2 10 91 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/850fe709b72add2e92c07774338fe811.pdf 7ed0fe1bf2228e21670514a0d68e95cf PDF Text Text Paul Chan Kevin Lee AAS 307 Final Paper SECTION ONE The person we interviewed was Jane Leung Larson. She is a writer and historian.We conducted the interview on Nov, 18 2016.at 3:30 pm. The interview was approximately 1 hour 30 minutes long. We conducted this interview to learn about the work that she has done as a writer and historian in connecting U.S. and Asian cultures. SECTION TWO From our pre-interview research, we found out that she has done independent research on the Baohuanghui since 1985. She was one of the founding executive directors of the Northwest China Council, one of the 12 regional China Councils sponsored by the national China Council of the Asia society. Some of her research on the Baohuanghui can be found on the website baohuanghui.blogspot.com. On this website, we found some of the presentations and publications that she has worked on. For example, we found a presentation she did about Kang Tongbi, who was Kang Youwei’s daughter and most trusted compatriot. Preparing for the interview, we made a list of questions that we would like to ask her during the interview. After that we decided who would ask the questions. The list of our interview questions are seen below. List Interview Question 1. How did your early life affect your career choice? 2. How did your Chinese heritage affect you when growing up? 3. In your mother’s memoir, it talks about your visit to your parent’s birthplace in China. How did that make you feel? Did it give you a new sense of Chinese Identity? �4. Were you inspired by anyone 5. Where did you grow up and where did you go to school (K-12)? 6. Were there any inspiring people that moved you to this career? 7. What difficulties did you face in your career as a women 8. What do you look for in the people you research and interview 9. Does your heritage have an impact on your work? 10. Is there any trend you see from the research and people as time pass 11. Has Westernization impacted the work you do on Chinese families significantly 12. Do people from different provinces have different belief or do regions have no differences 13. Is there anything about your work that you would like to talk about that we haven’t discussed in this interview? 14. What do you find is the most enjoyable part of your work? 15. How has your work influenced your life? 16. Is there anything that you want people who look at your work to take from it? 17. Is there a message that you want future generations who watch/listen to this interview to hear? 18. How did you find out that your grandfather was a student and follower of Kang Youwei, who would later form the largest transnational Chinese organization, and what was your reaction to that? 19. Did the fact that your grandfather was a student of Kang Youwei affect your childhood? Is so how? �20. What was the influence of Kang Youwei’s organization the Baohuanghui in the U.S? Do you see anything that was the result of the Baohuanghui’s work today? 21. A few years ago, you did a presentation about Kang Tongbi. Could you talk a little more about that? 22. What impression did you get about Kang Tongbi? Do you think that she was a strong female role model? Do you think that she helped you get to where you are now? 23. When you share your work with people, what are their reactions to it? Is your work completely new to them? Is the reaction different between different races? SECTION THREE For probing questions, we used point of view questions because we would frequently ask about her opinion on subjects, such as how was her experience when she first went to China. We also asked about her goals like what she hoped to accomplish with her research. We also asked her clarification questions, when we asked her to talk a little bit more about the Kang Tongbi presentation. We then asked questions when she brought up an interesting topic we wanted to know more about. Our approach as a team to this project was to work together. We both developed questions to ask her and then would take turns during the interview to ask her questions. We did not always get complete answers to our questions, there were some questions that she never really thought about. For example, if her heritage had any impact on her work. Other questions were not relevant, such as if her grandfather being a student of Kang Youwei affected her because she did not meet her grandfather. There were questions that she gave us a lot of information on such as questions about Kang Tongbi. We did get complete answers to things about her work and most things on her mother’s side of the family. �As for the structure of our interview, our interview was a mix of structured and unstructured. We would ask her questions and then would ask to go into detail about what she just said. Sometimes she would describe something that was interesting, so we would ask her to elaborate on it. Before the interview our interviewee, Jane Larson, gave us her CV before the interview took place. On this CV, were scholarly publications she was in as well as a summary of the work that she has done. This CV was our primary source of information when we were making discussion questions to ask her. On the CV, was also a link to a website about the baohuanghui. The name of the website is baohuanghui.blogspot.com. The following is what we have compiled as our interview notes. SECTION FOUR Interview Notes: - Came from a mix marriage with a white father whose heritage was swedish, french, english, and chinese mother whose heritage was Chinese. - Both American. They were both born in the United States. - Really due to father, highlighting the unusualness of her situation. - Father made a big deal out of fact she was Eurasian, more than with her two brothers. - Thinks that he was more interested in her since she was a girl. - Father emphasized Chinese heritage more than Swedish and English heritage which he deemphasized. - Father’s family didn’t want anything to do with her mother, since she was Chinese. - Made a big difference, never knew those relatives. - Basically, her family was her mother's family who were all Chinese. Strongly affected identity. �- More so than with brothers who really didn’t go into her field at all. - All of her Chinese, pure Chinese cousins, except for one, didn’t really touch upon anything Chinese American or Chinese. - Some of them went to China, but her mother was went very early on and she followed the same year. - Mother had a large influence too. She and her father broke up when she was 5. Was a single mother basically. - Parents were both journalists, they were both reporters. They met as reporters in Los Angeles. Her mother was probably the first Asian reporter man or women. She first began her work in 1926. A very strong women, and worked after she and her father split up. - First went to China around in late 1970’s. - Mother wanted to visit where her parents are from. They were on both sides of this river in Shundaca Shunde in Guangdong. - She really did not want to meet any relatives. She only wanted to see the space. - All she did was, collect dirt from the top of a dam. She collected the dirt, and she dispersed it amongst her family in the U.S. in little porcelain vases. - Did not want to visit her relatives because of the experience of her parents or what she remembered from that or she knew of it. Which was her Chinese relatives wanting money, from the Americans. - Ultimately Jane Larson did meet them, much later around 1990’s. - They were indeed quite wealthy but they did indeed want her to help them. - Basically she helped them transfer money so they could buy motorcycles and other things. - Also met her grandmother’s relatives who were quite a different sort. �- Met them through the overseas Chinese affairs office. They tracked down all these people in Guangdong, in Hong Kong and so on. - Has gone back to see them several times, they are much simpler people than the ones in Guangzhou, but she gets along better with them, happened to become rather close to a cousin in Hong Kong. - None of her direct relatives went to the Tong village, but some of the more distant relatives did go to the Tong village. - Her grandfather had a number of relatives and her grandmother had fewer. But many of them were involved with business and some of them were involved with the Chinese Empire reform association as well. On both sides of the family. - Her trips to China gave her a new sense of identity. Originally went to China not because of any particular desire to. Went because of her mother. She wanted to go to China. - It was her mission, after 1972 and Nixon going to China. She wanted to go to China. - Wasn’t easy for a journalist to go to China. Mother had to sort of hide that, and the only way that an American can go was through the U.S. China people's friendship association. - Both joined the friendship association in Portland, Oregon where I lived and she was a member of it in California. - Her mother got chosen for a activist tour in April of 1976. So, she went during the cultural revolution. There were various things happening in China, but she went with a very different kind of group. - Later Jane Larson was chosen to go, originally suppose to go in September but then there was a earthquake and Mao died. �- Her trip was delayed until November/December. So she was then interested in normalization of relations and began to work with the Asian society and the League of women voters. To try and organize a conference on U.S.-China relations and normalization in Portland, Oregon. - She got a lot of support in fact and had a conference after Carter normalized relations.Around March of 1979. - Many were people who were very active in U.S. China relations like Michael Oksenberg, who at that point was Jimmy Carter’s national security person involved with China. - Various people through the Asian society who were pretty significant. Then mobilized a group of people in Oregon, a few China scholars the few who existed and lots of Chinese Americans and anybody who was interested in China to organize the Northwest regional China council. Happened in 1980. - Grandfather’s connection with Kang Youwei part of the family lore. Something her mother talked about. She couldn’t communicate with her grandmother, who lived far longer than her grandfather. - She never met my grandfather, he died long before she was born. - Father was really interested in Chinese [history] and he saw the significance even if mother didn’t. - He was a real historian, amateur historian, like her but he really loved history and really valued history and valued artifacts. So when he had tuberculosis they had to move him from Chicago to Los Angeles and when he finally got out of the sanitarium, he went to live with the Leungs. - Her father got her mother to interview the grandmother. He knew that Tom Leung was an interesting and important man and he of course heard of Kang Youwei. �- He got her mother to do this long oral history on a notebook. Then she typed it all up, those notes, that's what she based her book on. - He got her mother’s siblings and other people who knew Tom Leung to write up their stories or interview them. - Jane Larson majored in Anthropology because her father encouraged her to that area. But it was more or less looking at history and categorizing people. - This is where she began to work with that kind of material and began to sort of study Chinese, a very small way. - Didn’t learn Chinese until before went to China. Took some community classes and that’s all. - Did not learn Chinese from mother, but she used Cantonese only for words that she didn’t want people to understand. - Jane Larson was born in Los Angeles. Went to college in Portland. - Not many asians in part of Los Angeles she lived in. Only until went to college, met other Asians. - Even then they didn’t have any classes on Chinese history, the closest she came to learning about China was a art history class. The professor was very close to this Chinese man in Portland. - Went to graduate school but dropped out, Majored in Chinese history and Anthropology. It didn’t last, so then she said “I’ll study this on my own,” and did but not very seriously. - Does not believe had any difficulties because of gender or race, faced more difficulties based on lack of education and status. - Before she was involved in China stuff, she was involved with other topics such as mental health and the environment. �- When she got into the China field, it was important to gather a group of people for support - When she was organizing the conference, she came out of nowhere. Met the professors in Portland. - Had difficulties with the Chinese community because they were very anti-PRC and very Taiwan. - Got the help of the League of women voters they were strongly for normalization of relations of China. - It sort of fit into their national platform, so their international committee sponsored the conference. They introduced her to people within the community in terms of funders - She would later approach the Asia society herself. - Very wonderful people who believed in her, because they had no reason to believe in me. Wrote these letters with extremely ambitious plans, but they were very good. After the conference. - They realized they could organize something. So formed the first board of the [northwest] china council. All sorts of people were part of it, it was a really collected group. - Believes her heritage made it easier, was comfortable with both cultures. - Went to China many times and ultimately the China council had tours to China. Starting in 1985, so she got to go on a lot of those. - Other people who lead the organization as executive director since that point, some of them have Chinese heritage some of them have not. But they all have a lot of experience with China. - Lots of changes in China seen. - What is significant is working with scholars. Began working on her grandfather’s papers. In 1990, went to China and was able to work with various experts on Kang Youwei. �- They were enormously helpful. - One of the changes she noticed in very recent years is communication with scholars. They can’t get into Google, communication is harder than it was. Also there is a hesitation with working with an American on a somewhat controversial topic such as Kang Youwei and constitutional system. - That is something that is troubling, and she hasn’t found a way around it. - The people when she goes there are wonderful, it’s just communications with them when they’re not in the same room is hard. - The Baohuanghui were an exile organization, the United States was really the center of the organization. - The Baohuanghui was a very important organization. There wasn’t anything quite like it since. - Happened at a time when Chinese nationalism grew and at that time there was things like the Chinese exclusion act. It was Chinese nationalism based abroad. So the organization grew at the same time. - Kang sort of fed as well as fed into this sense of identity in the United States. People were already aware of how difficult it is to get into the United States and the hostility shown to them. - There was a feeling that China needed to stand up, they had a government that couldn’t protect them, a government that was weak that was backwards. It was sort of an attack on China. - Kang more or less represented more than anybody this movement against exclusion, for modernization of China and so on. On that basis, he was able to met with Theodore Roosevelt twice and basically get a change in the exclusion system. - Did make quite a bit of difference in people’s treatment. �- Kang was a very ambitious person. There were a number of things that was happening, there was a newspaper, this bank in New York, a restaurant in Chicago, her grandfather sort of initiated to fund students to come to the United States. - they had all of these chapters, that haven’t been identified yet. - It was a pretty powerful organization until around 1909 it began to crumble. In part because Kang was so involved in business enterprises and scandals of all sorts took place. - Kang was a very emotional person, very ambitious, he would sometimes strike back at people like her grandfather. - Created a great deal of resentment. - Her grandfather even though he was very instrumental in building up the organization, he was also instrumental in bringing it down. - It was an overextended business combined with the fact that internationally there was a financial crisis in 1909 that helped crumble the organization. - People became disillusioned with the Baohuanghui because of the scandals. - Westernization had no direct effect on her work.People were very friendly to Americans - Sometimes they would take very surprising views of the United States that she wouldn’t understand. They felt that they were being attacked - Can’t say that her own work has been directly affected. Although as she said she there is a suspicion of outside influence especially from the United States that affects her connection with scholars. Jane said part of working with other people who are passionate about her work is one of the enjoyable parts of her work. It is wonderful to get to know these people and they are great to �work with. She is unable to operate on her own due to the lack of academic background or power. Her lack of a scholarly background is detrimental to her work since she can’t work alone. Her book project requires people that are professors and actually have phd in Chinese history. She worked with graduate student in Ukon who does translation. She has met descendents of Kang Youwei, and Kang Tongbi. Kang Tongbi has been part of her research the last few years. Her sister-in-law found photographs and receipts on ebay of Kang Youwei that had a collection of letters, receipts, and photographs . She got contact through auction house to meet buyer, and got scans of letters and photographs in return for transcribing, organized them, writing an appraisal and translating them. The letters were important because they covered where Kang Youwei went during his travels in the US. Most of the collection was sold off afterwards in a Shanghai auction house. Jane tried to get Universities to buy collections, but it was too expensive. She went to visit the house where Kang Tongbi used to lived and original family still lives there. Kang Tongbi was a strong female role model since she founded a few women associations. She was a member of small group of women in barnard college who wanted women suffrage. Kang Tongbi was a very independant and ahead of her time.Her father bought her guns and she enjoyed riding horses and using guns. Part of Kang Youwei’s assassinate plan was counting on her . She was trusted above anyone else. Kang Youwei treated his daughters good,did not bind their feet and had them educated. Eldest daughter worked in a newspaper company as an editor. Kang Tongbi was inspiration to women’s movement, and went to lecture at various women’s organizations. First organization founded by Kang Youwei was antifootbinding movement. Jane’s work specialized in many ways so she was unable to tell anyone since they wouldn’t know very much about the obscure era of Chinese history. �There are no emerging trends in her work other than the fact that most of her work require someone with a masters to work with her because she only has a bachelor's degree which bars her entry from some fields. Some recommendations for follow up interview is mostly to ask about her work, networking with other people, her work for other people, and her family. Her family is an interesting topic because they show different types of people from the Asian American group, and how they interact in American society . She has worked with many famous people so she has many connections as well. The story of the person’s life from the interview was helpful as well as the person’s career. It gave us context on how the person lived so we could understand the influence on the person and the interviewee’s career choice. The weren’t any significant parts that can be considered not useful. I would like to know more about her interaction with the people who asked her for help and her work on the China council . It would be interesting to learn about her partnership with other people. The other in-class presentation were helpful in learning the different roles women took in Asian-American relationship. Many of the were similar to one another since they occupy the similar positions, but their starting points were different which made it interesting . The most useful presentations were ones that did not end up in USIP. Those that went into nontraditional fields made it more obvious problems they faced due to gender and status. The women who founded a Japanese theater company defied the traditional role for women in the Japanese theater which was that the majority of the time women weren’t allowed to act in the theater. This presentation highlighted how women were restricted by gender and societal structure so they could not pursue the theater profession. Many women were looked down upon in Japan for joining the theater profession compared to men who did not receive such a big scorn. When the theater company went to Japan the result was the men were astonished by �how well the performance was by including women who excelled at their roll compared to those typecasted according to their gender. I also found it interesting that many of the other interviewees didn’t believe they were being discriminated against because of their gender. Even during our interview, Ms. Larson didn’t feel that she was being discriminated against. But I feel that gender bias definitely played a part in leading to where she was today. For example, her father talked a lot about her Chinese heritage to her rather than her two brothers. In other presentations, I found it interesting that Alexandra Toma found out she was being payed a lot less than her male co-workers. I feel that gender bias is something that you can only see if you are aware of it. Her career path is unusual since most people in general would have pursued a more traditional path instead of being a freelance writer. Her parents were both journalist which was unusual for women, and it did influence her to follow her parents footsteps in a different way. She did not have a career that particularly involves helping people, but writing down people’s histories. Helping people is both a male and female impulse, but a different sort of attitude is involved with both. Men seems to have a more self-righteous attitude, while women can be more considerate and caring when they move away from the self-righteous attitude. It is hard to say if she is “generous” or “sweet” with her time, but she did give us a large amount of time. Considering her current situation she did plan a large enough time frame for the interview, and she did do it at home so she was being nice with her free time. I would not have used the same words to describe her as for a man, but for time wise yes. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Larson, Jane Leung ; Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching; Women social reformers--Asia; Women social reformers--United States; Oral history Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject; AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2016_20170109_jleunglarson_doc_dis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women’s contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library’s digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women’s social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chan, Paul ; Lee, Kevin Type The nature or genre of the resource text Title A name given to the resource Jane Leung Larson http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/358383cc0157e500ce3cc35c1ad3c7b6.pdf dd0ae9605878c4ed77fcaab61c7c046b PDF Text Text Jane Leung Larson is a writer and Chinese historian. She was born in the U.S. and got her B.A. in Anthropology at Reed College, Portland, Oregon. Since 1985, she has done research on the Baohuanghui. Her grandfather was a student of Kang Youwei, who founded the Baohuanghui. In addition, she is also a founding member of the Northwest China Council, one of 12 regional Councils sponsored by the National China Council of the Asia Society. Currently, she is working on a collaborative project with scholars to update and publish the 1972 dissertation by Robert L. Worden called, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile: The North American Phase of the Travels of K’ang Yuwei.” Her goal relates to women’s role in US-Asian relations because it is creating an exchange of information between the two cultures. Her work has also taken her to China so she is personally creating a communication exchange between the two nations. �We mostly asked her about her work on the Baohuanghui and her experience as the director of the Northwest China Council. Therefore, most of the information we got involved that. What we did during the interview was take turns asking her questions and if we heard something interesting, we would ask her about it. For example, when we were discussing her presentation on Kang Tongbi, she see was glad to discuss it. When we got to the part where she discusses how they found important documents on ebay she seemed happy. So, we asked her more about it. What we found out was that Kang Youwei was a famous calligrapher so his works were being sold for the caligraphy. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Larson, Jane Leung ; Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching; Women social reformers--Asia; Women social reformers--United States; Oral history Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject; AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2016_20170109_jleunglarson_ppt_dis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women’s contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library’s digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women’s social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chan, Paul ; Lee, Kevin Type The nature or genre of the resource text Title A name given to the resource Jane Leung Larson http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/791348006feebe0082959efaf671c5d3.pptx fb779e9045e6f83566759ab39cd9da69 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2018_20180413_nwang_master Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/ppt Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chen, Trent YingZong, Feng Chang Seong, Bae Title A name given to the resource Nancy Wang Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-13 Type The nature or genre of the resource interactive resource Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching Women social reformers--Asia Women social reformers--United States Oral history Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/d5b49951d241916f31d9cc3df2909333.pdf 4544d1625dc047adec39332625856065 PDF Text Text Nancy Wang and Her Career/Goals The women we interviewed is Nancy Wang. First let me briefly summarize the basic information of her, her job, her career, her mission goal and the relation between her and the women’s role in US-Asian relations. Nancy Wang is an Asian American. She was born and brought up in Louisiana, and now she is living in San Francisco, California, with her husband. Her father was American while her mother was Chinese. During her life, she desired to work in areas where she would serve people. Later on in life, her desire was to work as a dancer. Based on the interview, we know that Nancy’s father used to work for the State Department of security, he served as a common general in New Orleans, and her Mother was a Nurse. Due to her Parents job and the daily life influence of her parents, she said she was brought up with a good values and morals. She always knew that everyone has a duty to help others and serve for the community, the societies. Nancy’s first job after school was as a social worker. In there she helped different kinds of people by counseling them. According to what she said, the majority of the clients she took care of are all similar to her -- Asian American women. Her major work is to help them understand the difference between the western and eastern cultures, and how to balance these two. Later on, after finishing the career of a social worker, she become a dancer and contributed to spread the ancient Asian tale, myth and some other cultures by the 1 �traditional dance performance. Being a dancer also finally caused her to meet her future husband. See this man, he is Nancy’s husband, Robert Kikuchi. He is a Japanese American, same as Nancy, he also devote his life to be the Asian traditional dancer and a storyteller. Career/Goals and Her Mission and How She Is Fulfilling Them When we asked about her mission goal, Nancy claimed that her goals in life were to help people. Although later she changed her career from working with people to working for people. She was very successful in achieving and fulfilling her goals on helping people. Like what I just mentioned, she started a counseling organization where she worked as a social worker. During the years she worked as a social worker, she helped many people especially the younger women realize their potential. Her main aim was to blend the gap between the western culture and the eastern one, especially teaching them how they ought to regard either of the cultures. As a dancer, she travelled different places inspiring people through music. She was able to overcome the stigmatization of Asian and American and taught others the same. As a storyteller, she works with her husband Kikuchi, they created many kinetic stories, and many of them are focus on the topic of Asian folktales, immigration history, and some stories relate to her own life experience and the other Asian’s daily life in this country. This couple always use their great wisdom and life experience to combine those things, combine the music, dance, theater and the storytelling together to present for many countries audience. Like this picture, it’s in San Francisco’s Asian community, and they were performing opera which is about the traditional folktale in ancient China. Relation between her goals and career to that of women’s roles in US-Asian relations Finally ask about the relation between her and the women’s role in US-Asian relation. She conclude that In her life, especially her mission and career, relates greatly with that of Asian Americans women in US. Many of them struggle to feel at home without being isolated or discriminated against. They focus on building their career and helping others. That is what the life of Nancy is all about. Dancing, helping other, trying to feel accepted, studying, are some of the roles supported by the majority of Asian American women. 1 �After introducing ourselves and thanking Mrs. Wang for allowing us to conduct the interview, we began by asking an open-ended question: “Tell us a little about yourself and you career?”. This followed by more open-ended questions such as: “How has being a woman affected your career and how has that played a role in how you have performed and written your plays?” and “What do you think are the biggest cultural differences between China and the United States?”. These questions really provided us with an enormous wealth of information and even covered some questions that we didn't get a chance to formally ask Mrs. Wang. During one exchange, Mrs. Wang talks about how being a woman has affected her career and elaborates that although being one has had an impact on her experiences and career choices, she felt that her experiences couldn't be reduced to one characteristic about herself. She says that this is “what they call…” “I can’t remember the name”,” something about a crossover of things, as a female, as a minority, as an ethnic person of color, and all these ways that they crisscross each other and you don’t know what’s affecting what”. I respond by saying that that’s what you call “intersectionality” and she responds by saying “thank you, yes, that’s the word”. This was one of the best examples of active listening in the entire interview. (Top Audio) Because our interview was audio only, we could only pick up on nonverbal cues. 2 �During one part of the conversation, when talking about the differences between Chinese and American cultures, Mrs. Wang talks about how Asian Americans appear less confident than European Americans because of some of the cultural differences between the East and West. She explains that this appearance isn't so much a product of Asian Americans actual being less confident than other people, but rather a display of humility that is more prevalent in Asian cultures. For a brief instance she talks from the perspective of someone who mischaracterizes Asian people. From the way that she talks during this part of the interview, it was clear to me that she doesn't appreciate people who do this. The tone that she uses expresses a genuine sort of contempt for these attitudes. (Bottom Audio) 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2018_20180413_nwang_ppt_dis Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chen, Trent YingZong, Feng Chang Seong, Bae Title A name given to the resource Nancy Wang Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-13 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching Women social reformers--Asia Women social reformers--United States Oral history Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/e3b28ca5d3fd96f48cb1435cad5cf783.pdf 96c80aa89c07f819548a41935ffbdf9a PDF Text Text Trent Chen, Feng YingZong, Bae Chang Seong Final Project AAS-POL 307 Professor Christoff SECTION ONE Person interviewed: Nancy Wang Interviewee’s title or position: Social Worker, Dancer, Storyteller Date, time, and length of interview: April 13th, 2018, 04:00 PM EST, 00:00-34:10 Your objective in conducting this interview: To learn about the life and career of famous AsianAmerican social worker, dancer, and storyteller: Nancy Wang. SECTION TWO Conducting an interview on Wang was a bit easy and simpler. There are some of the things we did before conducting this kind of interview on her. First, we had to do a research on her life; the way she lives, her background and the mode of life she is used to. We expounded on the internet research and the sources that are trusted and supplied from the base of her relation. We found that Wang is a lady with respect since her tender age. She had been raised in a family whose parents take mere responsibility and have a lot of work to do, apart from raising their kids. We also found that the character of Wang is a bit more social and responsible. She is used to taking responsibilities each and every time. The busy schedule of her parents makes her not prone to living in a single environment for long-she keeps moving to different schools because �her parents also keep shifting homes. The questions we had for her were connected to the kind of work she wanted, since her background had a persuasive influence too. The interview questions we prepared are below: 1:Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? 2:How has being a woman affected your career? 3:What stories do you try to tell your audience?Do you think your performances are universally relatable? 4:What do you think are the biggest cultural differences between China and the United States? 5:Who are your influences? What inspired you to start a career in the performing arts? 6:What title do you like the most, Storyteller, Dancer, or Playwright? 7:It says on your website’s mission statement that you want to “heal the divides between us”, do you think there has been progress in bringing people together? 8:Additionally, your mission statement also says that you want to “reveal universal truths”. What do you think some of these “truths” are? 9:We know you’re well-traveled, what Korean stories are you familiar and impressed with? 10:Do you think there should be more female storytellers? SECTION THREE 1) Due to the time limit of the interview, we didn’t finish all the questions we want to ask to Nancy Wang; However, on the kind of response and answers we got from her, we had all answers aligning to our research on her. She made clear points that showed that she was a true person who could just lean on mere truth. All the questions we asked went answered and she never hesitated even a bit. She made clear answers which came out exactly the same as the research we had conducted on her earlier, so we can say Yes, we got complete answers to our questions. �2) Our interview was structured because we came prepared with predetermined questions that we asked Mrs. Wang to answer for us. However, once we asked our questions the interview was relatively unstructured. Mrs. Wang even answered questions that we didn't get a chance to formally ask in her responses to questions that we did get to ask. For instance, we wanted to formally ask Mrs. Wang how she met her husband but she ended up telling us how she met him in her response to the first question: “Could you tell us a little about yourself and you career?” 3) We didn’t get a chance to ask probing questions but there were instances throughout the interview where one of us made probing statements. During one section of the interview, Mrs. Wang tells us about her experiences being a first generation Asian American and one of us responds by saying “I’m third generation myself”. This let Mrs. Wang know that we’re listening and also opened a path for further dialogue. Additionally, at a later point in the interview, Mrs. Wang talks about a Korean folktale that contains the lesson to judge people individually. One of us responds by saying, “the mission statement on your website says that you want to reveal universal truths and that definitely seems like a universal truth: to judge people individually and not as groups”. Mrs. Wang agrees with our interpretation of her mission statement and then elaborates on it. 4) The team approach during the interview was quite simple, because we asked only five questions although we prepared about 10 questions. We divided 5 questions into three parts. First, Trent Chen started interview with the question of introducing her and influence of being a woman on her life and career. After that, YingZong Feng and ChangSeong Bae asked some specific questions about her. YingZeong Feng asked the difference of culture between China and USA. ChangSeong Bae asked about the Korean story that Mrs. Wang was familiar and impressed with. Because there is no time to ask another specific questions after that, Trent Chen �ended interview with the questions about her final goal of her career and appreciation. Because interview was not so long and most of her talking was audible, we did not record interview by hand but just record her voice with Skype. 5) Unfortunately, she didn’t mention any article or document to us during the interview, but she did mention her husband Kikuchi when she was talking about her career and working inspiration. She works with her husband and created many kinetic stories. Many of the stories they made focus on the topic of immigration history, Asian Traditional folktales and her own life stories in this country. Nancy and her husband always use their great wisdom and life experience to combine the music, dance, theater and the storytelling together to present for many Asian communities in U.S and audience outside the U.S. SECTION FOUR 00:49 / 34:10 Transcript Summary: Interview with Nancy Wang (Edited for clarity) 00:49 Okay well you know I was born in New Orleans 00:56 Louisiana because my father had just 01:00 been promoted to Consul General he was 01:05 Vice Consul in Chicago and became a 01:07 Consul General for the country of China 01:11 at the time and stationed in New Orleans 01:16 and my mom was a nurse so they both 01:20 had similar values in terms of serving 01:23 the community and my father, as a 01:26 diplomat, was in charge of all the 01:27 Chinese Americans who lived in the south 01:30 and any needs they might have and so I 01:32 was kind of brought up in that kind of 01:35 value system, 01:38 and in philosophy, that one's life is 01:43 about serving others and then especially 01:55 (Inaudible) 02:00 with the communist takeover he did 02:05 not continue with the Kuomintang in 02:09 Taiwan and instead started work 02:12 in the United Nations representing China 02:14 but then he got his citizenship 02:19 and 02:22 moved to Chicago and in Chicago he 02:24 continued to do his civic service in 02:28 Chinatown, and so once again 02:32 it was about how you serve others and so it 02:36 became natural that when I was in 02:39 college I was going to be a nurse, then I 02:41 was going to be a medical technologist, 02:42 and then I finally 02:45 settled on psychology, and that's how I 02:48 �got my Masters in Social Work so 02:51 again, once again that was like, you 02:54 know, that's about serving others, but then I 02:58 worked as a social worker for 03:00 many years but I always not-so03:03 secretly wanted to be a dancer so I 03:06 became a dancer and I finally found a 03:10 teacher out west 03:14 in San Francisco and she was my 03:18 mentor and taught me not only dance but 03:23 theater and choreography and staging 03:27 and I danced in her company and I taught 03:29 for her and so that continued until I 03:35 had a private practice in 03:37 psychotherapy and one of the things 03:41 I'm very proud of and still proud of 03:43 today is that I would do 10-week 03:45 sessions for Asian Americans so that 03:47 they can understand “the Western 03:49 perspective” versus “the eastern 03:51 perspective” and how important it was not 03:53 to see yourself through a Western 03:56 perspective or you would not think very 03:58 highly of yourself or your culture and 04:01 so that was really really important, I've 04:08 written articles, I do workshops, but 04:10 always the dance and theatre 04:13 called me and so that's how I met my 04:16 husband, he was the music director for 04:21 the Asian American theatre and then I 04:24 was a dancer in one of them it was 04:29 called “the Avocado Kid” 04:33 (Inaudible) 04:38 and then we were going to work 04:41 together, (Inaudible) 04:43 how we went from teaching and having the 04:49 first company and first school of 04:52 cooling tongue which is a (Inaudible) 04:54 of Southern Philippines which is 04:58 now a huge phenomena thanks to Robert 05:01 and myself for bringing that to 05:04 California and we, being the people 05:10 we are, community minded and naive at the 05:13 same time, someone wanted to be part of 05:17 our company and we unfortunately let her 05:19 do that against our own good feelings 05:21 and ended up stabbing us in the back and 05:26 taking away that organization but if it 05:29 weren't for that 05:30 we would not have created Ethnohtec 05:33 which has taken us very far in terms 05:36 of touring around the world, throughout 05:40 the country, 05:42 you know performing for Clinton's and 05:45 then Obama's inaugural celebrations and 05:49 it's been really an honor to do this 05:51 work because folktales have a built-in 05:57 value system that they teach, so it really 06:03 spoke to us in terms of not only the art 06:07 and the form that we created which is a 06:11 very stylized unique way of telling a 06:15 story, we use movement, and gesture, and 06:17 music, and the spoken word, but also it 06:20 had those values already in it, that 06:22 we could impart to 06:27 people that still need to know 06:29 about and learn about in terms of living 06:32 a good life again, and be at the same 06:37 time entertaining, so that became our big 06:43 way of performing for thousands of 06:46 people, so that's what we still �06:50 do and now we've gone on to do 06:55 personal stories, I've written the story 06:57 of an atom bomb survivor and his 07:02 journey from revenge and hatred and rage 07:06 to forgiveness and reconciliation, I've 07:09 also written a story about my Chinese 07:11 mother that's called “Bittersweet” 07:15 and Peggy knows, she's interviewed 07:19 my mom, and my grandma, 07:21 and also the most recent one is a 07:25 piece called “Red Altar” which goes back 07:27 to 1850 when my first family members 07:32 came to this country on a junk boat, they 07:35 were just teenagers, they crashed into 07:37 Carmel Bay and started the fishing 07:39 industry there 07:42 and they passed San Francisco and 07:45 never got there and that's on my 07:49 mother's side, and 07:52 it's all through the women so that piece 07:56 is really about immigration and racism 07:59 and legal discrimination that was going 08:01 on in the late 1800s and 1900s and how 08:07 the Chinese had to leave early and did 08:12 successfully reinvent themselves each 08:15 time a new law was passed such as the 08:18 “Chinese cannot fish during the day” and 08:20 the “Chinese cannot fish offshore”, no more 08:24 drying fish so that it kept constantly 08:27 trying to make the Chinese 08:33 leave to Asia, and we didn't leave, so 08:38 that's why I'm still here today, I'm here 08:40 today because we succeeded, it was, you 08:44 know, pretty horrible but still we 08:46 succeeded, and that's how it happened, 08:54 generations in our family in America 09:04 (Inaudible) 09:10 me neither, it's really bad 09:41 well, you know, I think we're gonna dance, 09:49 I mean, in a dance company it'll be 09:52 mostly women it's hard to get men so I 09:56 don't think actually being a woman has 09:58 made too much of a problem, same with 10:01 social work, mostly at the time it was 10:04 women there were few men and you know 10:06 not that I ever wanted to run a 10:07 department but it would always be the 10:09 men who were hired to to be the 10:12 department head and not women but 10:15 that didn't affect me because I never 10:17 wanted to be you know doing that, I think 10:21 women were 10:25 there I never had a hard time and then, 10:31 let me think, in psychotherapy it's the 10:36 same thing, it's a lot of female 10:38 therapists and also at the time there 10:41 were very few Asian therapists so I 10:46 didn't have a hard time with that, 10:48 I also, let me think 10:53 I will say that as we have been doing 10:59 storytelling since 1987 11:03 we pretty quickly became 11:05 nationally known storytellers and yet I 11:09 can walk down the street at a festival 11:11 where everyone, you know, 11:14 knows each other sort of you know and 11:16 and we're on the stage but they 11:19 don't know me unless I'm with my husband 11:23 so I don't know if he’s more 11:28 recognizable or what, but you know it 11:35 really has an effect, I mean I'll pick it �11:36 up when they say Robert and his wife 11:38 rather than Nancy and her husband but I 11:45 think the only way that it has 11:52 affected me is that, 11:57 I don't know if this is because 11:58 I'm chinese-american, and a 12:02 minority (Inaudible) 12:06 or because I'm 12:10 a female that I wasn't always the first 12:15 to speak up or even if something 12:17 happened I wasn't the one to speak up, I 12:20 always held myself back but 12:23 I think that's a female thing, but 12:26 it's also probably an Asian thing 12:28 because we're more of a collective 12:30 orientation, so there are ways that we 12:34 kind of check with each other to see who 12:36 wants to talk, rather 12:38 than the European American way which is 12:41 to just immediately raise your hand 12:43 because you know you're right to do that 12:45 and usually first you 12:47 know, they're the first out the door and 12:49 first in the door, you know I don't 12:54 know because it's what they call whether 12:56 it's a new word now where you, 13:00 I can't think of the name when you're 13:03 (Inaudible) 13:04 trans something-or-other 13:06 you know crossover, you know is it.. 13:09 because there's stuff that goes 13:11 on as a female, there’s stuff that goes on as 13:14 a minority, just as an ethnic group of 13:17 color, and then there's ageism, 13:20 and like all these 13:22 ways that they criss cross each other 13:24 and you don't know which is 13:28 affecting what.. thank you, yes.. that's the 13:34 word, so I don't know if it’s just being a 13:39 female because my mother was pretty 13:41 outspoken, it used to embarrass the hell 13:42 out of us when we were young but I 13:46 do that myself now and my daughter's 13:51 learning to do, I don't know, you know 13:55 Japanese are more implosive and Chinese are 13:57 more explosive so here we are in San 14:02 Francisco if I was living maybe in 14:05 Kansas City or I was still in New 14:08 Orleans or if I lived in Florida or 14:10 Nebraska it would be very different 14:14 because in San Francisco, the people of 14:17 color are the majority, so it really 14:21 makes a difference in terms of how 14:26 comfortable we become because everywhere 14:29 we look we're there, 14:32 which is very different growing up in 14:34 New Orleans, in Chicago, and then going to 14:36 college and graduate school in Wisconsin 14:41 but it was definitely something that I 14:44 had to learn having come from New 14:49 Orleans, Chicago, 14:50 Wisconsin, once I got here I learned to be 14:55 comfortable in my skin as a person of 14:57 color, instead of wanting to be white 15:00 like everyone else so I don't know so 15:04 much of being a female, I mean being a 15:07 second daughter did make a difference, 15:10 my sister was much more you know I was 15:13 always my sister's younger sister my 15:15 brothers younger sister so 15:18 �so you know it's hard to 15:20 say sibling position, gender, ethnic 15:27 group, age... 15:52 Yes, you want to know what 15:58 the difference is? 15:59 Oh, huge difference, 16:04 China (Inaudible) 16:06 for so long was not open to the rest 16:11 of the world so you've got to maintain 16:13 and contain your beautiful philosophy 16:17 and your cultural behaviors and you 16:23 know respecting elders 16:26 although the Revolution kind of 16:30 did that one so the difference is here I 16:35 think in China the 16:38 Chinese are more comfortable in their 16:40 own skin 16:41 here the Chinese were not 16:43 comfortable in their own skin, and it 16:47 still goes on today because even the 16:50 young people coming up they have the 16:52 same issues as I did when I was young 16:55 and that was decades ago they 16:59 still have the issue of not feeling 17:04 they are being heard or that people 17:09 keep coming up to them and asking them 17:11 “where are you from?” 17:13 I mean I heard that, “oh, your 17:15 English is so good” I never could 17:18 understand that because it was the only 17:19 language I knew, and I was born here but 17:21 they didn't (Inaudible) 17:24 to hell 17:24 you know European Americans just assumed 17:27 that you are from another country 17:30 that we're not Americans so we always 17:32 feel like we are outside of the 17:36 mainstream whereas in China you are the 17:40 mainstream, so I think you're more 17:43 comfortable in your skin and you have 17:45 issues about other things 17:48 but in America we have our own issues, 17:50 I think the other thing 17:56 is that Chinese 17:58 and I think it probably goes for 18:00 Japanese and Koreans and everyone, that 18:03 you don't realize how much you are still 18:05 of your ethnic culture because you no 18:09 longer have context for it, or words for 18:12 it, I get so lost in translation I mean 18:16 as it goes down from generation to 18:17 generation we lose what it's all about, 18:22 so for example, my parents would 18:25 always say “oh you know no she's not 18:29 smart, she 18:32 could be better, like she should be more..” 18:34 like, shut up. 18:35 and I know that happens in 18:38 China but it still happens here but we 18:40 don't understand it because we hear our 18:43 counterparts in the European culture 18:46 saying about their children and 18:49 how wonderful they are, they do this and 18:51 they do that at all ages, so what about 18:53 you, so cute and we never heard that 18:56 and there's a reason for that, there's a 18:59 cultural reason for that, but even my 19:02 mother probably didn't know it as a 19:04 fourth generation, maybe my grandma knew 19:08 as a third generation but I don't know 19:10 that for sure, 19:12 �but maybe more so because she doesn't 19:15 even know English that well she still 19:18 lived in her little fishing village and 19:20 then in San Francisco Chinatown all her 19:22 life so the culture was still intact, 19:27 I think once we're here for many 19:30 generations that whole comparison that 19:36 you can't help make about who you are, 19:38 about how they are, and how they're 19:43 so much more confident that we 19:46 seem so much (inaudible) but it's not 19:48 because 19:52 that we’re less than them, although we will 19:54 interpret it that way because we have a 19:57 Western perspective, oh she says 19:59 she's stupid, she doesn't know what to 20:05 say but really it's because we've been 20:07 brought up not to speak out, 20:11 in Japanese 20:16 there's a saying that “the nail that 20:18 sticks up is the one that gets pounded 20:20 down” so we were taught that in a 20:23 collective you don't try and make 20:24 yourself better, it doesn't mean you 20:26 aren't competitive, but there's a 20:29 humility about it that's not in the 20:32 European American culture, humility does 20:35 not exist that way so it's very easy to 20:38 start looking down at yourself, 20:41 whereas in China that wouldn't happen so 20:44 we still have our own culture but we 20:48 have no name for it unless you 20:50 study about it 20:53 but, you know I think that's 20:57 what you mean in terms of 20:58 what it is to be Asian 21:02 and Chinese in America versus Chinese in 21:04 China (Inaudible) 21:41 one of our very first stories from 21:44 Korea was called: “the man who 21:47 planted onions”, I don't know if you've 21:49 heard it before, 22:03 that's one of my favorite ones, it's 22:05 about a time and a place when people did 22:10 not see people as people but people saw 22:12 people as cows and so people would get 22:17 confused and asked “is this a 22:19 person or a cow” and so sometimes they 22:21 would end up eating each other, 22:25 do you know that story, it's a 22:37 Buddhist story but what happened was 22:41 this one man ended up eating his own 22:43 brother and so he was so upset that he 22:46 decided to travel around the country 22:48 looking for a cure, but no matter 22:52 where he went people still saw people as 22:54 cows and not people as people, 22:56 until one day he met 22:59 an old man 23:00 and asked the old man 23:04 “where are you from” and “where are you 23:05 going” and he realized “huh, you see me as 23:07 a man?” and so he said “well of course” 23:11 and he said “well how did you do that?” 23:14 (Inaudible) 23:16 and that was before we discovered a 23:20 wonderful treat with onions, he asked, 23:21 "what are 23:26 onions?”, so the woman explained to him 23:30 what onions are and he takes the seeds back 23:32 home, he plants them and he goes to tell 23:35 �all his old friends who good news but 23:36 they still saw him as a 23:39 cow so we ended up eating those 23:40 accountable, then after a while I 23:43 realized what the old (Inaudible) 23:45 another they know his harvest come up 23:47 they began to eat onions and from that 23:49 point on people now see people as people, 23:54 so that's an origin which is sort from 23:58 Korea, yeah they think well because we do 24:11 it a little bit with humor, 24:13 you know the point is that, 24:17 I think the end goes, no matter what 24:26 always eat your meat so now 24:32 people see people as people and cows are 24:35 stir fried with onions but Bill 24:41 do not take this for granted so there 24:44 are some people who still see people as 24:46 just a piece of piece of meat, 24:48 so you know it's what we've taken and 24:51 made the message in the story, “not 24:57 to see people as just a piece 24:59 of meat” and don't treat people like 25:01 they're just a piece of meat, that you 25:04 know that we are people of heart and 25:11 soul and value, and be kind to each other, 25:15 people like the journey at first 25:19 they're a little like, “what? you're 25:21 telling children about eating people?” but 25:24 by the end it's fine, and actually kids 25:27 love it, 25:29 teachers 25:32 get it at the end, so you know 25:59 folk tales have that already, but 26:02 you have to sometimes read a folk 26:04 tale that's been written by missionaries, 26:05 but thank goodness they did do it 26:08 because it might have been lost by now, 26:10 but still they are doing it from their 26:12 perspective a lot of times you have to 26:13 read several of the same one and then 26:16 try and make sure that you get the 26:20 essence of it and then you find the 26:22 message, and so yeah 26:25 so we do that with all our folktales and 26:28 find really wonderful ways of imparting 26:32 messages that are universal, 26:58 I've written the story, the 27:04 red altar of my, you know the fishing 27:08 villages in Monterey 27:09 started in 1850, so I've written a book, 27:12 there's one chapter that I want to 27:13 insert a small still doing that about, 27:16 what was going on in China that there 27:19 were so many people willing to leave and 27:23 it was you know there was a plague, and 27:25 there was a drought, and famine, and 27:29 Taiping rebels and so I 27:32 wanted to get some context to that but 27:35 yeah I want to finish that book, I want 27:36 it to be in all the schools, 27:39 I want it to even become a movie, 27:41 I just need our history to be 27:44 out there, that we've been here in this 27:47 country a long time, and it's a bad time, 27:50 you see me as an American, and so I want 27:54 that done, and I just got a grant to do 27:56 my grandfather's story which is another 27:58 story of how this man comes over from 28:01 China at age 12 and he becomes this 28:05 amazing kingpin of very high-class, 28:11 �Chinese restaurants in Chicago 28:14 catered to the European American 28:18 carriage trade, he died a very 28:21 mysterious death, he fell down his own 28:23 elevator shaft and people think maybe he 28:26 was pushed, (Inaudible) 28:28 and who knows what wasn't 28:31 happening, 28:31 so I'm gonna be doing that story and 28:36 maybe that'll be when I stop, well I have 28:41 to then perform it so yeah so there are 28:45 always things, make sure that all 28:47 our focus should be children's books so 28:50 that might be something that 28:54 once we don't perform them 28:56 there's not much that we can really 28:58 concentrate on, and really you 29:12 should see, it's very telling you 29:15 you can't come to it unless you're 8 29:17 years and older so it's mostly adults 29:19 and adults absolutely still love these 29:23 folktales because they're really not 29:25 just for children, 29:29 is the children love but it's the deeper 29:31 messages and the metaphors that the 29:33 adults get that have much more meaning 29:38 you turn 29:51 on television it's really pretty 29:53 disgusting, 30:01 it's really sad, yeah, we do this one 30:05 piece that’s called “monkey moon” and 30:07 it's about following our 30:10 “following foolish leaders” and we used to do Notes: 30:14 it for Bush now we definitely do it for 30:19 Mr. Trump, yeah we'll probably be 30:28 doing a lot next as we have 30:34 a mayor mayoral election in November, 30:38 one we have new Congresspeople, oh 30:43 don't follow foolish leaders, vote, 30:51 this is exciting that you got guys are 30:53 there talking to females about how 30:57 it is to be a female, 31:09 (Inaudible) 31:24 yeah what are you gonna do with that?, are 31:27 you all going to be teaching 31:29 Asian-American Studies? Because 32:01 women still make less than men at the 32:03 same job and in China they abandoned 32:08 all their little girls, that's still 32:12 happening and 32:15 the girls are 32:16 always much less appreciated in Chinese 32:19 families, 32:26 but my mother was a second daughter so 32:28 she made sure I didn't become a typical 32:34 second daughter, there's still a stigma 32:40 in many cultures 32:43 which I could 32:47 never understand because without us how 32:48 could you have your son? 33:14 Thank you, yes, 33:36 definitely will always always be our 33:40 mission, 33:49 yep, have a good weekend. Thank-you, bye. /END �Tell us a little about yourself and your career? · Born: New Orleans, Louisiana · Father – Chinese diplomat – instilled values of serving others · In College, going to be a nurse, natural part off serving others, master’s in social work · Secretly wanted to be a dancer · Mentor in San Francisco taught her dance, led to a private practice in psychotherapy. put aside some time to work on Chinese cultural perspectives. · Husband was a director of an Asian American theater. Started working together. Eventually created Ethnohtec. · Folktales have built-in values. Good source of storytelling and at the same time entertaining. · When Mrs. Wang talked about her experiences as a second generation Asian American, I reaffirmed that I could relate by telling her that I was third generation Asian American. How has being a woman affected your career and how has that played a role in how you have performed and written your plays? · Being a woman hasn’t made too much of a problem. Mentions how head department positions usually go to men. “Never had a hard time” · A lot of female therapists but few Asian therapists.~dhkt · Nationally known, but most people don’t recognize her unless she’s with her husband. 11:43 “Robert and his Wife, rather than Nancy and her husband”. · Only way it has affected her: She wasn’t always the first to speak up about things. Always held herself back. Possibly a female and Asian thing. Stems from the collective values of Asian cultures opposed to European/American individualistic values. Talks about intersectionality but couldn’t think of the word until one of us mentioned it. Considers this a big part of her experiences. Living in a majority POC city (San Fran) has probably played a part in how she has experienced living as a female poc. What do you think are the biggest cultural differences between China and the United States? - Feng · In China, the Chinese are more comfortable in their own skin compared to ChineseAmericans. Here, they get questions like “where are you from?”, “your English is so good”, 17:00. It’s still assumed that Asians aren’t American. Also, in America, Asians aren’t the mainstream. Europeans brag about their children Whereas Asians don’t. This is because Asians are brought up “not to speak out”, taught in a collective you don’t want to be better than others, “humility about it”. Not as prevalent in European cultures. What Korean stories are you familiar and impressed with? - Bae �· “the man who planted onions” – about a time and place when people didn’t see people as people but people as cows. Buddhist story. Judge people as individuals not as pieces of meat. “That definitely seems to be a lesson that you allude to on your website, you talk about your mission statement and how you want to explore universal truths, that definitely seems like a universal truth: to judge people individually and not groups, like you said.” We appreciate your time talking to us, Mrs. Wang, one last question, as far as your career goes are there still things that you want to complete, stories you still want to tell, plays you still want to write? · Yes, a story about what was going on in China that made people want to leave in the 1950s. Wants it to be in schools, become a movie. “There’s always things”. Adults still love folktales. Adults get the deeper messages. · And once again they reveal universal truths that need to be revealed every once in a while. · Definitely, “you turn on the tv and it’s really sad”. We can’t follow foolish leaders *alludes to Trump* “Vote”. This is exciting that you have guys in a class around women” “Are you guys gonna be teaching Asian American studies?” · It’s been 33 minutes, we appreciate the time, Professor Christoff appreciates it, I hope you continue trying to “heal the divides between us”. You have a good weekend, bye. SECTION 5 Interviewing her, one of the interesting aspects was that being a woman did not affect her life unlike anticipation. In the interview, she said that “I do not think actually being a woman has made too much of a problem neither in a dance company nor in a social work.” This is because in a dance company, most of the members were women and it was hard to get men. When it comes to social work, although most of the department heads were men, Nancy Wang said that it did not affect her because she did not want to do that. Also, when she worked as psychotherapist, she did not have any disadvantage by the reason of being a woman, because there was a lot of female therapist at that time. Only way she was affected by her gender was that people do not know her unless she is with her husband. Mrs. Wang said that she held herself back and that it may be a female thing. But overall, it seemed that being a woman did not have �an influence on her life. So, it was interesting aspect but it was not useful to figure out U.S women and Asian relations through her. Another interesting aspect was that she paid attention to human-centered issues as a storyteller. In the interview, she said that Folktales have a built-in value system that they teach, so it is good resource of storytelling and at the same time of entertaining. Mrs. Wang said that she wanted people to learn about living a good life through the stories. Also, we asked her about Korean stories that she was the most impressed by, because we found that Ethnotec has an exploring program to Korea and China to learn about their folktales. The Korean folktale she impressed by was about a person who planted onions. The story is that once upon a time, in a village, people saw people as a cow so they ate each other. One man in this country who ended up eating his brother was so upset that he decided to leave his village. Traveling around the country, he found a village where people saw each other as people, so he asked an old man in this village how they did not eat each other. The old man said that onion made them see each other as people. So, the man brought onion to his village and made people harvest it. Even though he ended up being eaten by other people, after eating onion, people start to see each other as people, not cow. Mrs. Wang said that this story can be inappropriate for kids because it included cannibalism, but she was impressed by this story. This is because this story had a message that people should not see each other as a piece of meat, that is, a method for something but see each other as people themselves. Considering these aspect, we were able to find that she focused on human-centered stories and well-being life. She told us a lot of things within just thirty minutes including her life, her career, her life as a female, and her final goal. Her story was very interesting, so there were little things to ask more about her. But if choosing just one thing we wanted to ask was her thinking about the �difference between western and east folktales. Because western and eastern culture has a lot of differences, so their folktales also have some differences. When it comes to other groups’ presentation, the most interesting presentation was about Elaine H Kim. According to EunJeong’s group, she was born in New York in 1942 and she was Korean American. The interesting and useful aspect of her was that Chinese and Japanese who she met in California and Hawaii were protesting the United States in Korean War. This is because U.S had a big bomb that can kill most of the population of Busan, the second biggest Korean city, and Philippines in Korean War. The reason why this was interesting was that Asian, especially Korean usually focus on their situation in Korean War, so most of Korean do not know that there was protests against Korean War in U.S. Moreover, it was interesting that Japanese and Chinese in U.S also protested against Korean War. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2018_20180413_nwang_doc_dis Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chen, Trent YingZong, Feng Chang Seong, Bae Wang, Nancy Title A name given to the resource Nancy Wang Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-13 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women’s contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library’s digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women’s social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching Women social reformers--Asia Women social reformers--United States Oral history Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/8f5b62578d0889b9ca077bd36b6b4106.pptx 9313979e9eb2264e673f4d201bf34e94 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2018_20180416_elui_master Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/ppt Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cho, Sandy Lim, Katie Title A name given to the resource Eileen Lui Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-16 Type The nature or genre of the resource interactive resource Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching Women social reformers--Asia Women social reformers--United States Oral history Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/1dd61cd7becb2b847914a12b408053dc.pdf f53c6649dcc098e505b9c1a418dabdd3 PDF Text Text Experiences as a women – considered as more emotional, just wanted to go against the harsh system NGOs – certain issues they can and can’t touch. Not all the money is going to the people. Wrote to UNICEF about how the govt was holding student documents and students weren’t allowed to go to school because of missing documents, but UNICEF didn’t answer her letter. Hopes for the future – mentality change. Everything happens in a cycle, so it will take a few generations to start on a clean slate but women should do as they see fit, whatever needs to be done (clean or work, etc) 1 �2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2018_20180416_elui_ppt_dis Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cho, Sandy Lim, Katie Title A name given to the resource Eileen Lui Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-16 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching Women social reformers--Asia Women social reformers--United States Oral history Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/aee4dff069ff730df540aecdecf00dbf.pdf 566067fa5aa145a3acc3ced5619f45c6 PDF Text Text Sandy Cho & Katie Lim AAS/POL 307 Professor Christoff May 9, 2018 Final Report Section One: Person interviewed: Eileen Lui Interviewee’s title or position: Founder of “Children of Tomorrow”, Coach/Mentor, Entrepreneur, Marketing Communications (MARCOMs) Consultant, Author, Certified Fitness Trainer, and a housewife. Date, time, and length of interview: April 16, 2018; 9 PM Eastern Time (7:30 AM Myanmar Time); 1 hour, 3 minutes and 24 seconds. Your objective in conducting this interview: Our main goal was to ask Eileen Lui about her childhood, her parents’ careers, her mission and goals in life, and how she came to accomplish them. Overall, we wanted to get an idea of the steps she took to get to where she is now in her life. Section Two: Prior to the interview Katie and I prepared ourselves by collecting any information we could get on Eileen via social media, LinkedIn account, previous interviews in Myanmar media, and YouTube videos. We were fortunate to get a handful of information and data on Eileen Lui. Since she is very well known in Myanmar, it was not hard for us to conduct a background search. These were the sources we used to gather Eileen’s information prior to the interview: �http://www.asianentrepreneur.org/eileen-lui-soyai/; https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileen-lui419448/; https://www.myanmore.com/yangon/author/eileenlui/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMhQaWE-q7o; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ByvrogCTMg; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ZmB_uCGPY; https://www.facebook.com/cotyouthcentre/; https://www.facebook.com/unwomenasia/photos/a.125861380908222.24093.124151414412552/ 755807207913633/?type=3&theater. After going through all these sources, we narrowed it down to what questions we still needed to ask and what questions we could follow up on. We didn’t want to ask her the questions that were typically thrown at her in other interviews, so we decided to create interesting open-ended questions. We created 15 questions in total. Google docs. was our platform to share these questions and make necessary edits, if needed. The plan was to take turns asking each question. Due to the conflict in all our schedules, we had to come up with a day and time to conduct this interview. Time zone difference was another obstacle for us, since Eileen was 12 hours ahead of us. Eileen is also a very busy woman and for her to make time was difficult. In the end, Katie and I decided to go by Eileen’s availability. Eileen said she’s usually available early in the morning which is night time here. At first, we didn’t know where to find a place for the interview. Finally, on the day of the interview, we tried to reserve a room in the library but they were all occupied and outside the library was too loud for us to conduct the interview. Eventually, we found an empty space on the second floor of the Student Activities Center. I arrived half an hour early before the interview to set up the laptop, and to make sure the camera 2 �and recording application were all working properly to avoid any potential technical issues. These were the questions we asked Ms. Lui: Interview Questions: Childhood 1. Where were you born and what were your parents’ occupations? 2. What was your childhood like? 1. What were some goals you had for yourself as a child? OR 2. What was your dream career as a child? Why? Career 3. I understand, you are an entrepreneur, an author, fitness trainer, a voice for the youth and at the same time you maintain a full-time career in Myanmar. 1. How and why did you come about taking on these positions? 2. Can you give us the details on how you manage to do all these? 3. What do you want to achieve from doing all of this? 4. What do you think are the impacts of your efforts? 4. In the Asian Entrepreneur interview, you answered and I quote: “I’ve been living like a gypsy across Indochina with the intention of saving the world.” Would you please elaborate on what you mean by this? And how do you intend on “saving the world”? 5. Based on our background research, you’re the founder of SoyAi. Can you tell us about the SoyAi and how it came into being? 6. What about the Youth Centre in Myanmar? What influenced you to establish this community? 3 �7. I remember you once told me, how you started out with a big group of kids and only ended up with a small number. Was it because their families didn’t support the program or other personal reasons? 8. Based on your previous interview with Myanmar Entrepreneur, you expressed a certain opinion about NGOs. Could you elaborate more on why you feel this way about NGOs? Thinking back 9. What countries have you visited and done work in? Could you please elaborate on those experiences as well as any hardships you may have faced while traveling? 10. In all the countries that you’ve traveled, how are women different from each country? Example, gender equality, women’s rights and other discriminations they may have faced. 11. As a female, did you ever face any racial/ethnic, or gender discrimination? If so, could you elaborate on one experience and how you dealt with the situation? 12. In your own perspective, what are your thoughts on women in Asia and women in the West when it comes to women’s rights and how their culture plays a role? 13. Would you say, in today’s world women are more able to liberate themselves and able to voice their rights? Or is there still a gender gap? 14. As a woman, you have done a lot to create change in your community. In our course, we learned of many situations where “women were agents of social change”. How do you feel about this phrase and do you agree with it? 15. Finally, to end this interview, what is one thing you hope to see in society (in your lifetime or the future)? 4 �SECTION THREE (10 points; 2 points each) Answer these questions: 1. Did you get complete answers to your questions? Explain For many of our questions, we got more than complete answers. When Eileen answered our questions, it was like she was telling us a story. Especially when we asked her about how she came to receive the many titles that she had (e.g., entrepreneur, an author). She would include a lot more information than what we were expecting. There were many times where she would think of something relevant to what we were previously talking about and bring it up in the conversation. 2. Was your interview structured, unstructured, or mixed? Explain Our interview was mixed, but a majority of it was structured since we stuck to the questions that we had written down prior to the interview. We moved along the interview by asking one question after another. However, we skipped over some of our questions based on her responses, because sometimes Eileen would provide an extensive recollection of information for one question, but would be sufficient for the following two-three questions. We only asked additional questions when trying to clarify something that she had previously said. 3. What probing questions did you use? Explain All the questions we had were based on the previous research we had done on Eileen. One of the probing questions we had was about her opinions on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) because in a previous interview, she had mentioned that she did not like to be addressed as an NGO. Thus, we decided to ask her to explain more on why she felt that way. Another probing question that we asked was about her experiences in the countries that she had lived in (i.e., Myanmar and Cambodia). Since she is a woman and has experiences being a foreigner in 5 �another country, we were interested in whether or not she had experienced any discrimination and if she had experienced difficulty in her work space. In addition, we asked Eileen about topics that we had discussed in class in order to see if her perspective differed from our classmates’ responses. For example, we asked her how she felt about argument on career vs. family for women, since the topic was discussed in class and we thought it would be interesting to see if this argument is also present in other countries beside America. 4. Explain your team approach. That is, who did what? For the most part, we approached the project collaboratively by doing the tasks separately and then we would each add or edit what the other had done. For example, when we were creating the interview questions, Sandy first started the list of interview questions. I added my own questions from the research we had on her and rearranged the questions so that they would transition smoothly when we asked them to her. During the interview, we each switched off to ask Eileen the questions and we took turns to respond to what she said for our questions. For the powerpoint slides, we met together to put all the important parts that we wanted to mention in our slides and then we each did condense the information on a slide (Sandy did process and I did content). Everything was done over google docs so that we could each edit it on our own time. 5. Did the interviewee give you any documents or references to articles to read, or did she mention other people for you to talk to (or research)? Explain Eileen did not give any additional resources to research. She did, however, mention about UNICEF in Myanmar. SECTION FOUR (30 points) 6 �Insert your interview notes/write up here. Remember to be accurate and concise. Consider what was said, any emerging trends your interviewee mentioned, different interpretations, and recommendations for follow up interviews. The first two questions that were asked about about Eileen’s childhood. We first asked about where she was born and what her parents did for a living. She spoke about being born in Malaysia and how her parents were teachers. She further clarified what level of education they were working at and their specific positions at the school. We then asked her about her childhood dreams. She laughed while saying how she wanted to be a police woman so that she could catch all the bad guys. To follow up, we asked her what her parents wanted her to be and she said they wanted her to be an accountant or lawyer. In addition to her answer about her parents’ goals for her, she joked about how much she disliked math. Following these two questions, we asked her about her career. Based on our previous research, we knew that she was an entrepreneur, author, fitness trainer, and a voice for the youth. Thus, we asked about how she came about taking on those positions. For this question, she provided us a very long and detailed answer of many events that she had encountered to get where she was now. She was very enthusiastic when she was explaining everything and at certain points, she displayed her frustration with her experiences through changes in tone and eye movements. She talked about many of her achievements, as well as the many issues that occured along the way and her attempts to resolving such issues. Moreover, she recounted many memories that have shaped her into who she is today. Eileen started off by explaining why she was in Myanmar, which was because her husband had gotten transferred there in 2012. She talked about her search for something to do because she didn’t want to be a housewife. She laughed and further added how it was impossible 7 �to be a housewife because there was no electricity or water. Following this, she talked about her job at Citi Mart, and about how she wanted to do something more than just work. The first home Eileen found had 26 children and she recounted one instance she had with one of the children. She had asked a girl what she had had for lunch and Eileen exclaimed that they only had papaya salad, emphasizing how ridiculous the situation was. She then talked about how she was introduced to a monastery with 200 children, about her frustration with the adults there, and her disapproval of how everything was related to money. She spoke of one memory where she had donated a TV and started noticing that the moms were charging the children to use the TV, which Eileen had not expect would happen. She then talked about her solution to this problem, which was to create her own youth center. She expressed the difficulties she had with starting it up because of the money, but she then expressed her gratitude and excitement of how her friends and family had supported her through it all. Following this, she talked about how she was done with simply donating her salary, because she didn’t think it was sustainable. She brought up her company called Soyai, which was designated for the 18 year old boys that she was working with. She talked about her frustration with the monks and how they disapproved of her not giving the money and instead making the boys work for it themselves. She even experienced emotional blackmail since the monks would say that they had no money to send the children to her. She recounted her experience of pitching her story to the public about Soyai, about her goals for the company and the very essence of it all. When she talked about all the achievements Soyai had accomplished, especially with the boys themselves, she spoke with honor and was genuinely proud of all the company has gone through to become what it is today. Moreover, she recounts memories of the initial struggles of getting the company started and the many experiences she had with the boys. 8 �After Mrs. Lui spoke about her career, we asked her further probing questions based on our research, like about her opinions on NGOs. She described her disapproval of NGOS, like UNICEF, for using donations for administrational things, like paintings in an office. She contrasted herself from these NGOs, since she was using 100% of the donations for the children, because it felt weird to not be giving it all back to the deserving recipients. She also mentioned an experience she had when she tried to bring up an issue to UNICEF, regarding the government obstructing the ability for boys to attend school. For an organization that receives so much money, she never heard back from them about her issue. Once we heard everything about her opinions and history of her career, we asked for her opinions about topics that were talked about in class. Based on the way she recounted her memories, Eileen expressed herself as a very strong and independent woman, who was persistent in her determination to create change in her local community. With that said, we asked her if she had ever experienced discrimination (as both a female and foreigner) in the many countries she had visited in South Asia. Eileen then recounted her frustration as a foreigner and efforts to fight the system that was already present in the community. This is very similar to the experiences of the women we had read about in class. She also added how she was stereotyped as a woman since people expected her to be emotional and would judge her for her appearance. We then asked her about her opinions on the discussion between having a career and having a family. She used her own experiences to express that there shouldn’t be an opportunity to choose, because people should just do what they need to do. If they think they should focus on their career right now, they should, instead of listening to what other people have to say. She further added that people must first change their mindset, and change the ideas that people are being brought up with. She believes that because women are raised a certain way, it is almost like they are 9 �brainwashed and this consequently impacts how they would act in the future. In other words, women become stuck in these categories/boxes. Despite the strong impression she gave off, she also believes that women who are fighting the system are still a minority, and that there are still not a lot of women that are trying to end gender inequality. As a conclusion, Eileen didn’t provide recommendations for a follow-up, but she did leave a final message. She believes that without changing the mindsets that people are raised with, there will be a very slow change in terms of gender equality. Section Five: Your Analysis: We’ve gained a tremendous respect and admiration for her work. In today’s world, it’s hard to find people like Eileen. Creating her own safe haven for underprivileged children in Myanmar and reassuring them that there’s hope in life is what makes Eileen unique from other individuals. Knowing the fact that she is not a member of any organizations such as the U.N or the NGOs and that she works alone with the help of her friends and families shows that this is her true passion. She’s doing all of this out of kindness and her true desire to eradicate poverty. To us this is more meaningful than anything else. Judging from her responses, it is clear Eileen is not the type to give up easily once her mind is her on a goal. She has many potentials, dreams and hopes for the kids in her youth center. Throughout this interview, we don’t believe there were any aspects that were not useful. Since we did not have sufficient time, we would have like to know more in details of her other trips to Cambodia and Vietnam. Also, what other programs or ideas does she have in mind for the children in Myanmar? It would be interesting to know if she has plans to build her own organization and help all the other children in the Southeast Asia as well. 10 �From our class presentations, the presentation on Dr. Ling Ling Ho was interesting to observe. She is currently the head researcher for University of Wisconsin. She witnessed the era of the Chinese civil war. Hearing the story from a first person is much more fascinating than reading it from the books. It’s scary to know that back then the only way to stay alive and be safe was by joining the Chinese army. Children were on the streets and had no educational opportunities. It was risky and dangerous for her to be seen with her Western (British) boyfriend in public during the civil war because it was a period when China was anti-Western. The other presentation we also liked was on Sarah-Ann Smith. She was an ex-foreign service officer for the U.S government at China and Taiwan. She was also a professor at the University of South Carolina. Her role as a diplomat developed a better understanding relationship between Taiwan and the U.S; help people understand each other. The most interesting thing to find out from this presentation was that Sarah-Ann was the fifth woman in the U.S Foreign Service. Other groups did a fantastic job on their presentations as well. Overall, this course has given us a lot of knowledge about women and the movements and revolutions they’ve started or contributed to. Katie and I can agree that after completing this course we have a better understanding on how history has a big impact on today’s society. It’s all a big wave of movement. If the women we learned about in class didn’t take the initiative, then we (women) would still be living in a male dominated world. 11 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2018_20180416_elui_doc_dis Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cho, Sandy Lim, Katie Title A name given to the resource Eileen Lui Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-16 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women's contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library's digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women's social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching Women social reformers--Asia Women social reformers--United States Oral history Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017 http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/e6be645a2140db65469d4325ab85a5f5.pdf 919a58c1244ddc86be5d3f60ab6b37c8 PDF Text Text Theresa Decicco, Mehtasim Mahfuz, Alexa Reynolds AAS 307 Professor Christoff 12 December 2015 Interview Paper Section One: Person interviewed: Mary David Interviewee’s title or position: Lawyer, and advocate for anti-human trafficking Date, time and length of interview: Sunday November 8th 2014. 4:10pm. 55 minutes. Objective in conducting this interview: To find out more about Mary David, a woman who has contributed to US Asian relations, and to uncover interesting information about her including (but not limited to): her origin story, motivators, contributions, and future plans. Section Two: Prior to our interview Ms. David sent us her CV, which was key to our preliminary research. From this we learned of her current career, assisting the Judge-in-Charge of the Criminal Division at the Baltimore Circuit Court. Along with her impressive work, both domestic and abroad, Ms. David’s talent is widespread. As her CV mentioned she also partakes in beauty pageants, dancing, and spoken word performances. As a group we also looked into Ms. David’s social media outlets such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Social media help us gain an impression of Ms. David. Watching former interviews and performances, we learnt that she was very informed and well spoken. Another gem that gave us a great amount of guidance was Ms. David’s website. The website listed her past and present projects, as well a section on her work against human trafficking. 1 �In our last measure of research, we looked into the issue of human trafficking. One of our group members, Alexa, had some interesting insight into this topic. She bought about knowledge of the tier system, which is used to measure human trafficking in various countries. Alexa, pointed out the fact that Timor-Leste’s tier level lower after Mary David’s work with that country’s government. We felt that we needed a better understanding of the topic, learning the definition of human trafficking as: “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation” (United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime). Learning about issue at hand, made us more interested to talk to Ms. David, as we found it very noble of her to be fighting against such a terrible violation of human rights. The following is the list of questions we originally had to ask Mary David: Where were you born? What is your country of origin? How did you get involved in fighting against human trafficking? Who are the at-risk populations for human trafficking? What are the factors that add to this? Is spreading the message through the arts a good platform? What is the link between the arts and spreading your message? Are the main purposes for human trafficking in the areas you worked? How do you believe you contribute to US/Asian relations as a woman? Do you identify as an Asian woman helping Americans, vice versa, or both? How would you explain human trafficking to someone who does know about it? 2 �What do you think would be the long-term consequences of human trafficking if more awareness isn’t spread? What effects does foreign human trafficking have on the US/ US-Asian relations? Who is the most interesting person you met? How did you get involved in fighting against human trafficking? Could you tell us more about your role/time as an UN advisor in Timor-Leste? Why do you think human trafficking is still a prevalent problem in today's society? What do you believe allows for this issue to continue on? What would you say are your biggest accomplishments in regards to US/Asian relations as a woman? Section Three: Ms. David gave us quite elaborate and detailed answers. She answered our questions completely; an example can be seen in her path to advocacy. The question at hand was “how did you get involved in fighting against human trafficking?” Her response was fluid and powerful, she told us of her time on the island of Cyprus and her interaction with Filipina workers. During her stay, she witnessed the maltreatment and prejudices against the forced workers. Coupled with negative responses she received from local police, Ms. David came to the conclusion that human trafficking was a battle worth fighting. While Ms. David gave very detailed answers, she was able to stay within the realm of the questions. Our interview was a mixture of both structured and unstructured questions. As a group we sought to gain as much information as we could from Ms. David. In our preliminary research, we found so many different and interesting aspects of her career. To ask just a set of structured or unstructured questions would be unfair to her and our research. One example of our structured 3 �questions was: “What do you think would be the long-term consequences of human trafficking if more awareness isn’t spread?” One simple example of our unstructured questions went as followed: “Could you tell us more about you time as an UN advisor to Timor-Leste?” Since Ms. David had so much to offer, we found it best to ask all around questions, which best helped us in understanding her career and impact on US/Asian relations. In terms of probing questions, we were greatly interested in her career against human trafficking and its origin. We approached this by directly asking: “How did you get involved in fighting against human trafficking?” We continued on this path, by asking Ms. David about her time and role she played in Timor-Leste. Ms. David told us about her time in the Southeast Asian country from how she dealt with counter terrorism to helping with the country’s first elections. When giving the interview, the three of us equally divided the responsibility. We split the questions amongst ourselves in a way that we each spoke to her for an equal amount of time. We also took turns taking notes. We decided to go this route so that we could 1) have each other’s opinions from the notes and, 2) so that we alternated who was paying attention to Ms. David. While taking notes, we took care not to take notes all at the same time so that at least one of us was watching Ms. David at all times, showing that we were interested in what she was saying. Section Four: The first thing we did was joke a bit about the technical issues we had been having previously, which ended up setting the mood for the entire interview as being very relaxed and held a peer-to-peer vibe. We reintroduced ourselves to Mary David, so she would be able to put faces to the names of the people that she was corresponding with. After that we jumped into the interview quickly, as we had a lot of questions to ask her. We started with the short answer question of where Ms. David was born, which was in Chennai, India. Then after that we pretty 4 �much exclusively asked open-ended questions. How she would explain human trafficking to someone who is not educated on the issue depended on the audience and that it has different technical definitions but at the source it is when a person is forced, fraud, or coerced. Normally, it is implied that a person needs to be moved, but it really is about that person’s exploitation. How she got involved with the issue of human trafficking was when she visited Cyprus in college during study abroad because she thought it would be an off the beaten path location. What she didn’t know at the time was that there was a large Sri Lankan and Filipino population there and that they were lower class and discriminated against, which caused issue because of her physical features causing her to be lumped in with them as well. She faced the same types of discrimination, which included being threatened, and she didn’t feel comfortable in reporting it because the police seemed not to care. Ms. David began to wonder what these workers went though and when she asked they were able to open to her about their poor working conditions that they had been tricked into, offers which were made to make a person think that they would have a truly great opportunity and then turning out that the idea is only for getting paperwork to go through and then they are subjected to horrible situations. After that question we felt the need to expand on that more and asked an improved question: Where there any stories in particular that sticks with you even now? She told us of a woman who was a college degree-government worker in the Philippines that went over to Cyprus work in an administrative role at a hospital but was forced into domestic work after she had already spent so much on paperwork to get to Cyprus. Ms. David saw her experience as eyeopening, that this woman couldn’t go out alone, her phone was taken from her so she couldn’t call family and watched everything she did. The fact she was college educated was not a typical story, but it showed how broad the issue is and that background isn’t always the key factor. In 5 �talking about her time in Timor-Leste, she talked about the range of jobs she had while she was there which included an advisor on Women’s and Children’s Issues (for human trafficking, exploitation, marginalized and economically poor women), an election campaign for representatives for the committee on the elimination of the discrimination against women (which involved working with other country states and why the issue was important and what they could go as a collective), counter-terrorism for UN to show their efforts in preventative measures and revision of the Constitution to align with values of anti-women discrimination. We moved back to talking about human trafficking as a whole and the at risk population being those with the least access to opportunities, which are most often women and children, particularly in lower socioeconomic groups, without access to education and sanitation. It also affects large families who can’t support all their children, either as a way to try and lift the children up to a better situation or to better the lives of the family by selling off the child. The main reasons for human trafficking have the largest links to sexual abuse and incest, which makes these individuals more susceptible and they are sought out by traffickers because they are easily manipulated use prior abuse to hurt them emotionally. There is also a relation to a lack of a stable home life or those without an emotional support network (economic status aside) which ties to, in America, the foster care system and children's’ lack bonds and they are more easily lured. We discussed what could be the long-term consequence of human trafficking if awareness isn’t spread, particularly the awareness of foreign victims. The lack of knowledge of 911 in a country might not be known to foreign individuals and she worked on a legislation in Maryland that allowed for multilingual awareness postings in areas where trafficking were taking place, creating awareness and access to the help they may need. She placed importance in creating a community and culture of advocates as well, donations being important resources, but more 6 �important to get involved. She used examples like doctors who gave reconstructive surgery to individuals who have been mutilated and tattoo artists who remove tattoo brands from victims as being ways that people can help fight trafficking using their work. We moved to the importance in the role of women quickly went back to the “main reasons of human trafficking” question to add on that one of the big issues, globally, is also low self-esteem. Since this is one of the roots of the problems of human trafficking, women hold an important role in teaching self-esteem to one another and forming relationships. Since women are often scarred with physical relationships, other women are important in creating a safe environment for them to help build trust and heal. Men and women are both important, but trafficked women are sometimes afraid to trust with men after their experiences so women’s roles become very important in this aspect. We then moved onto her relationship with the arts as a platform for awareness. For Ms. David, she wondered how to get an audience's attention from the start. Pageants were her best platform, because she automatically had an audience and she was able to make connections. Her main example was that if she tried going into schools as just the Deputy Chair for the Maryland Human Trafficking task force, they were leery because of students’ young ages. Yet with her mentioning that she is a beauty pageant girl, all of a sudden those same doors became more open for her, which gave her access to kids that she wouldn’t have been able to reach before. She sees the arts has a great way to connect with kids especially, but for all other age groups as well because of the emotional response possible. Official audiences are important too, but it is every day people who response to stories and narrative can capture attention. When asked who the most interesting person she had met, she seemed to find it a tough question for her because she couldn’t really choose. Who she thought of was a guy that she couldn’t remember his name, but he was the main guy from Law and Order TV show, when she 7 �interviewed him she was impressed with his passion for international refugees. She thought she could give a better answer if she came back to it. So we rephrased the question a bit to gain a more clarified response from her in an effort to be helpful: Who was the most influential person that she found throughout her career? She thought there were really two, but she choose to focus on one. Sophia Borges, one of the youngest ambassadors at the UN and working with her was very valuable to Ms. David, who described her as being a “powerhouse” and an individual who “owned her confidence”. What remained important to Ms. David about this experience was Ambassador Borges “humanness” and her imperfections coupled with seeing her act in an official capacity. The little quirks were what really had an effect on the impression of her. We also discussed the issue of the “bossy” versus “controlling the room” for women in relation to seeing Ambassador Borges’ way of handling herself as a woman in those situations. When talking about her identity as an American woman helping Asian or an Asian woman helping Asia, she said she saw herself as Asian American. She sees labels and boxes as a struggle, since even Asia is hard to define because of its size and diversity. She considers herself culturally influenced as both when she tried to bring herself more to context of the question she identified herself as a woman helping Asia. We then asked how she felt she contributed to U.S.– Asian relations as a woman and her greatest accomplishments. She had to put a lot of thought in during answering this question, since she used a lot of filler or hesitation words, but she saw being a woman of Asian American descent as part of her approach to issues, in courts in particular. She related it to her current work with the judge in charge of criminal prosecution in Maryland as her perspective was shaped by the victims she worked with and also by her experiences as an Asian American woman. And for the UN, she knew the importance for bringing up minorities populations to have a voice to speak for themselves and others. 8 �She sees herself being Asian American as a plus in understanding the “Otherness” that these minorities often face and via different perspectives and mentioned the horrible “What are you?” question that those of non-Caucasian descent often get asked in terms of their ethnicity. She sees that her identity as both Asian and American as a way of understanding victims and awareness of the cultural “sensitivities” that often surround issues such as domestic violence and rape. This understanding is important so that she can talk about it within the Asian community and also outside of it. In repeating the second part of the question once again and since a different person answered it was slightly rephrased and narrowed down: What you feel are your greatest accomplishments in U.S.-Asian Relations, particularly related to human trafficking? She held great emphasis on her work in Timor-Leste’s nomination and election to the committee on the elimination of discrimination against women and also in making changes to the country’s national constitution to help women have access to resources in cases of domestic violence, sexual abuse and assault. There was another that she was unsure about adding at first, because it did not relate to Asia, but we encouraged her to continue on, since it was something that she did want to add onto accomplishments. She even said that it meant a lot to her in helping with the general election of a presidential candidate who was actively fighting slavery for Mauritania Africa, which highest percentage of slavery in the world at 20%. This candidate ran on the platform of the fight against slavery and trafficking, and reached out to her. He didn’t win, it was a fixed election, yet he got a large percentage of the vote with promoting these issues. As a wrap-up question: What do you see yourself wanting to do in the future? From where she is now, what are things that she would like to focus on? Ms. David is very interested her legal work and her goal right now is to focus on criminal prosecution, especially of 9 �traffickers, but also of child sexual abuse and child pornography related cases. She also very passionate about the connection of the arts with human rights issues. She feels that education on issues of human trafficking need to be talked about earlier than they often are, with target audiences of youth being high school, which is more often already too late of an age and more of a need to educate younger audience as a way of prevention, which is very difficult for adults to handle. Kids are learning from wrong sources and she wants to provide the right sources. She is creating a film to illustrate a false love story of a trafficking victim, as a source for younger kids to get started in dialogue about it. We started to close the interview and she said that she would be happy to help us in any way she could in the future. Then she suddenly thought of something else that she thought was important to add on. One important legislation she helped draft in Maryland from a misdemeanor to felony along with creating a government fund to help trafficked victims from the assets of traffickers. The fact that it was a misdemeanor was something that she happened upon and she presented it to the governor. Section Five: Our group ended the interview in complete contentment. Our group felt that out of the many good parts of the interview, Ms. David was easy to relate to, as she is in a similar situation as all of the members of our group. Our group members also deal with the clash of ethnic and cultural identities. Just like Mary David, we are in a situation of trying to manage our cultural heritage with our “American” upbringing. As Ms. David stated in the interview, instead of being part of only one, we can fully identify as all of our identities and use it as a means of helping both in Asia and in America. 10 �Our group also admired how driven Ms. David is. At such a young age, she was able to accomplish a lot, even being listed as a Top 99 Foreign Policy Leader under 33 in 2013. She is a person with a mission and she has worked diligently to fulfill her goal. Ms. David is a woman of different backgrounds (Indian and American) and she was able to break barriers through methods that others don’t often utilize. It was even more meaningful that she found a direction to follow at a similar age that our group members are in now. While many college students, like ourselves, are only concerned with their GPAs, Ms. David was examining what was in front of her and questioning the whys and trying to come up with solutions for the social injustices that she was uncovering. Our group found her ability to balance her schoolwork with her humanitarian work an admirable feat and a great source of inspiration. Mary David was also an excellent interviewee. She was very on point with topics and didn’t go on tangents. Although we had only sent her a few of our questions, she was so prepared in this topic that it seemed as if we had sent her our entire list of questions beforehand. She was extremely well versed in the topics we asked her about, and was very direct with her answers. Because of this, there were not any parts of the interview that our group found to be not useful. Every statement that Ms. David made had some sort of relevance to our interview and some sort of positive effect on the group. In our focus to find out more about her accomplishments, our group feels that we should have asked her about her origin story. It would have been interesting, and perhaps useful, to know more about her history. What is her background and how did she grow up? What geared her towards law in the first place? How did her family life affect her decision to pursue law and human trafficking? Questions similar to this would have been good to ask. 11 �Our group would also have liked to know what the process was of her involvement post her story from Cyprus. After having her experience there, what steps did she take mentally and physically to begin her fight? How long after this experience had she made her decision? We felt that would be good to know because it gives us background information on how she decided to shift her career towards human rights, instead of when and why. In comparison to other in-class presentations we found three interviewees to be particularly interesting. These women were Clarissa Burt, Nancy Payne, and Jennifer Chou. With Clarissa Burt we found her work with the Naval Academy to be greatly captivating. Being a professor in Arabic studies, she was truly in engrossed in her subject, and shared a great love for it. This reminded us of Mary David in a sense, as we had the similar process of listening to how passionate Ms. David was with her mission. Just as Ms. Burt’s group listened and asked follow-up questions on her area of expertise, we did the same. In this case it allowed for both Ms. David and Ms. Burt to expand on points and ideas they wished to talk about more. Interviewee Nancy Payne, was another person we found to be of interest. As a group, we found Ms. Payne’s use of the arts as a means of communicating awareness, very similar to Ms. David. Nancy Payne’s participation in the Radio Drama of South Sudan, allowed for the spread of western ideologies in gender issues and democracy. Just as Nancy Payne used radio, Ms. David’s art performances raised awareness for human trafficking. While Ms. David did not convey the same message, both women used the arts as medium to spread their ideas across. Finally, we found the work of Ambassador Jennifer Chou to be compelling. An aspect of her interview that stood out to us, was her views of defining gender. Ambassador Chou’s ideas were considerably similar to Ms. David’s thoughts on ethnic identity. Ms. Chou’s ideal on this issue of using gender as a defining point to be a bit offensive. In a similar context, Mary David’s feelings 12 �seem to relate on using nationality to define a person’s work. When we asked Ms. David on her view of whether she finds herself to be an Asian women helping Asia or an American woman helping Asia, she found herself to be just a person helping the world. As she stated in our interview: “I don’t like one specific background. Both parts are parts of who I am, Asia is vast, in my experience I know one that’s dual.” Overall, our group was pretty pleased with this project. It gave us insight into different contributions by women that we otherwise may not have ever known about. Many of these women have helped others immensely with very little recognition. We found all the in-class presentations to be of great interest, as we saw many of our classmates share the excitement we did. All the women that were interviewed in this process were greatly insightful and inspirational. 13 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource David, Mary ; Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching; Women social reformers--Asia; Women social reformers--United States; Oral history Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject; AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2015_20160815_mdavid_doc_dis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-12-12 Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women’s contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library’s digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women’s social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Decicco, Theresa ; Mahfuz, Mehtasim ; Reynolds, Alexa Type The nature or genre of the resource text Title A name given to the resource Mary David http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/48f9c89c17e3ba6dfe1ecf2d5b89df14.pdf 386255ad1264829db7fe23cfd6f2b6ae PDF Text Text Our group interviewed Mary David. She is a lawyer and an advocate for anti-human trafficking. She received her JD in 2012 from George Washington University Law School. She is currently assisting the Judge-in-Charge of the Criminal Division at the Baltimore City Circuit Court with various aspect of adjuncting felony cases. Mary David has sought to create change and raise awareness about human trafficking, through policy making, education through the arts and working in and with different levels of government, both domestic and abroad. Ms. David has held esteemed positions such as Advisor for Timor-Leste where she dealt with counter terrorism, the country’s first elections, and human trafficking. Mary David is using her status and privilege as an American woman to help those who don’t have the same rights. Ms. David reminded us of Anna Louise Strong and Pearl S. Buck. Ms David uses her beauty pagents, spoke word performances, and dancing as an access point to various audiences that are often over-looked in regards to social change. In class we learned about the “Spheres of Influence/Identity Model” and Ms David stated that she sees herself as being both “Asian” and “American” and dislikes the labels that would confine individuals to one category or another (Interview audio insert). She is a woman who helps the world. Looking at the “Ten Methods of Social Change” we reviewed in class, she utilized several of these methods, such as dialogue, education and consistency. Upon hearing Ms David talk about human trafficking we were reminded of the “East Asian Women in the Military” and the comfort women that were mentioned and how it related to modern human 1 �trafficking. 1 �Before even formulating questions, we thought it wise to research Ms. David and ascertain information a bout her that she may not have included in the CV that was forwarded to us by her. After deciding on the points that we felt were more important, we formulated our questions. In contacting Ms. David it was difficult working around scheduling conflicts amongst the four of us. Originally we had a date set, but since she could not access Adobe via her work computer our meeting had to be moved to the following Sunday. Even on that day we were unable to get video from her end in the Adobe Connect Room and so we had to do our interview via Professor Christoff’s Skype account. We were unable to record video but we did record audio via our phones. In our working as a team, we found that it best to spread the responsibilities of each of the jobs between us as a way to all be equally engaged with Ms. David during the interview. The questions were mostly open ended questions which created a mixed structure format that resulted in a very relaxed interview environment. We feel this gave Ms. David more room to bring up and expand on different points that she wanted to touch up-on further once the interview began to come to a close. We split up the original interview questions amongst ourselves and found it easiest to take each of our notes individually yet taking care to not all take notes at the same time. Because of this at least one of us was watching Ms. David at all times and that person could comment and progress with the interview while the others could nod and gesture to show continued engagement. Even with an ordered set of questions for the interview, we ended up going in a non- 2 �linear fashion once the interview got going and ending up adding “spur-of-themoment” questions and rephrasing already formulated ones to clarify points and gain a better response. 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource David, Mary ; Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies. Subject The topic of the resource Asian Americans--Study and teaching; Women social reformers--Asia; Women social reformers--United States; Oral history Relation A related resource AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject; AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/). Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context aas_2015_20160815_mdavid_ppt_dis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Description An account of the resource Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women’s contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library’s digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women’s social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Decicco, Theresa ; Mahfuz, Mehtasim ; Reynolds, Alexa Type The nature or genre of the resource text Title A name given to the resource Mary David