 Hello, my name is Joseph and I'm a Youth Librarian for San Francisco Public Library. I'm so happy you are here with us to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Month with local author and publisher Oliver Chien. This May, we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander everywhere with our program series. Check out San Francisco Public Library's webpage to see our upcoming events, books by Asian American and Pacific Islander authors and illustrators, exciting booklets, artists, shop, and much more. We would like to thank the Friends of SAPL for their continued support of library programs. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that as I stand here in San Francisco, California, we are on the unseated land of Ramatouche Ohlone peoples who continue to live, work, and play here today. Secondly, I would like to stand in solidarity with our Asian American community in condemning racism and expressions of hate, discrimination, and xenophobia of any kind. Oliver Chien co-founded Emidium in 2004, an independent publisher of wonderful and diverse children picture books based in San Francisco. Emidium has published books that feature multicultural themes and characters. Oliver Chien is the author of the popular series, Tales from the Chinese Sodiak, and Julie Black Belt, and Sports Commentary The Dao Piao, an insight from basketball's Brightest Big Man. Oliver has co-authored the storybook series, The Asian Whole of Pain, that celebrate Asian inventions that change the world. Oliver's new book is called Awesome Asian Americans, 20 Stars Who Made America Amazing. It's co-written by Phil Amara and illustrated by Juan Calle. In this reading, coordinating part with the APIA Biography Project with SF State Asian American Studies Department, Oliver highlights Dolly G's advocacy for social justice. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce a prolific author and publisher whose work continue to increase the representation of Asian American characters in the media. Hello, my name is Oliver Chien. I'm a San Francisco publisher and author and happy to participate in San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Public Library celebration of May 2021, which is Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month. As you may know, the library and the university is teaming up to promote greater awareness and understanding of Asian Americans in the theme of writing justice, the impact of Asian Americans fighting for social justice within the American judicial system. We've recently published and written a book, Awesome Asian Americans, which is about 10 women and 10 men who've contributed to our country. So today I'll be presenting some of the chapter for Dolly G, who is a U.S. federal judge. And I have a small PowerPoint, which will go over some of our book. And then we'll read some of the chapter together on Adobe Acrobat. So this is the book we've made with my co-author Phil Amara and illustrator Juan Calle. And again, our goal was to cover people who have contributed from very varied walks of lives and as well as different ethnicities from the 20th century to today. There could be scientists or entertainers, people who've struggled for civil rights or become business leaders. We've tried to do so in a way which would be very engaging, six pages per person, 20 chapters with more than 60 full color illustrations in a graphic novel style. So today we're talking about Dolly G, who is a U.S. federal judge. And as you know, during the last year, especially, there's been a lot of news about immigration, especially from the southern border of share with Mexico. And the various things that our government has done, good and bad, controversial, and even perhaps even not lawful. The person we're profiling in our chapter is Dolly G. And she's been covered in all major news outlets for her decisions about the U.S. government and its immigration policy. And recently she was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles. So we're going to share now some of her chapter. So we're going to read a part of Dolly G's chapter number 12 in her book, Awesome Asian Americans. She was born in 1959 near Los Angeles, California. And her opening quote is, oftentimes we limit ourselves and it is important sometimes to get out of your comfort zone and to accept the possibility that you might be able to do something in another field that you might not have necessarily thought about for yourself. After her father died in a civil war, 15-year-old Jenny Flores fled El Salvador to join her aunt in America. The INS arrested her at the U.S. Mexico border. Jenny was stripped, searched, imprisoned with men and women near Los Angeles and denied education, recreation, and visitations. In 1985, a class action lawsuit was filed against the United States for mistreating migrant children like her. In 1997, the United States consented to the Forest Settlement Agreement, otherwise known as the FSA, to provide a standard quality of care for detained undocumented minors and to ensure their rapid release from detention to adult relatives or licensed shelters. When Jenny was detained, Dali Ji had just become a lawyer a few miles away and knew nothing about Jenny's case. Soon, Dali would devote her legal career to protecting workers fighting against discrimination, bridging the divides between groups, and eventually upholding the rights of society's most powerless. The Ji clan in China's Guangdong province traces its roots to Zhu Ji, an influential Confucian scholar during the Song dynasty. Despite the family's scholarly roots, later generations turned to farming and southern China's rural hinterlands into economic hardship, warfare, and migration. In 1848, who was discovered in California, a new spread worldwide via merchant ships. In China, America became known as Gold Mountain. The Gold Rush ended, but the Golden State still attracted migrants to toil on farms and in garment factories for lives better than those they left behind. Dali's great-great-grandfather joined thousands who deported Huishan in southern China to come to America. He worked on the Transcontinental Railroad that was completed in 1969. Gradually, the whites who feared Chinese competition for jobs stoked anti-Chinese sentiment. This resulted in discrimination, massacres, and the first U.S. immigration law that banded an entire group of people based upon ethnicity and nationality. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the immigration of Chinese labors and denied citizens to people born in China. Enabled to stay, Dali's forefather returned to China. Her parents grew up in Toisan small farming villages that had no running water or electricity. So we're going to pass forward a couple of pages to after Dali goes to law school at UCLA and is practicing law at a law firm. Although America is increasingly diverse, the U.S. judiciary was composed of white men for most of the 20th century. Dali's friends urged her to consider joining the pool of applicants to become a federal judge. Despite being content in her law practice and having the skivvins about changing her career path, Dali applauded. In 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated her late in his second term nomination stalled in the U.S. Senate and then lapsed after the 2000 election. And years later, Dali resubmitted her application. In 2009, President Barack Obama renominated her. The Dali Senate confirmation hearing California Senator Barbara Boxer said, quote, as the daughter of immigrants from rural China, Dali personifies the American dream. She used her position as a prominent attorney in Los Angeles to promote racial tolerance and pride for justice for those who face discrimination on court. On Christmas Eve, 2009, Dali was confirmed as the first Chinese American woman in the nation's history to become a federal judge under Article 3 of the Constitution. So we're going to move up a little bit more. Read this next part. After the 2016 election, immigration issues became even more divisive. The Trump administration adopted controversial policies that banned travelers from Muslim countries, reduced the number of refugees that suffered and made it harder for immigrants to seek asylum. In 2017, it authorized the policy separating children from their children and parents. By the time the practice ended, this policy had affected more than 3,000 children. In 2017, Dali ordered the return of an Iranian man who had become granted permanent residence but was prevented from entering the United States into the travel ban. Later that year, she ruled that ICE deprived detained minors of necessities, such as soap and toothbrushes, and FSA mandated safe and sanitary conditions. In 2019, Dali denied the Trump administration's proposal to detain the children indefinitely in ICE facilities without court oversight. Rejecting the Justice Department's claims that these changes were consistent with the FSA, she countered, just because you tell me it's night outside doesn't mean it's not day. The FSA ensures that our nation treats all migrant children in custody with dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors. Dali has scrutinized repeated attempts to undermine that standard. Affirming the importance of actively participating in a society, Dali commented, if you do not have a voice at the table, there are many decisions that are made that may adversely affect your community. So that's our selection on Dali G for May Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Thank you very much. How did I end up, or we end up selecting Dali G to represent judges? So for our 20 profiles, we definitely wanted a balance of genders, 10 women, 10 men, and vocations or occupations. As we know, Asians have been involved with many landmark US laws and judicial decisions just to set a few. In 1882, the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, very infamous and low point in our history, basically excluding a whole race of people from being immigrants. Eventually that was overturned. In 1898, the US versus King Ma arc established and solidified the principles of birthright citizenship, where if you're born in the US, you're a citizen. Recently, as you might know, the Trump administration tried to undermine that. The Immigration Act of 1952 removed the criteria of being white as essential for being an immigrant. So removing that from the naturalization process allowed Asian immigrants to become naturalized US citizens for the first time. 1944, backtracking, Korematsu versus the United States. That's when the US Supreme Court by a 6-3 decision upheld President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's executive order 9066, which interned hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in World War II. Justice Frank Murphy dissented by writing racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part, whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States unquote. So as we've grown up, parents have always said, I'll be a doctor or a lawyer. So we definitely want to include a lawyer. Dolly G was an ideal choice because she was the first Chinese American woman in US history to become a federal judge. The second question from San Francisco State is, what was the most surprising or fun thing we found out about Dolly G? So on the part we didn't read from her chapter, we cite how Dolly was a coxswain for eight women crew team at UCLA during college, which won a regional championship. So if you've never done crew before, it's people lined up in a very thin boat, each having one or it's kind of like a butterfly where half of them are on one side, half of them on the other side. The coxswain is usually the smallest and lightest person because they're not rowing. Their duties include the safety of the boat and the rowers on and off the water, launching and landing the boat, steering the boat, helping execute drills with the coach and then giving individual feedback, making rowers better, adding drills and providing enthusiasm and motivation for the crew, especially during the race. So the coxswain, though, that person doesn't actually row is the glue that holds it all together, giving the timing and the rhythm and the beat, providing reliable structure with teamwork and leadership. So obviously these practices provide a firm foundation of characters to someone who could become an effective lawyer and judge. And we found that to be quite compatible with her career and what she's currently doing, upholding our nation's laws. So that's our little bit about Dolly G from our book, Awesome Asian Americans. And we look forward to sharing some more stories with you in the future. So I'm gonna read part of the introduction of the 20 profiles and then a couple of select people. In 2018, the phrase Asian American had its 50th anniversary. In 1968, students of the University of California, Berkeley coined the term when they founded the Asian American Political Alliance. Fueled by the 1960 civil rights movement, AAPA, protest for legal, political and social equality for Asians in America as well. A year later, San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, Davis and Los Angeles founded the first college level Asian American Studies programs in the United States. That was the label Oriental. That term came from the Latin word Oriens, which meant rising. The sun rose from the east. From Europe, the center of the Roman Empire and later the Domet colonizers of the world, Asia was East. Therefore to Europeans, anyone coming from the direction of Asia was Oriental. American heritage is Eurocentric perspective and the definition of Oriental, which could mean foreign, exotic, other. This racial profile is stereotyped as stranger from somewhere else as an outsider who not really belong here. But what if people with Asian heritage wanted to control their own identities? Asians have been Americans for centuries. In 2020, Asians were the fastest growing group of American immigrants. It is projected that quote unquote minorities will become a majority of the US population by 2050. However, since the global spread of the new coronavirus disease started in November 2019, COVID-19, anti-Asian racism has spiked in the United States. By May 2020, the Center for Public Integrity reported that 30% of Americans witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the pandemic and 60% of Asian Americans had seen such behavior. The Washington Post reported that Asian American doctors and nurses were being harassed and recently the group stopped AAPI hate reported that almost 4,000 assaults have happened against Asian Americans in our country. Reed, her quote introducing herself, knowledge of history can be used as a weapon to divide us further or seek truth and learn from past errors and flagrant remisses. Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more justice society than we have seen. So here's her introduction. On February 21st, 1965, Yuri Kochiyama and her oldest son Billy joined the crowd entering the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, New York City. Everyone had come to hear Malcolm X speak. Three decades earlier in 1931, the African-American Association Nation of Islam was founded in Detroit, Michigan. Nearby in the city of Lansing, Malcolm Little was six years old. White supremacists had burnt his family's house down two years before. Now they murdered his father who was a Baptist minister. As an adult, Malcolm during the nation in 1956 and adopted the last name of X to reject his quote unquote slave surname. Soon he became the nation's most outspoken member challenging the civil rights movement led by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who advocated integration through nonviolent resistance. Instead, Malcolm X argued that blacks should defend themselves by any means necessary. In 1964, Malcolm X's growing stature threatened the nation's leader, Elijah Muhammad, who expelled him. Malcolm then visited Mecca, founded a new organization and stated that African-Americans greatest enemy was racism and not whites. Yet at the Audubon, he knew his life was in danger. His house in Queens had been firebombed a week earlier. On stage, he began to address his followers. Then chaos erupted. Three nation assassins shot him. A photo published in Life Magazine's March 5th issue showed Malcolm X as he lay dying while Yuri Kochiama gently cradled his head. Okay, so we're gonna move forward to another profile. We're gonna read a little bit of Bruce Lee. And his quote is, true mastery transcends any particular art. It stems from mastery of oneself, the ability to develop through self-discipline to be calm, fully aware, and completely in tune with oneself and the surroundings. Then and only then can a person know himself. A 1973 movie, the game of death pre-saged video games. In it, five foot seven inch Billy Lowe, clad in a yellow tracksuit, fights his way up a pagoda to steal a treasure. But to reach this prize, he must defeat bosses of increasing difficulty. The fifth floor garden is the seven foot two giant called Mantis, played by the 1971 most valuable player in the National Basketball Association, Cream Abdul-Jabbar. The film star was its creator who constantly battled prejudice. Shockingly, he died before ever completing the story, right when he was about to become the most famous martial artist ever. When the man is even bigger than the myth, that is Bruce Lee. In 1939, the Chinese Cantonese opera company invited Lee Ho Chun, a renowned Hong Kong actor on their American tour. His wife, Grace, from a wealthy family and his mother was English, accompanied as wardrobe manager. The next year, Lee Jun Fan, the fourth of their five children was born in San Francisco's General Hospital. A nurse suggested his English name be Bruce. According to the Chinese zodiac, he was born in the auspicious year of the Golden Dragon and in the dragon's morning hour. At three years old, he was cast in his first film, Golden Gate Girl, and he played the role of the girl baby. So we're gonna read a little bit of one last profile just to give you a taste of the book. And this is Helen Zia, chapter 11. Her quote is, we have to speak up. Nothing gets done unless you speak up, whether it's in America or anywhere else. On June 19th, 1982, Vincent Chen, a 27-year-old Chinese-American, celebrated his upcoming marriage. My draftsman had an engineering firm and a waiter. He had his bachelor's party in Highland Park, a city within Detroit, Michigan. The US auto industry had collapsed and many blinded on competition from Japan and anyone who looked Japanese. As an adult bar, Ronald Evans, a Chrysler plant superintendent and his 23-year-old stepson, Michael Knitz, singled out Vincent and were overheard using racial epithets. The two groups were thrown out of the club. The two white men grabbed a baseball bat from their car and attacked Vincent in a nearby McDonald's parking lot. Knitz held Vincent's arms as Evans swung the bat repeatedly at Vincent's head. Four days later, Vincent was removed from life support. His wedding guests went to his funeral instead. Knitz and Evans never spent a day in jail. Nine months later, after pleading guilty to manslaughter, the pair was sentenced to three years probation and fined $3,000 by a judge who did not call witnesses or have a prosecutor present and said the same. A laid-off Chrysler auto worker herself, Helen Zia, followed the local news. Frustrated by the injustice, she recognized the racism she suffered as a child. She was a long way from home trying to find her calling. This became the turning point that directed her life. And our answer to that is everybody in our book, the 10 women and 10 men, has fought against social injustice in different ways and in combination of ways. This could be A, personal, B, through community organizing, C, through their work, D, through their advocacy, and fifth through their image. So starting on a personal level, many encountered racism from the very beginning that they were coming to our country. So Tyra Swann, when he immigrated in the early 1900s, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act had already been passed the first federal law to ban an entire ethnicity. Vicki Draves, an Olympic gold medalist diver when she was growing up here in San Francisco, she trained as a teenager at the pool at the Fairmont Hotel on Naupel. And there her coach had to create a special club just for her where she was the only member to separate her from all the Anglos. Later she recognized that for what it was. On a community organizing level, through the excerpts we just read about Yuri Kuchiyama and Helen Zia, they've organized collective protests against prejudice, C, in terms of a person's work and struggle against prejudice and to increase representation, you see that in people like Shihi Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, he became the first non-white majority owner of an NFL team and of course many of the owners and stakeholders didn't want him to be that. You can see then the work of Mindy Kaling, the comedian and writer-producer who's introduced herself as well as other people of color in her TV shows and movies. For advocacy that can take place in politics and in the law, you see that with Senator Daniel Inouye, as well as Judge Dolly G. And for image inspiring people to stand up and be counted that you see also that through Bruce Lee and also through athletes like Jeremy Len. Literature is definitely a vehicle for social change but it's a piece of the puzzle. But I think for children especially, it's critical. Brudine Sims Bishop in 1990 coined the term mirrors, windows and doors, how a book acts as each of those for kids. It's a mirror where they see themselves. It's a window through which they can see the lives of other people. And it's a door through which they can enter to experience the possibility of a different life. So literature needs to change itself because through the most of the 20th century, American children's literature traditionally underrepresented characters and creators of color. It's only through the last five to 10 years has that really changed to match the demographics of our country. So it is important to speak up and use our voices, especially at times like these. And we hope our book is part of that. So for the fifth question, we had a hard time including narrowing it down to 10 people of female persuasion and 10 people of male persuasion. But we didn't want to single anyone out for not being included. But certainly there are a ton of very well-known people who've been profiled in other places like Chalice Yo-Yo Ma, who was recently in the news for giving a free impromptu performance after getting vaccinated and architect Maya Lin, who was just featured in March 18th New York Times for redesigning Smith College's Nielson Library. But we also wanted to highlight some people from the past who are not as famous and who haven't gotten the attention they deserve. So this transitions to the last question. For the people we did include, we wanted to have a balance of gender countries of origin from their forebears and occupations. So by hopefully creating a level playing field where there was a smorgasbord of variety, we could create a more well-rounded whole that would represent all the different aspects that Asian Americans participate in our country. So determining what parts of their lives to include definitely was a challenge and it's the responsibility of any biographer. But we did want to focus on the key moments and the dramatic points in their lives. A French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson was known as the father of street photography doing documentary candidates in Paris. And he was known for calling it the decisive moment for a photographer. So this is what he said, quote, when a photographer raises his camera at something that is taking place in front of him, there was one moment by which the elements in motion are in balance. Photography must seize upon this moment unclearly. So this commonly seen in the golden hour of the day which is right after sunrise or right before sunset. And so we wanted to choose the moments in each of these people's lives which were decisive moments for them which changed the course of their lives or was really where everything they had prepared for their lives was coming into fruition and they had to kind of make it happen or not. So much like any story, we wanted it to be dramatic, exciting, like a roller coaster, but definitely totally true. And so that's what we were aiming for. Thank you, Oliver, for sharing incredible, amazing Asian-Americans. Knowledge G is super awesome. Check out Awesome Asian-Americans by Oliver Chin to read the rest of 20 incredible Asian-Americans. We are very grateful to Oliver Chin as I've studied Asian-American studies, the Association of Chinese Teachers Square and Circle Club for today's program. And thank you, students, teachers, readers and listeners for tuning in with us to celebrate Asian-American and Pacific Islander Month. Remember, you can find Oliver Chin's amazing books through SFPL to-go. You can find out more Asian-Americans who have fought for social justice in judicial system with API, a biography.sfsu.edu. If you love today's program, check out our calendar for more virtual Asian-American Pacific Islander programs in our virtual library. And that's it for today, folks. Take good care of yourself, stay safe, and we hope to see you back at SFPL virtual library again soon.