Dear APALA Family,
When I stepped into this presidency role for the second time, I did so with equal parts of humility and joy. Not many people get the chance to serve their community once, let alone twice, and being trusted with this responsibility again, more than a decade after my first term, has been one of the greatest honors of my life. I want to begin with the simplest and most heartfelt words: thank you. Thank you for believing in me and thank you for building an organization that truly feels like coming home.
I remember the version of myself who first joined an APALA committee years ago, searching for a sense of belonging in a profession where I seldom saw myself reflected. I found that belonging here, among all of you. What a profound gift it has been, all these years later, to be able to help hold that same door open for the next person seeking their place. If there is one thing I hope every member feels, it is this: APALA was built by people who wanted you not just to join, but to genuinely belong.
Looking back over this year, what strikes me most isn’t a single accomplishment. It’s the way each one was carried by so many hands, so much heart, so much love.
We expanded our Literature Awards this year in a very special way, adding a Poetry category and, for the first time, distinct Pasifika subcategories across Adult Fiction, Poetry, and Picture Books. This was so much more than a programming change. It was our way of saying that our APALA Literature Awards is growing; it’s embracing more stories that reflect Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and/or Pasifika experiences and cultures created by Asian American, Asian Canadian, and/or Pasifika authors and illustrators. The banquet was a joyful celebration – our committee chairs and members, the authors and illustrators, the food, and the stories we shared made the sense of belonging truly contagious.
We welcomed a brand-new Rocky Mountain Chapter, cheered on our spirited Northeast members as they marched proudly at Better Chinatown’s 28th Annual Lunar New Year Parade and Festival, and delighted in our Southern California friends gathering to admire the cherry blossoms in San Diego. Our chapters kept finding one another. They gathered over books, over dim sum, over shared histories, and that, to me, is the real foundation of this organization. Not the bylaws. The connections. The friendships.
We sent Talk Story grants to Farrington High School, a Samoan-language program in Hawaiʻi, a Chamorro chanting workshop in Guåhan (Guam), a four-week intergenerational storytelling series with the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria, and a rural North Carolina library building bridges with the Haliwa-Saponi community. We awarded several scholarships, travel grants, and honored awards. I believe, with my whole heart, that the truest measure of an association is not what it accumulates, but who it lifts up along the way.
We organized a thought-provoking APALA/AILA President’s Program at ALA; standing alongside our AILA colleagues, we talked about disability, belonging, and the courage it takes to be seen – a conversation about the parts of our community the “model minority” myth has always tried to erase. We gathered at the Field Museum, visited the Pasifika collections, and stood together in the only Māori meeting house and marae in the country. We began the hard, necessary work of a strategic plan, asking ourselves not just what APALA has accomplished, but what it stands for, and how we can nurture it for the future.
None of that happens in an organization that merely functions. It happens in one that exists in love.
That is what I will carry with me from this term. Not the programs or the press releases, but the proof, over and over, that APALA takes care of its own. You mentored one another. You showed up for each other’s chapters, celebrated each other’s scholarships, doctorates, and Hall of Fame inductions, and grieved together when we lost Florante, who spent decades documenting every APALA milestone and taught so many of us what it looks like to serve with your whole heart, camera in hand, always making sure no one felt unseen or forgotten.
To Tina, Jamie, Allison, Edward, Jane, Jenay, Maria, Melissa, and Alanna – the incoming executive board: you are inheriting something rare and deeply loved, built by people who cared for it as if it were family because it is. Cherish it, nurture it, and know that an entire community stands behind you, ready to show up for you as we always have for each other.
To all of you – the members who renewed, who volunteered, who showed up to chapter meetups or virtual meetings, who answered a mentee’s email, or who nominated a colleague for an award they never thought to nominate themselves for: it has been the honor of my professional life to serve you. Twice now. I leave this role prouder of APALA than when I started, and more certain than ever that this small but mighty association runs on something no strategic plan can build: love, freely given, and returned in kind.
With deep gratitude and lasting solidarity – One Love.
Eileen K. Bosch
Immediate Past President, APALA