Asian Americans (film series)

Did You Know?

• The series' music was composed by Vivek Maddala.
• Lead producer Renee Tajima-Peña described the series as being about 'not about how Asians became American, but how Asians have helped shape America.'

Content

Premiering on May 11, 2020, the first episode traces Asian migration from China, India, Japan, and the Philippines during the 1800s and 1900s. It begins with Antero, an Igorot boy who worked as an interpreter and house boy for anthropologist Albert Jencks. In 1904, Antero went with Jencks to the St. Louis World’s Fair to take part in a Philippine exhibit. The United States, having annexed part of the Philippines through imperialism, used the exhibit to reinforce racial hierarchies.

Fair managers instructed the Igorot people to perform dances and eat dog for crowds, even though dog consumption was ceremonial and rare. Antero’s descendant, Mia Abeya, discusses her grandfather’s ambition to earn enough money and status to pursue the American dream. The episode then shifts to Asian immigrants who came to California during the 1848 Gold Rush but ended up building the transcontinental railroad. Chinese laborers, seen as cheap and dependable, made up nearly 90% of the western railroad company’s construction crew.

Chinese Associations recovered the remains of workers killed in avalanches and accidents to send back to China; historian Gordon H. Chang notes that around 12,000 sets of remains could be repatriated at once. When the railroad was finished on May 10, 1869, the commemorative photograph excluded all Chinese workers. By 1870, the large number of Chinese laborers was vital to California’s growth but also sparked anti-Chinese hostility, including attacks on Chinatowns, arson, and lynchings.

This prejudice became law in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first U.S. law to bar entry based solely on race and nationality. Historian Erika Lee explains that the act effectively made Chinese people “the first illegal immigrants, the first undocumented immigrants.”

Impact

In the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings on May 16, 2021, the documentary series became freely accessible. Illinois lawmakers and supporters of the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act, which mandates a unit on Asian American history in all public elementary and high schools, have pointed to the series as possible curriculum material. That law was enacted after a rise in anti-Asian attacks and xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic.