Asian American Little Magazines
The late 1960s and early 1970s was a moment when a new Asian American identity movement -- as developed by a community of activists, writers, artists, and musicians -- was in the process of emergence, at college campuses as well as at urban centers on both the east and west coast. Young writers and activists, some of whom would go on to become established figures, were first publishing their works in new magazines during this period, including Gidra, Bridge: the Asian American Magazine, Rodan, Aion, Kalayaan International, Amerasia Journal, and Yellow Seeds. Writers whose early works are described on this site include Lawson Inada, Janice Mirikitani, Frank Chin, Amy Uyematsu, Mike Murase, and Ron Tanaka, and many others.
To be clear, this is not a digital archive Asian American little magazines. Many of the works published in those magazines are likely still under copyright -- and in any case, there are other sites that operate as repositories for some of the works published in those magazines (for a list of such repositories, see below).
1968 seems an appropriate a starting point because that is the year when, scholars claim, Yuji Ichioka coined the term "Asian American" to describe a shared sense of identity amongst Chinese-American, Japanese-American and Filipino-American communities. Until that point, there had certainly been advocacy and activism within those groups, but it was 'ethnic' advocacy -- Japanese Americans tended to advocate for other Japanese Americans. The Asian American movement marks the beginning of true pan-ethnic Asian identity.
1968 is also the year of the groundbreaking student strikes at San Francisco State College (later, University) and UC Berkeley -- which led to the creation of the first Ethnic studies departments at American universities. The next few years would see impressive activity amongst Asian American activists, students, and community members -- and the emergence of numerous independent publications on both the east and west coasts. Many of these magazines were working on the same thematic issues, and some of them saw considerable cross-pollination in terms of contributing authors and editors. Since 1974 is the year of the publication of a major anthology of Asian American literature, Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Asian-American Wariers, 1974 seems like an appropriate endpoint for a narrowly-focused project like this one.
Little Magazines
A "little magazine" is typically understood as an independent publication aimed at a niche audience. Our usage of the term borrows from substantial scholarly work in modernist studies on the role of the little magazine in early 20th century writing. Little magazines were crucial to the emergence of an avant-garde modernist movement in England and the U.S. Analogously, I believe important conversations were occurring amongst Asian-American writers during the period marked here -- through which writers from different communities came to see their experiences as connected, despite real differences. The outcome of this work was the formation of an Asian American literary movement -- greater in some ways than the sum of its parts. Alongside documenting the actual magazines in question, this site aims to show the emergence of a network during the time period in question.
To be clear, these were by no means the only Asian American magazines being published at the time. Alongside the alternative publications showcased here were established magazines like Pacific Citizen, Kashu Mainichi, and Crossroads. Within the Japanese community, these were often operated and edited by the older generation (Nisei); the independent little magazine format was largely favored by the then-emergent third generation Japanese American community (Sansei).
This project has been greatly facilitated by several repositories of little magazine materials online, including:
the Gidra repository
the Aion repository
the Yellow Seeds repository
The journal Amerasia Journal was initially published as an academic journal by undergraduates at Yale University; its editors were in direct conversation with writers and editors who tended to publish in the other journals, so it will be considered here alongside the others. (Early issues of Amerasia Journal are available through academic journal providers.)
Magazines such as Bridge: the Asian-American Magazine can be found in the special collections of various research libraries, including some on the east coast. Magazines such as Rodan and Kalayaan International, tend to be more limited to West Coast collections.
--Amardeep Singh
Department of English
Lehigh University
