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calsfoundation@cals.org
Ephemeral Histories: AAPI Representation in the Archives
Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, celebrated nationally each May, offers a time to reflect on the complex histories of AAPI communities in our state. While much attention is often given to prominent figures, the everyday voices that shape AAPI histories in Arkansas are often found in more fragile and often overlooked forms: ephemera. Flyers, newsletters, newspapers, and zines may seem temporary by nature, but they serve as vital records of identity, resistance, and community organizing from the perspective of under-documented peoples like the AAPI community.
Before World War II and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans (which included two sites in Arkansas), the state’s AAPI population was small and included Chinese immigrants who settled in the Mississippi Delta in the late nineteenth century. Many operated grocery businesses serving both Black and white sharecropping families, navigating the harsh realities of Jim Crow segregation while establishing local roots. Their presence, however, was later overshadowed by the arrival in the state of more than 16,000 Japanese Americans forcibly removed to the Rohwer and Jerome incarceration camps during the war.
Within these camps, Japanese Americans quickly organized essential institutions, including schools, libraries, and newspapers, to preserve a sense of normalcy and autonomy. The creation of camp publications like Rohwer’s Outpost mirrored a vibrant pre-war Japanese American press tradition, transforming the newspaper into a vital tool for maintaining morale, sharing information, and fostering communal identity under confinement. Many issues contain creative work as well. In 1943, Lil Dan’l was published as an overview of internees’ first year in incarceration and highlighted comic character Lil Dan’l, who was created to add humor to the trying conditions of incarceration captured in The Outpost.
The foreword includes a dedication to those incarcerated that reads:
This publication is dedicated to those evacuees who have come through this most critical period of their lives unscathed in spirit, undaunted in courage, and prepared to face the future with renewed fortitude.
Today, collections like the Rosalie Santine Gould-Mabel Jamison Vogel collection at the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies preserve these publications as firsthand records of life behind barbed wire. If you would like to explore more of these publications, many were digitized as a part of a larger effort involving several institutions in Arkansas and are available through the Rising Above Digital Archive.
Following World War II, Arkansas saw another major shift in AAPI demographics with the arrival of Vietnamese and other Indochinese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Fort Chaffee, just outside the city of Fort Smith, became a central processing hub for the resettlement of over 50,000 refugees, and once again, ephemeral publications emerged as powerful tools of orientation and community. The Tan Dan was a bilingual newspaper that helped newcomers navigate American customs, stay connected with each other, and foster early relationships with the local population. The UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture has digitized several issues of this publication that can be accessed here. These publications not only informed but also countered misinformation and bridged cultural divides—making them essential records of resilience and adaptation. They offer intimate, immediate perspectives absent from official narratives, revealing the lived experience of displacement and settlement through the eyes of refugees themselves.
While we are still seeking ephemera from this population, Arkansas has also become home to the second-largest population of Marshallese outside of the Marshall Islands (displaced by nuclear tests done by the U.S. Army in the 1940s and ’50s); the 2010 federal census counted 4,324 islanders in Arkansas, compared to 7,400 in Hawaii, and the 2020 census counted 14,533 Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders (which includes Marshallese) in Arkansas, with 8,711 living in Springdale in northwestern Arkansas. (You can also see a county map of percentages of Asian Arkansans here.)
The legacy of community-driven publishing continues today. Contemporary AAPI creators draw inspiration from these earlier efforts, using zines and other DIY methods to document their identities, challenge stereotypes, and build community. Recognizing the significance of these materials, the CALS Butler Center established the Arkansas Zine collection to improve representation and preserve these creative works.
Through this collecting effort, we document AAPI voices like that of Toni Garcia-Butler, who in their poetry zine Ode to SPAM critiques the commodification and denigration of an iconic AAPI food and interrogates identity through a uniquely Arkansan and Filipino lens. Similarly, Moon Struck: A Zine Celebrating Asian Creatives in the American South edited by Emma Presley features interviews and creative works that deepen our understanding of AAPI life in Arkansas and the broader American South. These two zines are currently highlighted in a display for the collection in the CALS Roberts Library Research Room.
These ephemeral materials are more than just paper; they are artifacts of cultural memory, protest, joy, and survival. They help decolonize archives by centering excluded voices, and they challenge us to rethink what constitutes history. By preserving and engaging with these community-made records, we ensure that the stories of AAPI Arkansans are not forgotten but are instead recognized as a vital part of our collective past and present.
We invite you to visit the CALS Roberts Library and explore these materials held in the collections of both the Butler Center and UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture. And if you feel empowered by this post, assist in our efforts to preserve these important histories by sharing the ephemera relevant to your community.
If you have material you would like to donate to the CALS Butler Center, please contact Danielle Afsordeh at dtafsordeh@cals.org or 501.320.5726.
By Danielle Afsordeh, community outreach archivist and programs coordinator at the CALS Roberts Library
