The month of May brings cultural celebrations that honor Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Jewish Americans. The UCI Libraries is proud to be a part of these celebrations by showcasing various films, books, digital exhibits, and physical exhibits from our Libraries that are created by, produced by, or relevant to Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Jewish Americans.

Unless they specify a UCI login, these materials are available to the public year-round at no cost.

Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage

Online Resources

• Advancing Leaders Through Collaboration: Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month OverDrive collection (requires UCI login)
• Kanopy film collection: Films for Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month (requires UCI login)
• Docuseek documentary collection on Asian American studies (requires UCI login)
• Asian Film Online: A collection viewing Asian culture through the lens of the independent Asian filmmaker (requires UCI login)

Special Collections and Archives

• Southeast Asian Archive digital collections and exhibits
• University of California, Irvine Class Project on the Southeast Asian American Experience: Students' projects reflect cultural and social issues of Southeast Asian American communities in Orange County. Materials include artifacts, photographs, sound and video recordings, newsletters, ephemera, and the students' written assessment of each project.
• Lao Stories: Laotian American Oral History Project: Contains 17 oral histories about the life experiences of Laotian Americans across the United States.

Recent Acquisitions

• Where I Belong : Healing Trauma and Embracing Asian American Identity, by Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon, addresses the unique experiences of trauma, healing, and mental health in Asian and Asian American communities while providing essential therapeutic tools, reflection questions, journal prompts, and grounding exercises.
• Feeling Asian American: Racial Flexibility Between Assimilation and Oppression, by Wen Liu, examines contemporary Asian American identity formation while placing it within a historical and ongoing narrative of racial injury.

Jewish American Heritage

Online Resources

• Docuseek documentary collection on Jewish studies (requires UCI login)
• Docuseek documentary collection on Judaism (requires UCI login)
• Kanopy film collection: Jewish American (requires UCI login)
• Kanopy film collection: Jewish Cinema (requires UCI login)
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit: Americans and the Holocaust

Special Collections and Archives

• Snapshots of Orange County exhibit: Contains sections about Jewish communities and Jewish pioneers in Orange County.
• Simon Wiesenthal Center - The Courage to Remember: The Holocaust, 1933-1945 Posters: Contains 40 posters with images and textual information regarding the persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany during the period 1933–1945.

Recent Acquisitions

• Jewish American Identity and Erasure in Pop Art, by Melissa L. Mednicov, examines Jewish American identity within the context of pop art in New York City during the 1960s to reveal the multivalent identities and selves often ignored in pop scholarship.
• The Matzah Ball, by Jean Meltzer, is a romantic comedy following a young girl named Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt who loves to write books about Christmas. When tasked to write a book about a Hanukkah romance, she’s left uninspired and decides to attend the Matzah Ball, where she encounters an old enemy, Jacob Greenberg.
• I Lived to Tell the World: Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War, by Elizabeth Mehren, is a collection of 13 inspiring profiles of refugees who have settled in Oregon. They come from Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, Syria, and more-different stories, different conflicts, but similar paths through loss and violence to a new, not always easy, life in the United States.

Diversity of UCI Libraries’ Collections

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