Asian Heritage Month Resources

In the late 1870s, thousands of Chinese men left coastal British Columbia and the western United States and headed east. For these men, the Prairies were a land of opportunity; there, they could open shops and potentially earn enough money to become merchants. Cultivating Connections looks at the organizations, relationships, and ties on which these men and their wives depended for sustenance. The result of almost a decade's research and more than three hundred interviews, Cultivating Connections tells the stories of some of Prairie Canada's Chinese settlers – men and women from various generations who navigated cultural difference.

"In Diversity, Crime, and Justice in Canada hate-crime specialist Barbara Perry brings together 16 of the country's leading scholars to address issues of inequality as they intersect with crime and social justice. Students will discover how collective identities--not just of race, class, and gender, but of religion, ability, sexuality, age--play a crucial part in determining the nature of an individual's encounter with the criminal justice system. Integrating themes of history and context, power and powerlessness, and social and political action throughout, the text examines the concept of difference, the specific issues that different groups face with respect to the justice system, and the kinds of reform necessary to mitigate inequalities. Thoroughly updated throughout, the third edition includes the latest statistics, references, and topics--including new content on the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, Missing and Murder Indigenous Women and Girls, and Truth and Reconciliation."-- Provided by publisher.

"Faced with systematic discrimination in Canada, early Chinese immigrants had little choice but to create their own economic niche. From the turn of the twentieth century through the Second World War, a majority of Canada's Chinese immigrants were laundry workers in towns and cities from coast to coast. Although the hand laundry was not a traditional trade in China, laundry work required little capital, and could be performed despite a lack of familiarity with Western languages and financial systems. The hours were long, the work was physically demanding, and most Chinese laundry workers lived a marginal existence." "With the advent of modern laundry equipment and synthetic fibres in the 1950s, and the ageing of the laundrymen themselves, the Chinese hand laundry came to an end. To generations of Chinese-Canadians, however, it remains a symbol of hard work, sacrifice and enduring hardship."--BOOK JACKET.

"In August 1972, military leader and despot Idi Amin expelled Asian Ugandans from the country, professing to return control of the economy to "Ugandan citizens." Within ninety days, 50,000 Ugandans of South Asian descent were forced to leave and seek asylum elsewhere; nearly 8,000 resettled in Canada. This major migration event marked the first time Canada accepted a large group of predominantly Muslim, non-European, non-white refugees. Shezan Muhammedi's Gifts from Amin documents how these women, children, and men--including doctors, engineers, business leaders, and members of Muhammedi's own family--responded to the threat in Uganda and rebuilt their lives in Canada." -- Provided by the publisher

Fiction. "Caught between cultures, immigrant families from a Bengali neighbourhood in Toronto strive to navigate their home, relationships, and happiness. Set in both Canada and Bangladesh, Home of the Floating Lily follows the lives of the characters as they navigate the complexities of migration, displacement, love, friendship, and familial conflict. A young woman moves to Toronto after getting married but soon discovers her husband is not who she believes him to be. A mother reconciles her heartbreak when her sons defy her expectations and choose their own paths in life. A lonely international student returns to Bangladesh and forms an unexpected bond with her domestic helper. A working-class woman, caught between her love for Bangladesh and her determination to raise her daughter in Canada, makes a decision after a dark secret from the past is revealed. In each of the stories, characters embark on difficult journeys in the search of love, dignity, and a sense of belonging."-- Provided by publisher.

"Under the terms of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, Canada implemented a vast protocol for acquiring detailed personal information about Chinese migrants. Among the bewildering array of state documents used in this effort were CI 9s: issued from 1885 to 1953, they included date of birth, place of residence, occupation, identifying marks, known associates, and, significantly, identification photographs. The originals were transferred to microfilm and destroyed in 1963; more than 41,000 grainy reproductions of CI 9s remain. Lily Cho explores how the CI 9s functioned as a form of surveillance and a process of mass capture that produced non-citizens, revealing the surprising dynamism of non-citizenship constantly regulated and monitored, made and remade, by an anxious state. The first mass use of identification photography in Canada, they make up the largest archive of images of Chinese migrants in the country, including people who stood no chance of being photographed otherwise. But CI 9s generated far more information than could be processed, and there is nothing straightforward about the knowledge that they purported to contain. Cho finds traces of alternate forms of kinship in the archive as well as evidence of the ways that families were separated. In attending to the particularities of these images and documents, Mass Capture uncovers the alternative story that lies in the refusals and resistances enacted by the mass captured. Illustrated with painstakingly reconstituted digital reproductions of the microfilm record, Mass Capture reclaims the CI 9s as more than documents of racist repression, suggesting the possibilities for beauty and dignity in the archive, for captivation as well as capture."-- Provided by publisher.

"Who belongs? Who doesn't? Why? With this book authors explore the impact of unquestioned racial assumptions in the Canadian narrative which have constructed an insider/outsider culture. From that baseline, authors then develop an analytic designed to move beyond racialized othering to a society of genuine inclusivity and universal belonging"-- Provided by publisher.

"Twice Migrated, Twice Displaced explores the lives of Gulf South Asians who arrived in Canada from India and Pakistan via Persian Gulf countries. Tania Das Gupta reveals the multiple migration patterns of this group, analyzing themes such as gender, racial, and religious discrimination; class mobility; the formation of transnational families; and identities in a post-9/11 context. This perceptive study demonstrates the effect of neoliberal labour markets and transnationalism on community building, diaspora, citizenship, and a sense of belonging when in Canada."-- Provided by publisher.

Takeo Nakano immigrated to Canada from Japan in 1920, later marrying and starting a family in his adopted homeland. Takeo's passion was poetry, and he cultivated the exquisite form known as tanka. Then came the Second World War. Takeo Nakano was one of thousands of Japanese men forcibly separated from his family in 1942 and interned in labour camps in the British Columbia interior. Takeo was one of those who protested the forced labour in the camps and the separation from his family. His punishment was to be sent even further away, to an isolated internment camp in northern Ontario.