Asian American Literature Association (AALA)
October 2023
Dear Friend and Supporter of AALA,
Welcome to our monthly newsletter!
As AALA is committed to educating on anti-Asian racism and AAPI culture through art, storytelling, and conversation, we hope this newsletter is a valuable resource for you as the semester starts to pick up. Here, in this newsletter, you can check out some of the Asian American-related titles and videos we’ve been discussing in the last month. For the rest of October, we also have below some of the titles and essays we are planning to discuss. If you’re interested, feel free join! AALA is a space for you to engage in your own way on AAPI experiences, histories, and activism.
For now, I hope that all of you are well and are taking care of yourselves and each other since midterm season has either come up for some of you or is eventually coming up soon. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to reach out to us on our email—we’d love to see how you are doing!
Best wishes,
Christopher Pham
Founder and President of AALA
Highlight Titles of the Month
Other Resources from Last Month
Our Recent Meeting
This week, we discussed Elemental, a Disney Pixar film directed by Peter Sohn. As Sohn dedicated this film to his late parents who immigrated here from Korea, much of this film revolves around the intergenerational experiences of diaspora. Below, are some of the questions that we discussed. We hope some of these questions you could think about if you decide to watch the movie or not!
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What are your impressions of the film? What scenes stood out most to you?
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What are your thoughts on both the criticism and praise this movie has received?
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How do the hardships that the Fire people endure reflect the challenges of real-life immigrants? Do you feel that the immigrant experience is accurately portrayed here?
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Many viewers have criticized the use of non-human characters to depict human stories. How might the use of non-human characters detract from the significance of the immigrant story in Elemental? How might it help its cause?
Thanks Valerie for leading the discussion and the family story pitch activity (which can be seen below)!
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(From left to right). Valerie Lombogia, Nina Vo, Christopher Pham, and Luke Gustafson.