To document and celebrate the works of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, UC Irvine Libraries continue to grow our resources about AANHPI communities and their cultural contributions. From our broad-ranging Southeast Asian Archive to a wide variety of digital resources, scholarly texts, and creative works, our collections let users explore the experiences that shape AANHPI identities.

Although some online materials are only accessible to faculty, staff, and students with a valid UCInetID, many of these resources are open to the public and all are available throughout the year as part of the Libraries’ ongoing effort to foster learning and increase access to a wide variety of scholarship.

For research help with Asian American studies, contact Research Librarian for Asian American Studies Julia Huỳnh at juliah10@uci.edu or visit the resource webpage.

Southeast Asian Archive

UC Irvine Libraries’ Southeast Asian Archive (SEAA) was founded in 1987 in response to community interest in documenting and preserving the history of the Southeast Asian diaspora. The archive is broad and interdisciplinary, including a vast collection of photographs, books, periodicals, government documents, oral histories, personal and family papers, works of art, and more. It seeks to document the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic lives of individuals of Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese origin (including self-identified Hoa, Khmer, Hmong, Yao, Iu Mien, and other ethnic groups) who resettled beginning in the 1970s.

Collection strengths include refugee and immigrant resettlement experiences, documentation of refugee camps and repatriation, the arts, politics and community activism, social service and nongovernmental organizations, business and development, and intercultural and intergenerational relations.

You can search the entirety of our SEAA general collection, special collections, and archival materials using UC Irvine Library Search and/or the Online Archive of California.

Online Resources

• AANHPI Heritage Research Guide
• AANHPI Heritage Month OverDrive ebook collection (requires UC Irvine login)
• AANHPI Heritage Month films on Kanopy (requires UC Irvine login)
• Asian American studies documentaries on Docuseek (requires UC Irvine login)

Recent Book Acquisitions

• The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora, 2026, edited by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, brings together Vietnamese artists and writers from around the world in conversation about their craft and how their work has been shaped and received by mainstream culture and their own communities.
• Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, 2025, by Jill Damatac, blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as the author cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America.
• Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i, 2025, by Sara Kehaulani Goo, is part journalistic offering and part memoir, interrogating deeper questions of identity, legacy, and what we owe to those who come before and after us.
• Moving Mountains: Asian American and Pacific Islander Feminism and the 1977 National Women’s Conference, 2026, by UC Irvine Professor Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, with Adrienne A. Winans, illuminates a transformational event when 20,000 participants, mostly women, gathered in Houston for the first and only US National Women’s Conference, funded by the federal government with the goal of creating a national women’s agenda.
• My Documents: A Novel, 2025, by Kevin Nguyen, is a funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family that is informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention.
• Questions 27 & 28, 2026, by Karen Tei Yamashita, reaches backward and forward, chronicling the individuals who arrived in the US from Japan at the turn of the century, their children who came of age during war and incarceration, and their descendants who lived in the aftermath.
• Reckoning with the World: South Korean Television and the Latin American Imaginary, 2026, by Benjamin Han, explores how dramas, reality shows, and travel documentaries present South Koreans with an understanding of themselves by projecting an illusion of difference that underscores themes of identity, race, and modernity.
• Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America, 2025, by Michael Luo, weaves a tightly knit narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion, documenting a more than century-long struggle to belong.
• UndocuAsians: Lived Experiences and Social Movement Activism across the Diaspora, 2026, edited by Kevin Escudero and Rachel Freeman-Wong, tells the story of the contemporary US immigrant rights movement with a focus on Asian undocumented immigrant narratives drawing on personal reflections and research studies.

Diversity of UC Irvine Libraries’ Collections

UC Irvine Libraries collect materials in all formats to support the university’s research, teaching, and public service mission.

We believe it is crucial that our collections reflect the diversity of our students, faculty, staff, and larger Orange County community. Thus, we are making an effort to collect materials that consider the needs and perspectives of historically underrepresented, marginalized, and oppressed groups. For more information, please refer to our Diversity Statement and Plan. For more information, please refer to our Diversity Statement and Plan.

For additional information about UC Irvine Libraries’ efforts to celebrate diversity in its users, staff, collections, and resources, visit the UC Irvine Libraries Diversity webpage.