During the same week that the House of Representatives joined
the Senate in unanimously passing a resolution expressing regret
for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which until its repeal in
1943, prevented the immigration and naturalization of people of
Chinese origin; the same week that the Pew Research Center
released a much debated study on the growing role and relevance
of Asian Americans in the U.S.; the same week that Asian Pacific
Americans across the country participated in nationwide town
hall revisiting the 30th anniversary of the tragic death of
Vincent Chin, the young man who became a victim of violence when
he appeared to be “Japanese”; and the same week that America
celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Patsy T. Mink Equal
Opportunity in Education Act, a resolution named after the first
Asian American woman to serve in Congress, Representative Patsy
Takemoto Mink, and widely known as Title IX – the Library of
Congress (LOC) released its list of “Books That Shaped America,”
a list of 88 books