In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we are pleased to present an engaging opportunity to learn about the histories that make up the Asian and Pacific Islander Diaspora in the United States. Join us for light refreshments and a lively discussion with UCSC Professor of History Alice Yang and Cathy Choy.

To register for this event, visit the Santa Cruz Public Library website.

Catherine Ceniza Choy is an award-winning Asian American historian and professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Asian American Histories of the United States  (2022) published by Beacon Press in their ReVisioning History book series. The book features the themes of violence, erasure, and resistance in a nearly 200 year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. It was awarded a 2022 Kirkus Star from Kirkus Reviews for books of exceptional merit; named a Best of 2022 Nonfiction Book by Kirkus Reviews and Ms. Magazine; and featured in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2023 National Day of Racial Healing book list and the Texas Library Association’s 2023 Texas Topaz Reading List.

Choy’s first book, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (2003), explored how and why the Philippines became the leading exporter of professional nurses to the United States. Empire of Care received the 2003 American Journal of Nursing History and Public Policy Book Award and the 2005 Association for Asian American Studies History Book Award. Her second book, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (2013), unearthed the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States beginning with the post-World War II presence of the U.S. military in Asia. A CHOICE book review of Global Families concluded: “A useful corrective to one-dimensional, romantic portraits of adoption that saturate popular culture today. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** All levels/libraries.” Choy also co-edited the anthology, Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (2017), with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu.

An engaged public scholar, Choy has been interviewed and had her research cited in many media outlets, including ABC 20/20, The Atlantic, CNN, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, New York Times, ProPublica, San Francisco Chronicle, and Vox, on topics such as anti-Asian, coronavirus-related hate and violence, the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on Filipino nurses in the United States, and racism and misogyny in the March 16, 2021 Atlanta spa shootings.

Choy is Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice in UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). She is a former Department Chair of Ethnic Studies (2012-2015, 2018-2019) and a former Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies Division (2019-2021). Choy received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA and her B.A. in History from Pomona College. The daughter of Filipino immigrants, she was born and raised in New York City. She lives in Berkeley with her husband Greg Choy.

Alice Yang is chair of the History Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz and co-directs the Center for the Study of Pacific War Memories.  She is also the oral history co-director of the Okinawan Memories Initiative. Between 2010 and 2020, she served as provost of Stevenson College at UCSC. Alice teaches courses on Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander history, transnational memories of the Pacific War, oral history, and comparative redress and reparations. Her publications include Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress, Major Problems in Asian American History (co-editor), and What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? (editor). She is currently completing a manuscript on historical memories of Japanese American women’s activism between 1941 and 2021. She is also preparing an exhibit on Japanese American women’s history that is being funded by a California Civil Liberties Public Education Fund grant. She has served as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American History and an advisory board member for the exhibit Then They Came for Me: Japanese American Incarceration during World War II and the Demise of Civil Liberties. Her research has been funded by awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Luce Foundation, and a UCSC Public Humanities, Digital, and Community-Engaged Research Fellowship.