LibGuides: Celebration of Asian Americans: Prominent Individuals

Asian Americans in Politics, Law and the Military

Kamala Harris - Vice President of the United States. First woman, African American, and South Asian American to serve as VP.

Senator Tammy Duckworth - U.S Senator from Illinois.

Hiram Fong - American businessman, lawyer, and politician from Hawaii. First Asian-American U.S. Senator, serving from 1959-1977.

Patsy Mink - First Asian-American woman to be elected to congress.

Daniel Inouye - First U.S Representative from Hawaii, U.S Senator from 1964 to 2012.

Eric Shinseki - First Asian-American four-star general, and the first Asian-American Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Lance Ito - judge best known for presiding over the criminal trial for the O. J. Simpson murder case

Andrew Yang - 2020 presidential candidate and current candidate for New York City mayor, entrepreneur, politician, and philanthropist.

Dalip Singh Saund - First South-Asian American, first Indian-American, first Sikh-American, and first member of a non-Abrahamic faith to be elected to Congress.

Preet Bharara - lawyer, author, and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017

Viet Xuan Luong - a United States Army major general, the first Vietnamese born American officer promoted to general officer rank, currently the Commanding General for United States Army, Japan/I Corps Forward

Jacqueline Nguyen - Vietnamese-American circuit judge, currently serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Asian Americans in Science

Dr. David Ho - a Taiwanese-American AIDS researcher, physician, and virologist who has made a number of scientific contributions to the understanding and treatment of HIV infection

Roger Tsien - biochemist and professor of chemistry and biochemistry, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein

Dr. Steven Chu - American physicist, Nobel laureate, and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy.

Asian Americans in Sports

Bruce Lee - Chinese American martial artist, actor, director, martial arts instructor and philosopher

Apolo Ohno - short track speed skater, most decorated American Winter Olympian (two gold, two silver, four bronze medals)

Dat Nguyen - former linebacker who played in the NFL for seven seasons with the Dallas Cowboys and in college for Texas A&M University

Jeremy Lin - professional basketball player and the first Asian American to win an NBA championship (Toronto Raptors, 2019)

Kristi Yamaguchi - former figure skater, Olympic champion (Albertville, 1992) and two-time World champion (1991 and 1992)

Michael Chang - professional tennis player, youngest player to win a Grand Slam Tournament 1989 French Open)

Erik Spoelstra - Basketball coach for the Miami Heat in the NBA, first Asian-American head coach to win an NBA championship

Norm Chow - football coach and former player, has coached at the high school, college and professional levels

Kimberly J. Ng
American executive in Major League Baseball. She is currently the general manager of the Miami Marlins and the highest-ranking female baseball executive.

Asian Americans in the Performing Arts

Anna May Wong - American actress, considered to be the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.

Haing S. Ngor - Cambodian American gynecologist, obstetrician, actor and author. Won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his roll in The Killing Fields.

Miyoshi Umeki - Japanese-American singer and actress. Umeki was a Tony Award and Golden Globe nominated actress and the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for acting.

George Takei - actor, author, and activist best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the television series Star Trek.

Mindy Kaling - actress, comedian, writer, producer, and director, star of The Office and creator of The Mindy Project

Steven Yeun - actor best known for The Walking Dead, first Asian-American to be nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his role in Minari

Margaret Cho - actress, musician, stand-up comedian, fashion designer and author

Steve Aoki - DJ, record producer, music programmer, record executive, and founder of the Steve Aoki Charitable Fund.

Yo-Yo Ma - cellist, child prodigy, performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world, recorded more than 90 albums and received 18 Grammy Awards

Bruno Mars
Peter Gene Hernandez (born October 8, 1985), known professionally as Bruno Mars, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, and dancer. He is known for his stage performances, retro showmanship, and for performing in a wide range of musical styles, including pop, R&B, funk, soul, reggae, hip hop, and rock.

Asian Americans in Literature

Amy Tan - author known for the novel The Joy Luck Club, her other works include, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning and The Valley of Amazement

Celeste Ng - author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I've Never Told You

Viet Thanh Nguyen - Vietnamese-American, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sympathizer, his other works include, The Refugees and The Committed.

Jhumpa Lahiri - Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Interpreter of Maladies, as well as, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowlands

Lan Cao - author of Monkey Bridge and The Lotus and the Storm, also a professor of Law at Chapman University

Jenny Han - author of young adult fiction and children's fiction, best known for writing the To All the Boys series

Ha Jin - Chinese-American poet and novelist, his poetry is associated with the Misty Poetry movement.

Ocean Vuong - Vietnamese-American poet, essayist and novelist, his debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019

Alex Tizon
Tomas Alexander Asuncion Tizon (October 30, 1959 – March 23, 2017) was a Filipino-American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His book Big Little Man, a memoir and cultural history, explores themes related to race, masculinity, and personal identity.

Asian Americans in Arts and Design

Ang Lee - award winning director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain and The Life of Pi

Chloe Zhao - writer, director, producer, first woman of color to win an Academy Award for Best Director

Vera Wang - fashion designer, designs include everything from high end gowns to casual wear, received the Council of Fashion Designers of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013

An My Le - Vietnamese American photographer, and professor at Bard College, 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and recipient of the Tiffany Comfort Foundation Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship among others.

Maya Lin - designer and sculptor, won national recognition in 1981 for her design of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C

Prominent Individuals: Reading List

Famous Asian Americans by Janet N. Morey; Wendy Dunn
Call Number: 920 M845F
ISBN: 0525650806
Publication Date: 1992-02-13
Chronicles the lives and accomplishments of fourteen Asian Americans including Jose Aruego, Michael Chang, An Wang, and Ellison Onizuka.
DAT by D. A. T. Nguyen; Rusty Burson
ISBN: 1299052509
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Dallas Cowboy Dat Nguyen shares the inspirational story of his life--from growing up in a refugee family in Rockport, Texas to his college days at Texas A&M University, and to his life now as the starting middle linebacker for the Cowboys.
16 Extraordinary Asian Americans by Nancy Lobb
Call Number: E184.O6 L633 1996
ISBN: 0825128587
Publication Date: 1996-01-01
Highlight the achivements of people who have changed American life and history! Daniel K. Inouye Maxine Hong Kingston I.M.Pei Maya Lin An Wang Haing Ngor Seiji Ozawa Kristi Yamaguchi Noriyuki ?Pat? Morita Yo-Yo Ma David Ho Wendy Lee Gramm Ellison Onizuka Carlos Bulosan Jose Aruego Dustin Nguyen
Asian American Athletes in Sport and Society by C. Richard King (Editor)
Call Number: GV583 .A75 2015
ISBN: 9780415874915
Publication Date: 2014-11-13
For more than a century, sporting spectacles, media coverage, and popular audiences have staged athletics in black and white. Commercial, media, and academic accounts have routinely erased, excluded, ignored, and otherwise made absent the Asian American presence in sport. This book seeks to redress this pattern of neglect, presenting a comprehensive perspective on the history and significance of Asian American athletes, coaches, and teams in North America. The contributors interrogate the sociocultural contexts in which Asian Americans lived and played, detailing the articulations of power and possibility, difference and identity, representation and remembrancenbsp;that have shaped the means and meanings of Asian Americans playing sport in North America. This volume will be of interest to students and scholarsnbsp;of the Asian American experience, ethnic relations, and the history of sport.
Lt. Col. Ladda Tammy Duckworth : Thai blood lady MP. in USA by Phakāmāt Prīchā
Call Number: E748.D845 P435 2012
ISBN: 9786169146834
Publication Date: 2012
On the political life of Ladda Tammy Duckworth, the first disabled American-Thai politician to be elected a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the 8th district of Illinois, a war veteran awarded with a Purple Heart and on the Democrat Party.
Yell-Oh Girls! by Vickie Nam
Call Number: E184.O6 Y45 2001
ISBN: 9780060959449
Publication Date: 2001-07-31
In this groundbreaking collection of personal writings, young Asian American girls come together for the first time and engage in a dynamic converstions about the unique challenges they face in their lives. Promoted by a variety of pressing questions from editor Vickie Nam and culled from hundreds of submission from all over the country, these revelatory essays, poems, and stories tackle such complex issues as dual identities, culture clashes, family matters, body image, and the need to find one's voice. With a foreword by Phoebe Eng, as well as contributions from accomplished Asian American women mentors Janice Mirikitani, Helen Zia, Nora Okja Keller, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Elaine Kim, Patsy Mink, and Wendy Mink, Yell-Oh Girls! is an inspiring and much-needed resource for young Asian American girls.
Patsy Mink ahead of the majority by Bassford, Kimberlee
Call Number: DVD. E840.8.M554 P38 2008
Chronicles the life of Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman and the first woman of color elected to the United States Congress. She played a seminal role in the enactment of Title IX which helped level the playing field for women in higher education and athletics. Her run for the presidency is also covered.
Notes
DVD special features: deleted scenes ; additional speeches and interviews of Patsy Mink ; additional interviews in the film ; timeline.
Striking Distance by Charles Russo
ISBN: 9780803269606
Publication Date: 2016-07-01
In the spring of 1959, eighteen-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth. Although the martial arts were widely unknown in America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in the Bay Area, populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown's aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating for a modern approach to the martial arts, and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake. The year of 1964 would be an eventful one for Bruce, in which he would broadcast his dissenting worldview before the first great international martial arts gathering, and then defend it by facing down Wong Jack Man--Chinatown's young kung fu ace--in a legendary behind-closed-doors showdown. These events were a catalyst to the dawn of martial arts in America and a prelude to an icon. Based on over one hundred original interviews, Striking Distance chronicles Bruce Lee's formative days amid the heated martial arts proving ground that thrived on San Francisco Bay in the early 1960s.
Anna May Wong by Graham Hodges
ISBN: 9789888139637
Publication Date: 2012-06-01
Anna May Wong was the best known Chinese American actress during Hollywood's golden age, a free spirit and embodiment of the flapper era much like Louise Brooks. She starred in over fifty movies between 1919 and 1960, sharing the screen with such luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Marlene Dietrich. Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong was the second daughter of six children born to a laundryman and his wife. Obsessed with film at a young age, she managed to secure a small part in a 1919 drama about the Boxer Rebellion. Her most famous film roles were in The Thief of Baghdad, Old San Francisco, and Shanghai Express opposite Dietrich. Despite these successes, instances of overt racism plagued Wong's career. When it came time to make a film version of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, she was passed over for the German actress, Luise Rainer. In a narrative that recalls both the gritty life in Los Angeles' working-class Chinese neighborhoods and the glamor of Hollywood at its peak, Graham Hodges recounts the life of this elegant, beautiful, and underappreciated screen legend.
Anna May Wong by Philip Leibfried; Chei Mi Lane
Call Number: PN2287.W56 L45 2010
ISBN: 9780786446964
Publication Date: 2010-08-17
Anna May Wong, born in Los Angeles in 1905 to a Chinese family that did not support her ambition, is the only Asian-American actress to have achieved stardom during Hollywood's Golden Age. Staying single to avoid endangering her career, she became the darling of the intelligentsia, inspiring poems, songs, and crowds of admirers in the British Isles, Europe, and China. She leaves a legacy of some 60 film appearances, numerous stage and television shows, and several radio spots. This book covers Anna May Wong's entire career and personal life. Detailed filmographic entries, with critical commentary as well as cast and technical credits, synopses, and newspaper and magazine reviews, are followed by Wong's stage work and radio and television appearances.
Perpetually Cool by Anthony B. Chan
Call Number: PN2287.W56 C48 2003
ISBN: 9780810847897
Publication Date: 2003-10-09
The biography is a story of roots and identity as Wong ventured to China to discover that part of her which was missing during her time in the United States. This is also the story of the patriotism of Anna May Wong who worked tirelessly against fascism during World War II.
Sessue Hayakawa by Daisuke Miyao
Call Number: PN2928.H35 M59 2007
ISBN: 9780822339694
Publication Date: 2007-03-28
While the actor Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973) is perhaps best known today for his Oscar-nominated turn as a Japanese military officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), in the early twentieth century he was an internationally renowned silent film star, as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin or Douglas Fairbanks. In this critical study of Hayakawa's stardom, Daisuke Miyao reconstructs the Japanese actor's remarkable career, from the films that preceded his meteoric rise to fame as the star of Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat (1915) through his reign as a matinee idol and the subsequent decline and resurrection of his Hollywood fortunes. Drawing on early-twentieth-century sources in both English and Japanese, including Japanese-language newspapers in the United States, Miyao illuminates the construction and reception of Hayakawa's stardom as an ongoing process of cross-cultural negotiation. Hayakawa's early work included short films about Japan that were popular with American audiences as well as spy films that played upon anxieties about Japanese nationalism. The Jesse L. Lasky production company sought to shape Hayakawa's image by emphasizing the actor's Japanese traits while portraying him as safely assimilated into U.S. culture. Hayakawa himself struggled to maintain his sympathetic persona while creating more complex Japanese characters that would appeal to both American and Japanese audiences. The star's initial success with U.S. audiences created ambivalence in Japan, where some described him as traitorously Americanized and others as a positive icon of modernized Japan. This unique history of transnational silent-film stardom focuses attention on the ways that race, ethnicity, and nationality influenced the early development of the global film industry.
Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor; Roger Warner (As told to)
Call Number: DS554.83.H35 A3 2003
ISBN: 9780786713158
Publication Date: 2003-12-26
Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That's who I am," says Haing Ngor. And in his memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge. Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed. Like Pran, too, Ngor was a doctor by profession, and he experienced firsthand his country's wretched descent, under the Khmer Rouge, into senseless brutality, slavery, squalor, starvation, and disease -- all of which are recounted in sometimes unimaginable horror in Ngor's poignant memoir. Since the original publication of this searing personal chronicle, Haing Ngor's life has ended with his murder, which has never been satisfactorily solved. In an epilogue written especially for this new edition, Ngor's coauthor, Roger Warner, offers a glimpse into this complex, enigmatic man's last years -- years that he lived "like his country: scarred, and incapable of fully healing."
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
Call Number: LAW. PN6165.K35 I8 2012
ISBN: 9780307886279
Publication Date: 2012-09-18
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In this hilarious instant classic, the creator of The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood. "[Kaling is] like Tina Fey's cool little sister. Or perhaps . . . the next Nora Ephron."--The New York Times Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck-impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence "Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I'll shut up about it?" Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you've come to the right book, mostly! With several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? proves that Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door--not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka. Praise for Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? "Where have you been all our lives, Mindy?"--Glamour "Who wouldn't want to hang out with Mindy Kaling? . . . [Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?] is like a mash note to comedy nerds."--Time Out New York "Very funny."--Boston Globe
An-My lê: Small Wars by Richard B. Woodward; An-My Lê (By (photographer)); Hilton Als (Interviewer)
Call Number: TR655 .L4 2005
ISBN: 1931788820
Publication Date: 2005-10-15
An-My Lê was born in Vietnam in 1960 and came to the United States as a political refugee at age fifteen. She received a grant to return to her homeland just after U.S./Vietnamese relations were formally restored. Lê went back several times in 1994--97, creating stunning large-format, black-and-white photographs, expertly printed in a middle-gray scale reminiscent of Robert Adams. These images do not address the war specifically, but rather represent Lê's attempt to reconcile memories of her childhood home with the contemporary landscape that now confronted her. The war haunts the images in eerie metaphors: dozens of kites double as dive-bombing planes; crop fires and construction sites recall napalm and mass graves. In 1999 Lê began working with Vietnam War reenactors in North Carolina who restage battles as well as the training and daily life of soldiers--both Viet Cong and American GIs. For four summers, she not only photographed but also participated in battles of the Vietnam War restaged on her adopted American soil. Relating to both documentary and staged photography, the work is aesthetically rigorous and conceptually challenging. Soldiers at rest give themselves up to portraiture, while battle compositions recognizable from classic war photojournalism possess the qualities of a dream. Most recently, Lê has photographed exercises performed by the U.S. military in the American desert in preparation for maneuvers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Small Wars collects these three eloquent series in one volume. As a trilogy, the works brilliantly elucidate the complicated nature of the aesthetics and spectacle of war. But perhaps the most intriguing conceptual component is Lê's own relationship to the subjects and the landscapes she presents. The book is supported by the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society. Small Wars also received support from the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Maya Lin by Richard Andrews; John Beardsley; Lawrence Weschler (Foreword by)
Call Number: N6537.L54 A4 2006
ISBN: 9780300121209
Publication Date: 2006-11-06
"Utilizing the way in which scientists and computers see our world, drawing on images based on sonar views of the ocean floor, to aerial and satellite views of the land, I have started to create artworks that translate that technological view into sculptural forms.” (Maya Lin) One of the most celebrated artists working in the United States, Maya Lin (b. 1959) came to prominence in 1981 with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Generously illustrated and beautifully designed, Systematic Landscapes traces her continued fascination with geologic phenomena and topography, integrating natural contours and materials into evocative landscape sculptures such as Character of a Hill Under Glass (2002) and 11 Minute Line (2004). As the book reveals, Lin’s earthworks and public sculptures have always developed alongside small-scale, exploratory sculptures and monumental temporary installations, such as Avalanche (1998), through which Lin evokes the physical processes that shape the earth. This important volume also introduces three major new installation works created for the "Systematic Landscapes" exhibition, along with a series of related drawings and reliefs demonstrating the expanding scope of Lin’s creative process. The largest of these installations, 2 x 4 Landscape, is composed from more than 45,000 sections of lumber placed on end that from a distance take on a pixel-like image of a hill, and close up create a form that evokes both mound and wave, earth and water. Systematic Landscapes is of interest to newcomers to Maya Lin's work as well as to longtime enthusiasts of her unique artistic creations and stunning design work.
Doing Justice by Preet Bharara
Call Number: KF8700 .B43 2019
ISBN: 9780525521129
Publication Date: 2019-03-19
The former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York recounts captivating tales of true crime from his years atop the most storied prosecutor's office in the country -- inside stories of terrorists threatening America, mob hit men, billion-dollar fraudsters, corrupt politicians, and even a "cannibal cop". Bharara entertains us, but also inspires us to aim high, laying out a path for how to think and act to reach fair and morally correct judgments.