Voting Eligibility for Upcoming APALA Election

Dear APALA members,

The 2013 APALA Executive Board election will open on Monday, March 18 at 12am PT. The ballot will be open through Friday, April 12 at 11:59pm PT.

Online voting is open to dues-paying and lifetime APALA members who are members in good standing as of March 1. For your membership to be processed in time, please renew no later than February 22. Please contact APALA membership coordinator Maria Pontillas (mariabey@yahoo.com) if you have any questions about your membership status.

If you have any questions about the election, feel free to contact me or another member of the Nominating Committee.

Best,
Sandy Wee, chair
Michelle Baildon
Florante Ibanez

2013 Asian/Pacific American Award For Literature Winners

Winners of the 2013 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature, which promote Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage and are awarded based on literary and artistic merit, have been selected by APALA.

The Awards are given in five categories, with Winner and Honor books selected in each category. The winners of the 2013 awards are:

The Picture Book Category:

Winner: “Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth” written by Joan Schoettler and illustrated by Jessica Lanan, published by Shen’s Books.
Honor: “A Path of Stars” written by Anne Sibley O’Brien, published by Charlesbridge.

Children’s Literature Category:

Winner: “Chengli and the Silk Road Caravan” written by Hildi Kang and published by Tanglewood Publishing.
Honor: “The Shark King” written by Kikuo Johnson and published by Toon Books.

The Young Adult Literature Category:

Winner: “Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary” written by Keshni Kashyap and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Honor: “Ichiro” written by Ryan Inzana and published Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The Adult Fiction Category:

Winner: “The Collective” written by Don Lee and published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Honor: “Drifting House” written by Kris Lee and published by Viking Penguin.

The Adult Non-Fiction Category:

Winner: “Third Asiatic Invasion” written by Rick Baldoz and published by New York Univeristy Press.
Honor: “Forbidden Citizens” by Martin Gold and published by the Capitol Net.

Winner and Honor books were chosen from titles published from October 2010 – September 2012. The winners will each receive an award plaque at the APALA Award Ceremony on Sunday, June 30, 2013 during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, IL.

For complete press release, see page 11 of ALA Cognotes, January 26, 2013: http://alamw13manual.heiexhibitors.com/sites/all/themes/alamw13manual/resources/ALA_Cognotes_Jan2013_02_Sat.pdf

To read the poem “The Oscars of the Library World (2013)” by Janet Wong in tribute to this year’s award winners: http://www.apalaweb.org/the-oscars-of-the-library-world-2013/

 

APALA Needs You! [UPDATED]

Updated: January 7, 2013

Dear Colleagues:

APALA needs you!!

We’re looking for a few good people to run for office with APALA. Please consider nominating yourself or a colleague for:

• Vice President/President-Elect (3-year commitment)
• Secretary
• Treasurer
• Member at Large (two to be elected; 2-year commitment)

Attendance at ALA Annual and Midwinter is expected. Nominees must be members in good standing. Officer terms will begin at the close of the 2013 ALA Annual Conference in June. For more information about the available offices, see the APALA bylaws: http://www.apalaweb.org/about/constitution-and-bylaws/.

The committee will accept nominations through Monday, February 18 at 11:59pm PT. Voting will be open March 19-April 15, 2013.

Please note that in order to vote in the election, you must be an APALA member in good standing on March 1, 2013.

Feel free to contact the any member of the Nominations Committee with your nomination(s) or if you have any questions!

APALA Nominations Committee 2012-13

Sandy Wee, chair
Michelle Baildon
Florante Ibanez

Member Highlights Showcase — Rebecca Martin [edited]

Rebecca Yoonhee Martin is currently working as the Assistant Circulation Supervisor & Faculty Liaison at Boston University’s Pappas Law Library. She focuses on interlibrary loan and document delivery for law school faculty and administration and helps to oversee the access services department.

One of the wonderful things about the member highlights is the opportunity to celebrate the diversities within APALA.

I grew up in a mixed race family and prefer the term hapa kolea to describe my half-Korean and half-Scottish ethnic heritage. My mother is first-generation Korean-American, but my father’s family has been in this country many years with a deep cultural connection to his home state of Texas. I grew up in Boston with my parents and half-sister, Yoonjung, where the kitchen was usually filled with smells of BBQ – both Korean and Texan!

Rebecca attended Rutgers University as a distance student and finished her studies there in winter 2011, concentrating on digital libraries and taking a great interest in the intersection of technology and social change.  She tells us how she is thinking about moving forward in the profession.

As a recent LIS graduate, I’m still considering different professional routes. However, through my work at Community Change, Inc., I’ve found I greatly enjoy using my reference and research skills in a non-traditional learning setting – those that tend to elicit more situations of applied research, rather than just academic scholarship. Still, through my academic library experiences, I am exploring and learning how best to use library services and programs to foster civil and social engagement among student users.

I dedicate much of my free time to library work as well: I am an active member of the Boston Radical Reference Collective and serve as the Library Coordinator of the Yvonne Pappenheim Library on Anti-Racism at Community Change, Inc.  Through my work at the Pappenheim Library, I presented with a group of colleagues on racism and its manifestations on the Internet at JCLC. I am also an Editorial Board member of the ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table Newsletter (SRRT), http://www.ala.org/srrt/.

I became an APALA member in 2011, while I was about half-way through my MLIS degree. I joined initially because, as an online student, I wanted to ensure that I had nearly all the same networking and mentoring opportunities as my on-campus counterparts.  I wanted to find a community of practitioners who could provide mentorship and support as I entered the LIS professional community. Since joining, I have had the great pleasure of meeting several APALA members in-person, many at JCLC, and have strengthened online collaboration with others.

I currently serve on the APALA Publicity Committee and have contributed to the APALA Newsletter as well. One of my favorite APALA projects is the What’s Your Normal? series. I very much look forward to each entry and getting to know about the perspectives, interests and experiences of APALA members past their professional identities.

See Rebecca’s article, White Screen/White Noise: Racism on the Internet, pp. 10-11 in the APALA Newsletter, Winter 2013.

 

Article compiled, written, and edited by Charlene Hsu Gross, in cooperation with Rebecca Yoonhee Martin.

Edited, 1/29/2013 for duplicated content.

APALA Member Selected as 2013 ALISE / UW Information School Youth Services Graduate Student Travel Award Recipient [CORRECTION]

Updated: January 30, 2013

Congratulations to Karla Lucht on being selected as the ALISE / University of Washington Information School Youth Services Graduate Student Travel Award 2013 recipient!

The travel award is given to LIS graduate students who are members of the Youth Services SIG and will be actively participating  in the ALISE conference.

More information can be found at: http://www.alise.org/Youth%20Services%20Graduate%20Student%20Travel%20Award

 [CORRECTION: Karla Lucht is the recipient of the travel award. Our sincerest apologies for previously misstating her name.] 

Hapa for Hire! by Linda Ueki Absher

One of the joys of being mixed-race is that for a lot of people, my face is an open invite for them to approach and start playing the “what are you?” game. Doesn’t matter if I’m waiting for a bus, standing in line for a Daniel Craig movie, or just staring longingly at the Thai lime-and-chili cashews at Trader Joe’s. There’s something about my visage that’s irresistible when it comes to trying to tag me minority-wise. And it’s even better when I decide to fess up since I usually don’t fit the ethnicity they’ve selected for me: “No—you don’t look it.” Or my all-time favorite: “That’s not it—”

So after decades of being an ethnic Rorschach test to strangers, I began wondering: why not make my looks work for me? Heck, I’m ambiguous enough that I look like I was born in a kimono, flamingo dress, or burka. Why not hire myself out to folks who need that little touch of diversity? I’ve even worked up the ad:

Your cocktail parties looking a little too bland ethnically? Tired of friends and coworkers always implying you just aren’t diverse enough? Or do you just want a person-of-color friend without having to deal with the time and liberal guilt involved? Why not hire an ethnically ambiguous, white-collar professional? In other words: why not hire me! Yes, now you can hire your own minority professional for those situations when having a sea of Caucasians just won’t do.  As a mixed-race librarian with a questionable ethnic appearance, I can meet most of your minority needs without looking too multiculti, thus avoiding the risk of scaring off administrators, neighbors or that cute person of color you keep bumping into at Starbucks. For a modest hourly rate, I am available for

• Standing behind you during those pesky press conferences when you address why your institution is woefully lacking in some issue that is of concern to minorities and the national media. Nodding in sympathy is extra.
• Publicity photo shoots in which I stare intently at any object representing your business or organization (computer screens, recycling bins, Nobel Prize winning professors, etc.).
• Showing up at the Q&A session for your presentation to ask a question that really is a pat on the back for your diversity efforts.
• Fund-raising events where I stand by your sushi or Mexican hors d’oeurves table and pronounce individual dishes with the appropriate accent whenever someone who counts is within hearing distance.
• Community or civic services where you need someone on your team who looks like the people you’re helping while television crews are recording your efforts.

But why limit yourself to professional events? Why not hire me for those social situations when having a minority BFF is an advantage? For the same nominal fee, I will

• Join your friends or family at the ethnic restaurant of choice and loudly announce it’s the only place in town that serves food just as authentic as “back home.” (NOTE: you pay for the meal, including all the alcohol I drink to get through the event.)
• Make you feel less of an interloper or provide cultural street cred by accompanying you to any desired ethnic event: Obon festivals, Cinco de Mayo parties, pow-wows—you name it.
• Attend dinner parties where I kill time while guests are waiting for you to thaw out Trader Joe’s mini-quiches by letting them play “what’s your ethnicity?” Guests are allowed enough questions before I announce my background and dinner served.
• Don the uniform of your choice while friends are chatting at your home. Impress your friends by having me wandering about in a housekeeper, gardener, or nail technician outfit.

I’m also available for those personal requests, ones where an “exotic” touch is needed for the attention you seek.  For a one-time fee, I will provide a photo of me for an online dating profile. Warning: A significant surcharge will be assessed for Craigslist and OKCupid profiles.

DISCLAIMERS : Any event requiring me to lift more than twenty pounds or use a power tool is extra. No actual housework, gardening, or nail buffing provided.  Eye rolling permitted whenever colleague, guest, or potential date scoffs at perceived lack of ethnicity. Chopstick in hair and/or non-descript Asian accent extra. No actual dating provided.

 

Linda Ueki Absher is a humanities reference librarian at Portland State University Library and has been known to use a fork in Chinese restaurants.

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Resources

• I would not raise a mixed race child.  Not happening:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/13/1169450/-i-would-not-raise-mixed-race-children-not-happening
• Census: More people Identify as Mixed Race:  http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/27/census-more-people-identify-as-mixed-race/
• Multiracial Oath of Social Responsibility (by Dr. Maria Root): http://www.drmariaroot.com/doc/OathOfSocialResponsibility.pdf
• Passing as Black: How Biracial Americans Choose Identity:  http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/16/passing-as-black-how-biracial-americans-choose-identity/
• Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html