Top Asian American News Stories – August 2021
August 12, 2021
• Posted in

Following the conclusion of the Olympics in Tokyo, we spotlight in this newsletter several Asian Americans who have excelled in athletics at both the national and international levels. Sunisa Lee, Collin Morikawa, and Lee Kiefer are all trailblazers in their respective sports and have significantly enhanced the representation of AAPIs in athletics. We are so proud of their accomplishments.

Hmong Americans are often obscured by model minority myth. Why Suni Lee's win means so much.

Lee's Olympic gold isn't about meritocracy in the US: It's a reflection of the resilience of Hmong Americans, a predominantly refugee community, as well as her own, experts said.

The family of Olympic gymnast Sunisa Lee, who’s Hmong American, erupted in hugs and cheers Thursday the moment she won gold in the women's individual all-around gymnastics final, a reaction that reverberated across the Hmong community, a predominantly refugee group.

Experts say both the struggles and achievements of the Hmong community, an ethnic group with origins in Southeast Asia, have long been shrouded in decades of model minority stereotypes attached to the greater Asian American diaspora. So Lee’s win is far more than another addition to the nation’s medal count. Read more here.

Collin Morikawa — Olympian, 2021 Open Champion, and 2020 PGA Champion: The inside story of Collin Morikawa's journey to the peak of professional golf. 

No two golfing journeys are identical. But if there is a common theme, it’s turbulence. Golf drags you on a rollercoaster ride — you fall in love with the game and then fall out of it. You make a breakthrough and then hit a wall. The exhilarating successes are sandwiched by humbling failures.

That’s what makes Collin Morikawa’s rise so remarkable — the linearity of it all. It’s uninterrupted. There is, simply put, a whole lot of good and shockingly little bad: a comfortable upbringing in Southern California, an outstanding junior golf career that gave him his choice of colleges, a world No. 1 amateur ranking, a degree from one of the best undergraduate business schools in the world, a tour card less than two months after turning pro, an enriching relationship with a beautiful woman, three PGA Tour victories, millions of dollars, a major championship — all before his 24th birthday. Read more here.

Lee Kiefer will take a gold medal home to Kentucky. (Mohd Rasfan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

An American medical student from a fencing family wins a historic gold medal.

For Lee Kiefer, who became the first U.S. man or woman to win a gold medal in individual foil Sunday in the Tokyo Olympics, fencing and medicine run deep. The daughter of two doctors, Kiefer, 27, is a medical student herself, studying at the University of Kentucky. Read more here.

In another curated article, we share a story of Asian American elders who have faced terrible racism and attacks in America and demonstrate, with the help of family members, their tremendous resilience.

After experiencing the surge in attacks on Asian American elders firsthand this year, these families, and others like them, have found strength in their bonds. Pictured from left to right: the Sung family in North Carolina, the Chan family in California and the Kari family in New York. (Emanuel Hahn for TIME)

'Not a Victim.' Asian American elders stand resilient in the wake of hateful violence.

As the daughter of immigrants from China, growing up in New Jersey in the mid–20th century, I knew one element of Chinese culture to be nonnegotiable: children were expected to revere parents, teachers and other elders. In many Asian-American cultures, elders have a special status; they are valued and beloved for the wisdom of their years and all they have endured. My brothers and I knew never to challenge or disrespect adults.

After a lifetime spent absorbing these lessons, it is especially painful today to see cherished elders of any background become targets of the kind of assaults that Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) people are now facing. Read more here.


Finally, we include two powerful collections of Asian American books and images that speak to the shared experiences of our community — the love, tears, anguish and emotions. We hope they help sustain you and your family during these difficult times.

Asian American Voices: An Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month reading list.

“Racism is indiscriminate, carpet bombing groups that bear the slightest resemblance to one another,” wrote Cathy Park Hong, in her recent New York Times Magazine essay. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, verbal and physical violence directed at individuals of Asian descent has reminded us of the ugliness of racism and its ability to silence certain voices by telling them they don’t belong. In response, we’ve sought to help amplify contemporary Asian American voices in this reading list by showcasing titles from Asian American authors. Read more here.

Keeping Love Close. What does love look like in a time of hate? Asian and Asian-American photographers respond.

In Chinese families, you greet someone by asking if they’ve eaten yet. It is love expressed as concern: Let me take care of you, let me tend to your most basic need. And the response — I’ve eaten already — is an expression of love, too. Don’t worry, Mom, I’m doing fine.

When I was in college, my father would send boxes of snacks: packets of potato soup mix, sticks of beef jerky, my favorite chocolate pudding cups, purchased in bulk. Didn’t he know, I thought, that I could buy food myself? He would call me weekly — to fuss, I used to think. Did I need money? Was I staying out late? The day before he died, he called to see if I was going to bed on time.

After my son’s birth, I took him to visit my mother and found she’d converted my old desk into a changing station. A soft mat on the desktop for my baby to lie on. Boxes of wipes in the cubbies that once held envelopes; a pump of hand sanitizer where pens once stood. Every need anticipated and attended to, though of course I could have just changed him on the floor. Holding my 3-month-old, his skull still soft, I was finally old enough to see this for what it was: love disguised as worry. Read more here.

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