In 1978, a joint congressional resolution established Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week. The first 10 days of May were chosen to coincide with two important milestones in Asian/Pacific American history: the arrival in the United States of the first Japanese immigrants (May 7, 1843) and contributions of Chinese workers to the building of the transcontinental railroad, completed on May 10, 1869.Find more information about Asian/Pacific books for kids at these sites:
In 1992, Congress expanded the 10-day observance to a month-long celebration. Per a 1997 Office of Management and Budget directive, the Asian or Pacific Islander racial category was separated into two categories: "Asian" and "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander."
According to the 2005 American Community Survey, there are 2.3 million people aged 5 and older who speak Chinese in the U.S. today. After Spanish, Chinese is the most widely spoken non-English language in the country. What is more, Tagalog and Vietnamese have more than one million speakers each.
Blue Rose Girls (Grace Lin)
New York Public Library