Oi Yan Poon in Person

Join us on Wednesday, November 20 at 7 PM as OiYan Poon discusses her book, Asian American is Not a Color. She will be joined in conversation by Pawan Dhingra.

A mother and race scholar seeks to answer her daughter’s many questions about race and racism with an earnest exploration into race relations and affirmative action from the perspectives of Asian Americans
Before being struck down by the US Supreme Court in June 2023, affirmative action remained one of the few remaining policy tools to address racial inequalities, revealing peculiar contours of racism and anti-racist strategies in America. Through personal reflective essays for and about her daughter, OiYan Poon looks at how the debate over affirmative action reveals the divergent ways Asian Americans conceive of their identity. With moving sincerity and insightful study, Poon combines extensive research with personal narratives from both herself and a diverse swath of individuals across the Asian American community to reflect on and respond to her daughter’s central question: What does it mean to be Asian American?
Poon conducts interviews with Asian Americans throughout the US who have been actively engaged in policy debates over race-conscious admissions or affirmative action. Through these exchanges, she finds that Asian American identity remains deeply unsettled in a contest between those invested in reaching the top of the racial hierarchy alongside whiteness and those working toward a vision of justice and humanity co-constructed through cross-racial solidarity.
Poon uses these contrasting viewpoints to guide her conversations with her daughter, providing a heartfelt and optimistic look at how understanding the diversity and nuances of the Asian American experience can help us envision a more equitable future.

Dr. OiYan Poon is a community-engaged research scholar, educator, storyteller, and leader for intersectional racial equity. Her research has focused on the racial politics of Asian Americans, education access, affirmative action, and admissions systems and practices. She is the author of Asian American Is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family (2024, Beacon Press), which explores how Asian Americans are shaping the future of race relations through debates over education policies like affirmative action, using personal narrative and interviews of Asian Americans across the country. Born and raised in Massachusetts to immigrants from Hong Kong, OiYan now lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. In her free time, she enjoys baking, binge watching trashy reality tv, listening to NPR, exploring the rich food cultures in Chicago, and spending time by the lake and local coffee shops.

Pawan Dhingra is Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty at Amherst College and the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies. His most recent monograph is the award-winning Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough (NYU Press 2020), which Min Jin Lee referred to as a "fascinating exploration [that] gets to the root of education obsessions." Dhingra is the immediate past president of the Association for Asian American Studies and an award-winning teacher. He has published pieces in The New York Times, CNN, Time magazine, and elsewhere.

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