAL provides consumer health information in Chinese, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese. Pamphlets are also available in English so that health care providers will understand the contents. Browsable by language or subject. The site also includes links to Asian and Pacific Islander health resources. From South Cove Community Health Center (Boston) and Tufts University Health Science Library, with support from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.

History

  Reference Books

• Asian American Encyclopedia - Call # R 973.0495 A832

• Japanese American History - Call # R 973.0496 Ja35

    The Internet

• A More Perfect Union - Japanese Americans & the Constitution - This site explores a period of U.S. history when racial prejudice and fear upset the delicate balance between the rights of a citizen versus the power of the state. Focusing on the experiences of Japanese Americans who were placed in detention camps during World War II, this exhibit from the Smithsonian Museum of American History is a case study in decision-making and citizen action under the U.S. Constitution.

• Densho:  The Japanese American Legacy - Densho is a nonprofit organization started in 1996, with the initial goal of documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. This evolved into a mission to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity. Densho uses digital technology to preserve and make accessible primary source materials on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

• Forwarding Address Requested - Tells the story of Miss Clara Breed, "a librarian in San Diego at the outbreak of World War II, [who] used the mail to keep in close contact with the Nikkei [Japanese American] students who were taken to the internment camps." Includes transcripts of 17 letters, photos, and information on post offices in the camps. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

• History of Chinese Americans in California - This report concentrates on the early decades of Chinese American history, 1850 to 1900. Limiting their scope in time made it possible to search for endangered resources in all 58 counties of the state, instead of restricting our activity to the leading 10 or 12 counties, ascertaining true settlement patterns, occupations, lifestyles, responses to discrimination, and survival of early Chinese immigrants.

• Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project - The Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project is a multifaceted project to create a permanent Web site which provides enhanced access to the UW Libraries holdings on the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Included in the project is a virtual exhibit focusing on the Puyallup assembly center, Camp Harmony, and enhanced access to archival guides and inventories of the UW Libraries Manuscripts and University Archives Division.

• Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives - Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) This project indexes the holdings of a number of California repositories which document the experience of Japanese Americans in World War II internment camps. There are over "10,000 digital images [which] have been created [and which are] complimented by 20,000 pages of electronic transcriptions of document and oral histories." Although somewhat difficult to use, the results are richly rewarding for students and anyone else interested in these events. From the California Digital Library.

• History of Japanese Americans in California - The places selected for inclusion in this report not only relate to the Japanese experience in California, they also reflect the attempts of Japanese Americans to establish themselves in all aspects of life -- economically, educationally, socially, religiously, politically, and artistically. The selected properties reflect both events and actions directed against Japanese Americans, as well as the efforts they made to determine the nature and direction of their own lives.

• Locke and Walnut Grove: Havens for Early Asian Immigrants in California - This lesson plan uses two Sacramento River towns for studying the Asian immigrant experience. Materials include maps, readings, images, activities, and links. From the U.S. National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places program.

Military Service

Periodicals

• New California Media - Multi-Ethnic Media News.  New California Media (NCM) – an association of over 400 print, broadcast and online ethnic media organizations – was founded in 1996 by the non profit Pacific News Service. NCM's goal is to raise the visibility of ethnic media as a major information source for California's 17 million ethnic residents.

Religion

    Reference Books

• Contemporary American Religion (2 volumes)  - Call # R 200 C761

• The Encyclopedia of Religion (16 volumes)  - Call # R 200.321 En56

    The Internet

• Buddhism in America

Sports

    Reference Books

• The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League Call # R 796.3320922 T717
• The Official NBA Encyclopedia - Call # R 796.323 O32
• Total Baseball:  the Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball - Call # R796.357 T717

Statistics

• Facts on the Asian and Pacific Islander Populations - From the U.S. Census Bureau
• Asian and Pacific Islander Populations - From the U.S. Census Bureau
• We the People: Asians in the United States -  "This report provides a portrait of the Asian population in the United States and discusses the eleven largest detailed Asian groups at the national level, for example: Asian Indian, Cambodian, and Japanese. It is part of the Census 2000 Special Reports series that presents several demographic, social, and economic characteristics collected from Census 2000." Opens directly into a PDF document. From the U.S. Census Bureau.

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This page was created November 29, 2001This page was last updated: November 13, 2006
For questions and comments, please mail to: connief@cos.edu