Asian American History Curriculum
While people of color as a whole are barely visible in the traditional narrative of American history, Asian Americans are perhaps the most ignored minority group in school curriculum. Below are resources available online, including lessons I have created myself to bring Asian/Asian American history into the classroom. I have intentionally focused on works created by Asian American community members and scholars rather than more mainstream historical or teaching sources that often present an outsider view of ethnic histories.
Early Asian Immigration to America
- Work of Giants: Chinese Railroad Worker Project by the Chinese Historical Society of America
- Remembering 1882 and Chinese citizenship by the Chinese Historical Society of America
- I Want to Go to School: The Case of Tape v. Hurley Curriculum Guide by the Chinese Historical Society of America
- Chinese Exclusion & Angel Island (Primary Sources & Discussion Notes for middle school lessons)
- Filipino Farmworkers in California (Lesson supplementals: Grape Basics, Meet the Manongs reading packet, and A Season of Work)
- Roots in the Sand: Punjabi-Mexican families in California by J.M. Hart/PBS and article from Washington Post
Japanese Incarceration (Internment)
- Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive
- Letters from the Japanese internment by the Smithsonian
- Densho Project: Primary sources about Japanese incarceration
- Teacher resource guide for In the Shadow of My Country: A Japanese American Artist Remembers (grades 5-12) by Densho Project
- Euphemisms, Concentration Camps and the Japanese Internment by NPR
- Words do Matter: A Note on Inappropriate Terminology and the Incarceration of the Japanese Americans by historian Roger Daniels
- Relocation and internment in children's books by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Asian Americans post-1965
- The International Hotel's Final Victory by International Hotel Senior Housing, Inc.
- SmithsonianAPA's digital exhibit about the H1-B visa on its 25th anniversary
- SmithsonianAPA's Yuri Kochiyama digital exhibit
- The Asian American Movement (Snapshots of School Segregation for primary, Faces of the AAM for intermediate, and an introduction to the Movement for middle school)
- Grace Lee Boggs official website
- Asian Immigrants & Refugees
Resources for Specific Asian American Groups
- Vietnamese American Oral History Project by UC Irvine
- A Century of Challenge & Change: The Filipino American Story by SmithsonianAPA
- Filipino American history curriculum guides by FANHS
- Korean American Historical Society
- Museum of Chinese in America
- Chinese Historical Society of America
- South Asian American Digital Archive and lesson plans by SAADA
General Asian Culture & History
- Asian American history timeline by CETEL
- Timeline from Shelley Sang-Hee Lee's A New History of Asian America
- Teaching about Lunar New Year through postage stamps by the Smithsonian
- E-Comic to accompany SmithsonianAPA's I Want the Wide American Earth exhibit (posters available for free to educators)