By Abbey Zhu ’18, Feature Editor

May. May is the fifth month of every year. May clings to last bits of spring; the weather borders on summer heat and humidity and it’s the last full month of school before summer break. All in all, very exciting, if I do say so myself. If I asked you what happens in May, what would you say? Maybe you’d tell me that we celebrate Mother’s Day in May, or Cinco de Mayo. Memorial Day is also in May, or perhaps your birthday is. But you probably wouldn’t know that the entire month of May is a national celebration of Asian heritage in the United States. I didn’t know that either until last year, when Asian Diversity Club decided to give a presentation in May about the Asian American experience in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, or APAHM (I admit it, I’m a bad Asian.)

Now you’re probably asking yourself, why does APAHM exist? And why should I have to care about it if I’m not Asian? I’m not going to bore you with facts about the history of APAHM, because my coeditor Charles Pan finished his article before I did, and he already has the history of APAHM covered in the first paragraph of his article. So instead, I’m going to give you my highly respected, wildly radical opinion about why I, as a Chinese American female, think APAHM is important. Read on!

I’ll begin by addressing my first rhetorical question. Why does APAHM exist? Primarily, APAHM exists to celebrate the contributions of Asian people to American society. Contrary to popular belief, Asia is not just China. Nor is it just China, South Korea, Japan, and India. Asia encompasses 17.21 million square miles and is home to 4.436 billion people. To put that all in perspective, Africa is the second largest continent at 11.73 million square miles, and the world’s population is 7 billion people. Wow, you must be thinking. Asia is really big. And with that huge size, Asians and Asian Americans have contributed (and are continuing to contribute) a huge amount to American society. Just go to the Wikipedia page for Asian Americans[1] and click the headings “cultural influence” and “notable contributions.” There’s even a Wikipedia page with a list of famous Asian Americans![2] We’re super cool, I promise.

So now that we’ve established that Asia is ginormous and home to billions of people with diverse cultures, you’re probably wondering what “Pacific American” means. Pacific Americans, or Pacific Islander Americans, are exactly what they sound like. They’re Americans whose ancestors were the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands (islands in the Pacific Ocean). These include the regions of Polynesia, Macronesia, and Micronesia. You might never have heard of these pacific islands unless you were planning on vacationing there, and that brings me to answering my second point. If you’re not Asian, why should you care, or even celebrate APAHM?

Obviously, it’s because without Asian Americans, you wouldn’t have easy access to chow mein, fried rice, pho, sushi, Korean BBQ, pad thai, curry…need I go on? I’m joking, but in all seriousness, APAHM is crucial to the livelihood of the entirety of America because it celebrates the cultures of Asian Pacific Americans (thereby validating their existence and saying “Hey, we care about you. Thanks for coming to America. We don’t think you guys are savages or less than, and we demonstrate our gratitude by learning about and celebrating your distinct culture.”), commemorates the sacrifices they made for American society, and recognizes the atrocities they had (and still have) to endure as people of color who will always be seen as “other.”

I jokingly mentioned that the only time you’ve heard about the Pacific Islands was probably when you were planning to go on vacation there. That sad truth epitomizes why APAHM needs to be celebrated and more widely recognized. People tend to think of Asia as one giant block dominated by Far East Asia and India because those countries are wealthier than Southeast Asia is. Asian Americans are viewed as one huge group with the same immigrant experience, and half the time, people don’t even know that Pacific Americans exist. When you assume that all Asians are born into middle or upper class families with access to resources that enable them to excel in their studies and their lives (basically, when you assume that “All Asians are born smart”), you are erasing the experiences and suffering of Asian Pacific Americans whose relatives were refugees from the Vietnam War, or the Cambodian Civil War, or the Laos Civil War (please google these things if you have the time). When you subscribe to the model minority myth, you are actively choosing to forget the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, “yellow peril,” the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the murder of Vincent Chin (who was 26 years old) in 1982 at the hands of two white men who walked off with just three years of probation, and countless other injustices suffered by the Asian Pacific American community that we have failed to give voice to.

In words much more eloquent than my own, Melody Xiao ’18 divulged the importance of APAHM in a nutshell: “It’s important because it celebrates and acknowledges the histories and cultures of a massive, richly diverse population in the united states, one that has contributed a lot to world and US history.”

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that APAHM is important to America, but more importantly, to you. I had a lot of trouble trying to finish this article. I knew a lot of you would be thinking, “Wow Abbey, complaining about Asian American troubles again? What’s new?” I tried really hard to be funny (but I probably wasn’t) and informative (I probably didn’t do this either), and I genuinely hope that I’ve convinced you to google a few things about Asian Pacific Americans, their culture, and their history in the United States.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Americans

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_Americans