ASAMST 121 Spring 21 Presented by Harvey Dong

In our podcast, Chinese Sweatshop Workers: A Thread in the Fabric of Asian-American History, we speak with two significant figures of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and discuss their roles in confronting and improving the working conditions of Chinese American factory workers. Our guests, Katie Quan and Lora Jo Foo, speak extensively on the toxic working conditions of these sweatshops and factories, the rising tensions between laborers and unions and contractors, and their efforts to help others resist, reclaim rights, and survive. Throughout the podcast, we also discuss the state of factories and sweatshops today, how new technology may be able to help, and how our guests have made milestones in the world of Chinese American woman activism.

Interviewees:

Born and raised in San Francisco, Katie Quan is a third-generation Chinese American who joined the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union after working as a seamstress in a Chinese garment factory in New York. She helped organized the 1982 Garment Workers’ Strike, the largest strike in the history of New York City's Chinatown. She later worked as the ILGWU’s vice president, chaired the founding convention of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, and worked as a board member of the Worker Rights Consortium. Today, Katie Quan remains a guiding force in Asian-American activism with her illustrative art and essay work and is now a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education.

And our next guest, Lora Jo Foo was also a union organizer in the Bay Area as well as an activist in the garment workers union. When she was eleven years old she was a garment worker and she went on to work as an attorney working to represent low wage workers in sweatshop industries.She co-founded Sweatshop Watch and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. Apart from her activism in unionization and labor, Lora Jo Foo is also a photographer and published author, having written books such as Earth Passages Journey’s Through Childhood and Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns and Responsive Human and Civil Rights Advocacy. Thank you both so much for joining us today!

Learn more about the Chinese experience in Latin America. 

Welcome to Gold Mountain Bears, the podcast that discusses and shares the rich history of Chinese people in the United States, spanning from the Gold Rush period in the mid-19th century, to the present. Today we’re talking about Chinese Laundries -- early case histories of struggle against discrimination with Dr. John Jung. After a 40 year career as a Professor of Psychology, in 2002 Jung began to reflect on many aspects of his personal development and returned to a question that he had avoided many times, namely, how does he, as a second-generation Chinese American fit in a predominantly black and white society. Jung’s attempts to understand how his ethnic identity emerged led him to write a memoir "Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese Laundry in the Deep South," in 2005. In this podcast focusing on Chinese Laundries, Jung discusses the vital role that this ethnic business had for Chinese immigrants for over a century all over the U.S.

There is an overlooked connection between the Chinese community regarding health because of climate change. It’s not often a topic of conversation and when sitting down with Alvina, we were able to really grasp how nuanced this issue is, especially with older immigrant Chinese families. We discussed the hesitation of families in participating in environmental justice. One thing we covered a lot was environmental racism and how we can see examples of it in our own neighborhoods and community.

In light of the historical experiences of prejudice against Chinese and Asian-Americans in the U.S., music has been used as a platform for the advocacy of social change throughout the 1960s and so forth. In this podcast, we will be highlighting music as a catalyst for movement building and a tool for uplifting communities through hardships. Our group had the honor to interview Reverend Norman Fong who is one of the founding members and musicians of the San Francisco Chinatown band Jest Jammin’. Jest Jammin’ was founded by five high school students who were influenced by Motown, funk, and soul music. The origins of Jest Jammin’ dates back to the 1960s when Fong and his friends got together and held a going-away party for a beloved friend. Eventually, they declared themselves as a band that would play music for social gatherings, weddings, and community events. Advocacy for social justice naturally became intertwined with their calling during the era of the Civil Rights Movement and the Asian American Movement, as Fong recalls his childhood experiences with anti-Asian violence. For Fong, music is a platform used to create a positive environment and elevate the voices of Chinese and Asian-Americans as well as other marginalized communities. This year marks the 53rd anniversary of Jest Jammin’ and we are beyond privileged to have the opportunity to collaborate with Norman Fong in creating this project.

The Ming Quong Podcast discusses the significance of discovering and rediscovering cultural roots. Through the stories of student producers and interviewee Nona Mock Wyman, listeners gain insight into different perspectives of growing up Asian American. Born in 1935, Nona Mock Wyman grew up in the Ming Quong (meaning "radiant light") home for Chinese girls in Los Gatos. For almost 50 years, she has run a store named Ming Quong in Walnut Creek. In the interview, Nona discusses how she found family with her sisters at the home and the experience of writing about her story today. She talks about how the "MQ girls" didn't want to leave the home and how people are often surprised that she "turned out okay". Through a Chinese American lens, Nona's powerful story connects audiences to themes of family, identity, and resilience.

Our podcast topic is how the first Asian American studies class was started at UC Berkeley and Jeff Leong’s experiences during that time period creating the class. Jeff dives deeper into his own journey as a student, how the course developed, the cultural and historical context behind the course, the backlash, and how Asian American studies is like to this very day.

In this podcast, we will explore the evolution of Chinese restaurants in America from the original Cantonese Chop Suey Houses to the diverse array of Chinese restaurants seen today. Through interviewing Dr. Raymond Chong and hearing about his family’s restaurant, the Far East Cafe, we learn about the formation of many original Chop Suey houses, their roles in the community, and their eventual decline. Supplementing that perspective we also interviewed Steve Wong to learn about the Chinese restaurants today and how they are currently being impacted by the pandemic.

Our podcast regards the “Persecution of Chinese American scientists and researchers in the current climate of hostility between the US and China.” During this interview, we had the opportunity to talk to Joyce Xi, daughter of Chinese American scientist Xiaoxing Xi, regarding her father’s unfair prosecution for being a Chinese spy. Joyce shared with us her first-hand recount of the FBI raid on her family home which took away her father without sufficient evidence of any violation of the law. She then discussed how her family dealt with the court trials and the news press. We sympathized with her on the notion that many Asian Americans had faced and will face similar treatment from the US government, an absolutely unfair and cruel treatment of the Asian community. In the end, we concluded that racial discrimination towards the Asian community in the United States has existed since the first waves of immigration during the Gold Rush period. As international tensions between the United States and China, it is more important now than ever for us to study and understand the history of Chinese Americans to better protect us from similar incidences in the future. 

In this podcast, we spoke with Dr. Russel Jeung on the issue of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Chinese American community. We discussed a variety of topics including COVID-related anti-Asian hate crime, the recent rise in media coverage of anti-Asian hate crimes, and steps that Dr. Jeung's organization has taken to combat anti-Asian hate. Some of the themes that appeared in our podcast include the perpetual foreigner stereotype, white supremacy, and the inter-solidarity between Black and Asian American communities.