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Related work / inspirations

In the spirit of a "Constellation of Inspirations" (Alice Yuan Zhang external link), here are a range of people, projects, writings, and ideas which have inspired and shaped my work.

Also see:

RI Chinese History Project external link by Angela Yuanyuan Feng, Julieanne Fontana, John Eng-Wong, Robert Lee, and others. This project is how I first learned about Providence's Chinatown, and I'm grateful that with their support I have been able to pursue this project. Also see the Public Works podcast interview external link.

Future Through Memory external link by Lilian Leung; virtual storytelling through Toronto’s Chinatown, including community-produced 3D scans of important sites.

Long Time No See Chinatown external link envisioning Chinatown futures (Toronto)

Forever Chinatown is the story of artist Frank Wong's work to reconstruct interior scenes of San Francisco's Chinatown from his memory: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/346740 external link

Prarie Lotus by Linda Sue Park, is accompanied, on her website, by a Native American resource guide compiled by author and educator Andrea Page (Oceti Sakowin Hunkpapa), about the Oceti Sakowin people of the area in which the book is set.

A Portable Paradise external link, by poet Roger Robinson, has been a big inspiration to me in this work.

Cynthia Copeland: Restoring Seneca Village - Lessons for Snowtown external link includes historical and archaeological work in a Black community that lived in what is now Central Park, touching on their search for descendants, as well as participatory archaeology work, the use of core sampling and ground penetrating radar in understanding this community.

Tending our Roots external link - "A growing archive of stories about making places of belonging in AAPI America" - especially the Vision and Values page external link

Jo Ayuso of Movement Education Outdoors external link who has integrated deep history and Black and Indigenous reclaiming into powerful outdoors/mindfulness/environmental education programs for BIPOC youth, and who has inspired me with her vision of mutual care in group work.

Mia Warren's Uncovering the Asian American Old West external link. Mia (my sister!) got me interested in the Asian American history of the West, and put me onto Liping Zhu's work on this topic, as well as Linda Sue Park's.

Histories of Chinatowns and erased enclaves of color

A Tale of Three Chinatowns, by documentary filmmaker Penny Lee, tells the parallel but distinct stories of Chinatowns in Chicago, Boston, and Washington, DC: https://www.pbs.org/video/a-tale-of-three-chinatowns-ytmt4v/ external link

Vanishing Chinatown tells the story of a family-run photo studio in San Francisco Chinatown through the photographs and backdrops recovered years after it closed: https://www.vanishingchinatown.com/the-film.html external link

After Life - a fictional film by Hirokazu Kore-eda on memory, life, death, and creative reconstruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rk1HFC60e0&t=316s external link

Connie Young Yu is a historian, archeologist, activist and author on the Chinese experience in America. She gave a 2010 interview with Community Balance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XtvCaiKbcQ external link

Laura Ng's An Archaeology of Chinese Transnationalism external link and lecture Creating Home on Both Sides of the Pacific: The Archaeology of Old Chinatowns and New Villages external link

Rememberance

"Denver’s destroyed Chinatown is getting a mural dedicated to the once-thriving area’s past, present and future." https://denverite.com/2022/11/02/denvers-destroyed-chinatown-is-getting-a-mural-dedicated-to-the-once-thriving-areas-past-present-and-future/ external link

"San Jose apologizes for destruction of Chinatown in 1887" https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-28/san-jose-apologizes-for-1887-chinatown-destruction external link

"L.A.'s memorial for 1871 Chinese Massacre will mark a shift in how we honor history" https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-10-22/how-a-planned-monument-marking-the-chinese-massacre-of-1871-begins-to-fill-historical-gaps external link

"An L.A. mob once massacred 18 Chinese people. Now, a push to never forget the racist assault." https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-20/los-angeles-1871-chinese-massacre-memorial external link

"Report of the 1871 Memorial Steering Committee." https://civicmemory.la/report/1871/ & https://civicmemory.la/PDF/ external link

"Request for Ideas: Memorial to the Victims of the 1871 Chinese Massacre" https://culturela.org/programs-and-initiatives/rfi-memorial-1871-chinese-massacre/ external link

"Broken News." A project by Adit Dhanushkodi, Broken News portrays the deeply troubling vein of anti-Chinese sentiment in the popular press – as relevant today as it was in 1871. https://www.unionstationla.com/happenings/broken-news external link

http://takachizu.org/treasure/takachizu-zine-1 external link

Remembering the Forgotten Chinese Railroad Workers external link by Veronica Peterson

How Tacoma’s small Chinese community reckoned with the city’s anti-Chinese history external link discusses the story of the Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park.

Archives, harm & pain

Dorothy Berry's The House Archives Built external link, on Black archiving, Black stories and materials in archives, the trust in contributing family collections, the harm of search terms, and more.

We Still Can’t See American Slavery for What It Was external link, by Jamelle Bouie, discusses the limitations of understanding the lives of those enslaved during the trans-Atlantic slave trade through data-driven records and the accounts by enslavers.

Wayward lives, beautiful experiments : intimate histories of social upheaval, by Saidiya Hartman, makes use of her methodology of critical fabulation to combine deeply researched archival materials, read "against the grain" to speculatively retell the lives of young Black women in the early 1900s, recognizing them as social innovators challenging oppressive anti-black systems through radical new ways of living.

Venus in Two Acts external link, by Saidiya Hartman (content warning: accounts of extreme violence and dehumanization)

This episode of the Parenting Decolonized podcast, Rethinking Genealogy & Releasing Ancestral Shame with Walter English external link, focuses on Black American genealogy and both pain and shame in relation to researching one's own family history.

The National Archives and Records Administration has an interesting and detailed page on harmful content in archival records: https://www.archives.gov/research/reparative-description/harmful-content external link