UCLA Releases Free Digital Asian American and Pacific Islander History Textbook
The multimedia textbook, titled “Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook,” launched Saturday after eight years of development by 100 contributors at a cost of $12 million. Overseen by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, it aims to support high school and college educators nationwide.
mumbrella.com.auA free, digital textbook titled “Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook” launched Saturday as the culmination of years of work by 100 contributors including curriculum developers and illustrators. The $12 million project, overseen by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, aims to help high school and college educators nationwide teach more effectively about AAPI experiences.
Karen Umemoto, a co-editor and director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and Kelly Fong, a co-editor, posed for a picture at the center in Los Angeles on Monday, April 27, 2026.
The textbook covers a wide breadth of AAPI communities and their struggles. More chapters will be added to the textbook on a rolling basis. May is AAPI Heritage Month, and Fong said the platform is intended to keep the spotlight on year-round.
Fong said “Young people are going to have so many different opportunities to see themselves and their communities represented in this core text. ” The idea for the textbook was first developed eight years ago, with academic freedom and editorial independence as guiding principles from the start. A rise in anti-Asian hate crimes occurred during the pandemic.
The project felt like a bridge after a 2021 California law made ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement. By 2022, the Asian American Studies Center received federal and state funding for the textbook. The textbook’s editorial team whittled 150 ideas for chapter topics down to 50.
It includes sections on the formation of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Asian Americans in the South, chapters related to Vietnamese, Hmong and Indigenous Hawaiians, archival photos, and embedded videos including one on Filipino farmworkers narrated by rapper Ruby Ibarra.
com reported that the textbook gives voice to underrepresented AAPI voices, including women, and goes well beyond the Japanese detention camps and Chinese laborers mentioned in standard textbooks. Umemoto hopes that learning stories about the challenges and achievements of individual immigrants will create some historical empathy at a time when a large share of AAPI adults still worry about racial discrimination and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
The scholars developed the textbook even as President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans work to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in education.
