Throughout the month of May, Lawrence has been celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. According to current Pan Asian Organization (PAO) Event Coordinator and incoming President Isabel Dorn, a sophomore, AAPI Heritage Month is an opportunity to celebrate pan-Asian culture as well as educate others about the AAPI experience. She said that the month is meant to highlight the beauty of pan-Asian identities just as it does the challenges.
“Often, we talk about the experience particularly for AAPI immigrants; a lot of it is focused on the struggle of being a minority within this country,” Dorn said. “For me, AAPI Heritage Month is an opportunity to celebrate that there are also so many beautiful things about being AAPI.”
Because of the diverse pan-Asian community at Lawrence, Dorn believes that AAPI Heritage Month is especially important on campus. She said there is a difference between being just visible and being empowered by a supportive community on campus, and the goal of AAPI Heritage Month is to further promote the latter pan-Asian student experience.
Intersectionality within AAPI identities is at the heart of Lawrence’s AAPI Heritage Month events, according to Dorn. As a queer Asian woman, she said intersectional identities are inseparable from one another and make up her identity as a whole.
“[My intersectional identities] all reinforce each other,” Dorn said. “I have found that when you add [them] all up, it is a very strong lens that shapes how people perceive people that fall under […] those categories.”
For this reason, Dorn said PAO—which has planned most of the month’s events—is specifically trying to celebrate the intersections between being AAPI amongst other identities. She used the example of the AAPI and LGBTQIA+ Boba & Movie Night that will be hosted by PAO and queer student organization PRISM. The event will be held on Thursday, May 18 on the fourth floor of the Seeley G. Mudd Library with boba from UniUni, a bubble tea shop owned by an Asian-American woman. The movie will highlight the intersection of being Asian, LGBTQIA+ and a woman in the United States, something Dorn saw her own experiences reflected in.
Dorn said PAO has been collaborating largely with Lawrence University Native Americans (LUNA) to plan AAPI Heritage Month events to especially recognize Pacific Islander culture. She believes that often, Pacific Islanders are underrepresented in AAPI Heritage Month. Dorn’s goal in planning the month’s events was to realize more inclusivity of Pacific Islanders in the celebration of pan-Asian identities.
“Although the population of Asian students on campus is a lot larger than the population of Pacific Islanders here, that doesn’t mean that Pacific Islanders’ stories don’t matter,” Dorn asserted. “[They] should be highlighted, and so we wanted to ensure that we were able to empower both communities.”
As a result, PAO and LUNA collaborated to highlight Pacific Islanders in two upcoming events: the AAPI Art and Media Exhibit and the Kukui Nut Lei Workshop.
The AAPI Art and Media Exhibit began on Thursday, May 11 and will be held until Saturday, May 13 in the Warch Campus Center gallery outside of the Somerset Room. There, different visual forms of visual art from pan-Asian cultures are displayed, including poetry, traditional clothing and studio art. Dorn compared its set-up to that of the Black Feminist Fortnight event, which highlighted accomplished Black women by displaying their pictures and biographical information in the gallery.
LUNA president and senior Mahina Olores brought Native Hawai’ian instruments and regalia to display in hopes of sharing his Native Hawai’ian culture more completely.
“It’s just to see the side that you don’t see,” Olores said. “Usually, when you think of Native Hawai’ians and Hawai’i, you think of ‘Moana’ and ‘Lilo and Stitch’ […] you think of Hula dancing and leis […] but you don’t really think about the meanings behind them or even the people—you just think of what you think of when you see tourist brochures.”
First-year Hana Ramos, who is a Native Hawai’ian member of LUNA, emphasized the importance of contemporary Hawai’ian clothing in the exhibition, as he believes it helps display both the traditional and modern sides of Hawai’i.
“One of the things I think is important in this kind of exhibition is […] just the idea of how people [are] carrying on traditional values, ideals and cultural attitudes going beyond just doing things in an extremely traditional way,” Ramos said.
The Kukui Nut Lei Workshop will be held on Tuesday, May 16 in Memorial Hall. Attendees will craft traditional leis common in Pacific Islander cultures, working with members of the Pacific Islander community to ensure the leis are culturally appropriate.
On May 13, PAO will host the AAPI Cultural Dinner in the Diversity and Intercultural Center (D&IC) in collaboration with the fraternity Beta Theta Pi. Dorn said this event will be especially important since she believes the “Asian” food at Lawrence to often be inauthentic, and the event will be a good opportunity for AAPI students to represent their cultures through authentic cooking. The event also will act as a fundraiser for Dear Asian Youth, a nonprofit organization that seeks to empower young Asians worldwide.
The final event for AAPI Heritage Month will be PAO’s Pani Puri Night in Memorial Hall, hosted in collaboration with the D&IC and the International House. Pani Puri is a South Indian street food.
Dorn hopes non-AAPI Lawrentians will be at the events, as she believes the month to be an opportunity for self-education on AAPI cultures, and that once the month is over, non-AAPI Lawrentians will have achieved a more nuanced understanding of the pan-Asian experience.