May at HREI
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is celebrated in the month of May in the United States to recognize the contributions and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States.
Subscribe to our social media channels and join HREI this month in sharing books and stories that highlight the beautiful Asian and Pacific Islander cultures that have given great impact to OUR wonderfully diverse America.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
Hawaii Spotlight
Learn the Hukilau
During our HREI Multicultural camps, and after the students have made their own personal leis and sampled yummy traditional island foods, our program leaders get them out on the dance floor and teach them the Hukilau.
Cook some Shoyu Chicken
Cook up some traditional Shoyu Chicken for dinner with this video tutorial. Shoyu is basically soy sauce.
Mahalo!
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
Learn about Internment Camps
Idaho Statesman Article & Journaling
This is an article published early in 2020 has several resource links for students. Learn more about the history of internment camps in Idaho and how we can better understand the severe trauma imposed on some of our own citizens. Culture is power and knowledge is the key to change.
HREI encourages families to share in this journey with their students and explore the links together. Then, open yourself up to family dialog and a journaling exercise afterwards.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
India Spotlight
Try an Easy Meditation
Try your hand at a short 2.5 minute easy yoga meditation for all ages!
Let’s color!
Color the Indian elephant vividly. Click image to download.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
Children’s Literature
A Different Pond
by Bao Phi (Author) and Thi Bui (Illustrator)
A moving story about the simple event of fishing and the relationship between father and son. Before starting his long workday, a father brings his son to a small Minneapolis pond to fish for enough food to feed their family for the day while sharing stories about their homeland of Vietnam.
Dumpling Days
by Grace Lin
Loosely based on Lin’s Taiwanese American childhood, Dumpling Days follows Pacy as she takes her first trip to Taiwan to visit distant relatives and learn more about her parents’ home country. This book captures Pacy’s journey of experiencing a new culture while trying to better understand herself and her family.
Hush!: A Thai Lullaby
by Minfong Ho (Author) and Holly Meade (Illustrator)
In this perfect bedtime story, a mother tries to put her baby to sleep, but the sounds of nearby animals keep disturbing them. By the end of the story, the lizard, monkey, and water buffalo have finally quieted down, so will mother finally be able to get the baby to sleep?
Shooting Kabul
by N.H. Senzai
Fadi is having a difficult time adjusting to life in the United States away from his home in Kabul and his sister, Mariam, who is missing. When a photography competition is announced and the grand prize is a trip to India, Fadi sees a chance to return to Afghanistan and find Mariam.]
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
Young Adult Literature
From Twinkle, With Love
by Sandhya Menon
Twinkle Mehra is an aspiring filmmaker with stories she’s ready to share with the world, so she is excited to work with fellow film geek Sahil Roy on a movie for the upcoming Summer Festival. Told through letters from Twinkle to her favorite female filmmakers, this teen romantic comedy navigates friendship, family, and the unexpected places you find love.
A Line in the Dark
by Malinda Lo
Fans of teen thrillers will find their next new fave in this story about best friends Jess Wong and Angie Redmond, whose friendship is put to the test when Angie starts spending more time with Margo, a girl from the nearby boarding school. Dark secrets lie beneath the surface of Margot’s carefree world, and Jess knows Angie won’t be able to handle the consequences.
Skunk Girl
by Sheba Karim
Nina Khan is a girl living in upstate New York. Although she has never lived in Pakistan, the strict Muslim traditions affect her daily life. She isn’t allowed to date, or go to parties, or wear flashy clothes. She is expected to study hard and obey her parents, but Nina wants the freedom her friends enjoy. She wants Asher Richelli to be her boyfriend. Above all else, she wants to get rid of the dark, coarse hair sprouting all over her body.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
Adult Fiction
Forgotten Country
by Catherine Chung
Chung weaves Korean folklore with modern identity and immigration in this story about Janie and her sister, Hannah, who she feels a special responsibility to protect. When Hannah inexplicably cuts ties from her family, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister before their family returns to Korea to seek treatment for their father’s terminal cancer.
Gun Dealers’ Daughter
by Gina Apostol
Defying her wealthy upbringing, Soledad Soliman falls in with the radical crowd upon entering university and quickly transforms from bookish rich girl to communist rebel. Years later and far from the Philippines, Sol confesses her youthful indiscretions in hopes to find salvation.
The Last Illusion
by Porochista Khakpour
In a rural Iranian village, Zal was born with pale skin and light hair, which convinces his horrified mother that she has given birth to a “White Demon.” For the first decade of life, Zal’s mother keeps him in a birdcage and away from human society. When Zal is rescued by a behavioral analyst, he awakens in New York with possibility, but an emotionally stunted and physically unfit childhood makes for a bumpy journey to adulthood.
The People in the Trees
by Hanya Yanagihara
Partly inspired by the life of Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, The People in the Trees is the story of Dr. Norton Perina, who earns a Nobel Prize for his research on a lost Micronesian tribe living longer than expected thanks to a native turtle. Unable to resist the possibility of everlasting life, Perina smuggles some of the turtle meat into the United States, but he quickly learns this miracle property comes with terrible consequences.
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Lahiri brings the immigrant experience and culture clash in this story of the Ganguli family from traditional life in Calcutta to their transition to Americans in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ashoke is a trained engineer adapting more quickly to American life than his wife, who pines for life back in India. Gogol is their son, struggling between tradition and assimilation along his first-generation path.
The Reeducation of Cherry Truong
by Aimee Phan
In Phan’s debut novel, Cherry Truong journeys from Los Angeles to reunite with her brother living with distant relatives in Vietnam and uncovers how her family escaped during the Vietnam War, the forces that keep them separated, and the ties that bind them across three continents.
The Samurai’s Garden
by Gail Tsukiyama
During the Japanese invasion of China in the late 1930s, Stephen is sent to his family’s summer home in Japan to recover from a bout with tuberculosis under the care of housekeeper and master gardener Matsu.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month at HREI
Non-Fiction
The Best We Could Do
by Thi Bui
History and memory are woven together in this graphic novel portrayal of Bui’s family as they make their daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s and rebuild their lives as immigrants in a new country.
From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii
by Haunani-Kay Trask
Through one Native’s viewpoint, learn the rich history of Hawaii and the indigenous people who occupied the land and successfully governed the people for thousands of years, and how the arrival of Westerners suddenly changed that peaceful unity between land and people.
Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye
by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
As Mockett grieves her American father’s recent and unexpected death, she travels to Japan, the birthplace of her mother, following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
by Maxine Hong Kingston
Blending autobiography and mythology, Kingston portrays the intersecting identities of being a first generation Chinese American woman.
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