Yifeng Hu, associate professor of communication studies, spent a good part of last summer documenting the stories of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in Arkansas. Now, she hopes that similar storytelling projects will soon capture the voices of Asian communities in New Jersey.
The project is part of the ASIANetwork-Mellon Foundation Award for AAPI Voices and Stories: Community-based Digital Storytelling, which provides funding to support oral history and community conservation projects to record the experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
“It’s important to hear ordinary people’s voices and to preserve those voices,” says Hu, who worked with colleagues and students at the University of Central Arkansas in collecting the untold stories of Chinese American families who settled in Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta in the late 1800s.
Hu explains that after the Civil War, Cantonese families came to the Mississippi Delta region to work in the cotton fields, having made their way southward from California after completing work on the Transcontinental Railroad or being transported directly from China after the Emancipation Proclamation.
In the 20th century, these families became small business owners, primarily operating grocery stores that have been a mainstay in rural areas since. These businesses served as one of the few places where both Black and white communities were able to mingle during the Jim Crow South.
The adult children of many of those immigrants are now professionals in the cities of the South and beyond. Still, many of the grocery stores remain in the care of the Chinese families who originated them. While in Arkansas, Hu visited Young’s Grocery, which has been in business since the 1940s in the small town of Earle: population 1,831.
“The store is such a bustling place,” she says. “It is the hub of this small town.” And a necessary resource, she explains. “Many customers mentioned how Earle wouldn’t exist today if not for the grocery store.”
This spring, TCNJ students will embark on a storytelling project to document the voices of AAPI students on campus, says Hu, who hopes that similar oral history initiatives can commence throughout the state.
“The goal is to create an oral history of Asian Americans in New Jersey and promote the awareness of it,” says Hu, co-chair of the college’s Asian and Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition.
Hu says the first Chinese settlement on the East Coast was not the well-known Chinatown in New York or even in Philadelphia, but rather in Belleville, New Jersey, in 1870, as Chinese immigrants continued to travel east after completing the railroad.
“There’s a lot to be talking about and a lot to be shared with people, it’s exciting,” says Hu. “American history is not just Black and white; we all need to be heard. I really want to tell people that Asian-American history is American history.”
