Search the Media Repository
Discover the curated images, videos, and primary sources featured throughout Foundations and Futures
History is more than just text on a page; it is the photographs, voices, and artifacts of the people who lived it. The images and recordings featured across Foundations and Futures are part of a meticulously curated media repository. Whether you are building a lesson plan or investigating an artifact, you can use this database to trace the provenance of our media: discover who created an asset, the historical context behind it, and how it can be used to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences into your classroom.
Multimedia
Chapters
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Shirley Maclaine Applying Yellowface for My Geisha
The troubling practice of yellowface often relies on using makeup and prosthetics to create Asian-looking eye shapes, as seen here with Shirley Maclaine (center, holding mirror) on the set of My Geisha (1962).
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Video
Year Of The Dragon Community Reaction
Year of the Dragon (1985) was protested for its depictions of Asian Americans as violent criminals and drug dealers. Others, however, argued that such protests jeopardized the careers of the film’s Asian American actors.
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Community Character Abed Nadir
Community’s Palestinian-Polish American character Abed Nadir—while written as a seemingly archetypical nerd lacking in social skills and a penchant for pop culture and filmmaking—is beloved by and has deep relationships with the rest of the cast.
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Video
Early Years of Visual Communications
Visual Communications was founded in 1970 as one of the first Asian American and Pacific Islander media arts organizations in the US. Hito Hata: Raise The Banner (1980) is considered the first feature-length film by and about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
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Never Have I Ever Characters Nalini and Devi Vishwakumar
In the Netflix TV show Never Have I Ever, the character of Nalini Vishwakumar (left) is portrayed as a hard-working dermatologist who is strict with her strong-willed teenage daughter Devi (right). She might be seen as a Tiger Mom.
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2025 STAATUS Index Bar Graph
Thirty-seven percent of 4,909 Americans surveyed said they couldn’t think of a film with an Asian American character, according to the 2025 STAATUS Index (Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the United States produced by The Asian American Foundation (TAAF).
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Stop Asian Hate Rally in San Jose
A group of protestors in Spring 2021 call national attention to the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, fueled by racist rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Phoeun You On Balcony
After serving twenty-eight years in prison, Phoeun You was released on parole in 2021, but ultimately deported to Cambodia as a result of IIRIRA.
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Sok Loeun Arriving in the US
Sok Loeun (kneeling), a US. citizen, voluntarily self-deported to Cambodia in 2015. As of 2024, more than 17,000 Southeast Asian Americans have received notice of final deportation as a result of the 1996 Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).
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Photo of Ny Nourn as a Child
After her mother fled from the Khmer Rouge regime on foot from Cambodia, Ny Nourn was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. She and her mother eventually resettled in San Diego, California, when she was five years old.
