UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center on Saturday rolled out a free, online multimedia textbook meant to reshape how schools teach Asian American and Pacific Islander history and cultures, addressing long-running stereotypes that position AAPI communities as outsiders rather than central participants in U.S. political and social life.
The project, “Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook,” was developed over eight years with 100 contributors, according to the center’s co-editors, and is overseen by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Karen Umemoto, the center’s director and a co-editor, said in an interview that “Our presence, our practices, our cultural rituals and things like that are not deemed as ‘American,’” adding that creating the textbook was part of “our fight for inclusion” and “represents our right to be seen, our right to speak.”
Umemoto and Kelly Fong, also a co-editor, described the book as a high-caliber guide for educators at both the high school and college levels, with content meant to be used year-round rather than only during May’s AAPI Heritage Month. Fong said students would get “so many different opportunities to see themselves and their communities represented in this core text” and that she was “can’t wait” for that access.
Developers said the prototype took shape during the pandemic as anti-Asian hate became part of the national conversation. Fong said “COVID, I think, was really one of the things that shaped the textbook the way that it did,” and she described the effort as “education as one of the ways to fight racism.” She also tied the project’s momentum to California’s shift toward requiring ethnic studies by high school graduation: she said a 2021 state law made ethnic studies a graduation requirement and that, by 2022, the Asian American Studies Center received federal and state funding for the textbook.
The textbook’s scope goes beyond the kinds of AAPI topics that appear in many standard texts, organizers said. The editorial team narrowed 150 proposed chapter topics to 50, and the material includes sections on subjects such as the formation of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and Asian Americans in the South. It also includes content related to Vietnamese, Hmong and Indigenous Hawaiians, along with archival photos and embedded videos, including one on Filipino farmworkers narrated by rapper Ruby Ibarra.
Organizers said the multimedia format also aims to make the textbook inclusive in the sense of broadening whose stories are centered. Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, the center’s deputy director, said “We were trying to be as inclusive as possible,” and she pointed to sections that highlight individual experiences, including stories about Cornelia Delute, described as a Filipina supporter of the United Farm Workers, and Mamie Tape, described as an 8-year-old Chinese American girl whose efforts to attend public school were approved by the California Supreme Court.
The textbook also includes political and legal history tied to Patsy Takemoto Mink, who was the first woman of color and Asian American woman elected to Congress. Organizers said Mink opposed the Vietnam War and worked to prevent sex discrimination in education through Title IX, and they used a political scientist contributor, her daughter Gwendolyn “Wendy” Mink, for her section. Wendy Mink said, “I’m just glad that the whole project exists,” and she added that her mother’s generation is dwindling, saying “She was a fighter, she was principled, she offered hope to people who felt beaten down by defeats on struggles for justice.”
Fong and other education partners acknowledged that the political environment has changed since the textbook was first proposed, complicating how quickly states and teachers may adopt it. They said Republicans have argued that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives discriminate against some white and Asian students, and that the Trump administration has attempted to withhold funding from schools, including UCLA, for factoring race in admissions and for campus programs that support students based on identity. Some states, organizers said, have also set up hotlines or websites for reporting DEI practices at publicly funded schools, and critics have likened ethnic studies to indoctrination—factors that Fong said have put teachers “on the front lines” of cultural conflict over what gets taught.
Fong said, “It’s changed for the teachers who we were hoping would use the textbook,” adding that organizers have tried to “figure out how to respond to best support them” while saying they “don’t necessarily have an answer to that yet.” Tina Ellsworth, president of the National Council for the Social Studies and a textbook reviewer, said some states are focusing less on incorporating AAPI history even as work continues in others, often supported through advocacy by large AAPI populations.
Ellsworth said that textbooks have improved “somewhat in terms of cultural relevancy and sensitivity to language,” and she described the UCLA multimedia project as likely to be useful for teachers seeking additional materials on marginalized histories because it is free and connected to a reputable university. “It’s just about letting people know that it’s out there,” Ellsworth said.
Organizers said they are seeking another $5 million through private donations to expand the textbook, market it and cover costs such as cloud storage. They said new sections could include topics involving Tongan Americans and Taiwanese Americans, with Umemoto saying, “There are so many fascinating stories that have yet to be shared with the world.”