If you go back to the 1920s, the United States passed an Immigration Reform Act that effectively cut down immigration to close to zero for 40 years in this country. And what happened over those 40 years? The many, many people who had come from many different foreign countries and different foreign cultures, they assimilated into American culture.
Orchard Street, the eight-block stretch of the Lower East Side named as Time Out's coolest street in NYC this year, has undergone a host of changes in its history. Often, New York City's street-level history gets forgotten-demolished, paved over and deemed too small to make history books. But one museum is dedicated to remembering the stories of this street and its people .
Another notable immigrant community that has enriched London's culture hails from India, with records of immigration dating back to the 1600s and a large influx throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, from the first British Indian MP Dadabhai Naoroji, elected in 1892, to the British-Indian army, a 2.5 million-strong force of volunteers that fought during WW2. Not to mention the chefs and restaurants that have shaped the capital's culinary scene, from the family-run spots on Brick Lane to Mayfair's Punjabi restaurant Ambassador's Clubhouse.
This article introduces a new NPQ series titled The New Asian Diaspora Media: Defending Democracy Locally and Globally. Co-produced with Kavitha Rajagopalan, who directs a program on community journalism at the City University of New York (CUNY), this series highlights stories of how different Asian American communities are using grassroots digital media to meet their communities' needs for trustworthy in-language information amid a media environment distorted by rampant disinformation.
In places like Torrance and Gardena, you have the development and preservation of Japanese American food - it [has] layers of history and struggle, but food ultimately being a source of comfort and identity.