Already Home: AAPI Artists on Belonging

Curated by Shannon Lee

Relative to the history of Asians in America, the term “Asian American” is fairly new. Coined in 1968 by the Japanese American historian Yuji Ichioka as a way to build a self-defined political coalition, the term is one that attempts to encompass and place a single identity on a vast, often disparate diaspora of racial and ethnic ancestry that includes East Asians, South Asians, and Pacific Islanders. Within this rich multitude, however, is a common experience of otherness. We are often made to feel as though we do not belong, that we should “go back to where we came from.”

Between Yellow Peril, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment, the murder of Vincent Chin, and the current spike in violence…