What is AANHPI Month and how can Asian Americans celebrate it?
What is AANHPI Month?
AANHPI month takes place every May in the United States, and is dedicated to celebrating the rich culture, heritage, and achievements of communities of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander descent. The inspiration behind AANHPI month is the arrival of the first known Japanese immigrants on May 7, 1843, as well as the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, considered to be a huge feat, built predominantly by Chinese laborers.
Beyond marking the arrival of Asian immigrants to the United States and their incredible contributions to our society, it also serves more broadly as a time for us to celebrate our diversity, to affirm our value as part of the social fabric of the country, and to share the beauty of our heritage with our wider community as well.
Why it’s important to celebrate AANHPI month
As a minority community, celebrating our differences and our unique cultures is a powerful way to remember that we don’t need to reject where we come from to also claim where we are now. Given that the history of the AANHPI community has often been molded by exclusion - whether through legislation that restricts immigration and the erasure of Indigenous pacific cultures, or through day to day acts of micro-aggression - this month is a meaningful time to proudly take up space and celebrate our heritage as an act of resilience and an invitation to celebrate diversity and inclusion.
It’s also a time to own our heritage, particularly when the immigrant experience can involve forms of assimilation that demand we distance ourselves from it. Plus, it’s a chance to not only affirm ourselves, but to also share our cultures with our wider communities. Many Americans don’t learn about Asian American history in school, try our foods, or experience our cultural idiosyncrasies. Celebrating AANHPI month is also a chance to showcase the best of our cultures and place them side by side with American culture, so that we can understand that they can coexist in harmony, enriching each other.
You may have heard different names for AANHPI Month
You may have heard AANHPI month called a few different things. Previously, the acronyms have included AAPI Month (Asian American Pacific Islander Month) or APA Heritage Month (Asian Pacific American Heritage Month). The addition of NH (Native Hawaiian) to the acronym acknowledges the unique experience of Native Hawaiians, ensuring that all communities are represented and acknowledged in the term, reflecting the full diversity of our backgrounds.
The goal of changing the acronyms is to create the most inclusive abbreviation possible, recognising the diversity of individuals that belong to our community.
Breaking stereotypes about the AANHPI Community
As is the case for most minorities, the AANHPI community is often subjected to a slew of different stereotypes that erase the colour and texture of our differences and seek to homogenise and categorise us. The model minority myth is perhaps the most common one, perpetuating the idea that Asian Americans represent the “perfect” minority/immigrant, homogenizing us into a group of people that are always academically and financially successful and hard-working. This stereotype is damaging because not only does it flatten the variety within our own community, but it also perpetuates the idea that immigrants need to “earn” their place in the USA by being good enough.
Several other stereotypes pervade American society, from Asian food being unhealthy to all Asian Parents being extremely strict, all of which are founded on a lack of understanding and exposure to the realities of our cultures.
Generational differences in experiences
As we’ve illustrated so far, the AANHPI experience is far from monolithic – it is nuanced and varied. One of the most pronounced differences in our community is the generational divide in how we understand our cultural identity and our own place in society.
For those of us with first generation immigrant parents, for example, we may have noticed them swinging more towards one extreme or the other – either fully rejecting their heritage in order to assimilate, or rejecting their new culture due to the hostility and prejudices they may have faced on arrival. They’re also more likely to have faced social and language barriers that make survival a top priority over cultural preservation.
Children of immigrants, on the other hand, are more likely to find themselves caught in the middle. They see a rich culture in their parents, grandparents, and home life, and feel the way it has shaped their upbringing, and simultaneously are immersed in a completely different world at school, at work and with friends. Balancing a desire or obligation to uphold family values while forging their own path in American society is a uniquely challenging experience of juggling dual identities.
Still, we fundamentally share more commonalities than differences. We can focus on these shared experiences and foster intergenerational understanding by maintaining open lines of communication and talking openly about what cultural belonging means to each of us.
Global differences in experiences
AANHPI communities in the U.S. don’t necessarily share the same experience as Asian communities in other countries. In the U.K., for example, "Asian" is often assumed to mean South Asian, referring to the predominantly Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi communities that emigrated to Britain. On the other hand, the Asian American identity in the U.S. is more often associated with East and Southeast Asians due to the waves of immigration from China, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines throughout the 20th century. Fundamentally, this illustrates how attempting to apply a term like “Asian” to a diverse group of people, without recognising the nuances, doesn’t really make sense.
Religious identity also intersects differently with race and ethnicity across countries. In the U.K., discussions of race are often intertwined with religion, particularly in relation to Muslim South Asian communities who experience Islamophobia. In the U.S., while religion plays a role in some Asian American experiences, it’s usually less explicitly linked to racial identity in mainstream discourse.
Still, within specific communities, religion is deeply ingrained—many Korean Americans, for example, are Christian, in part due to historical missionary work in Korea, and Korean churches often serve as major hubs for social life and even political activism in the U.S. They can act as anchors to Korean heritage and community while living in an otherwise very different society. Similarly, Filipino Americans tend to have strong Catholic ties, a legacy of Spanish colonization, shaping many cultural traditions from fiestas to family values.
Even within the AANHPI label, sub-groups have vastly different experiences. Take South Asian Americans, who have a high rate of professional migration, particularly in fields like medicine and technology, compared with Hmong and Cambodian Americans, who have disproportionately higher refugee backgrounds, resulting in different socioeconomic realities.
Recognizing these nuanced distinctions helps us move beyond a homogenizing view of the AANHPI experience and towards appreciating the multitude of identities and histories that shape our communities.
5 things you can do to celebrate AANHPI month
Gather around food
Food is a core tenet of most Asian cultures. To celebrate AANHPI month, try hosting a dinner party to showcase your culture’s food, inviting friends of all different heritages to enjoy and experience the flavours that represent your lineage. You could even take this as an opportunity to strengthen familial ties, asking your elders to share a few recipes, or even to cook and prepare with you. Beyond the food, you can also learn from them customs of hosting, including decorations, placemats, etc etc.
Gather around culture
Film and television can flatten Asia into just Kung Fu movies or sidekick tech characters (often these are written and produced by non-asian individuals, too). To celebrate the breadth of Asian American talent, why not host a movie night around celebrating Asian culture? Whether it’s watching a documentary on Asian cuisine or nature and inviting friends to learn with you, or an incredible Sci-Fi, Drama, or comedy platforming Asian creators, this is way to mark AANHPI month in a fun and accessible way while including other friends and loved ones.
Visit museums/Learn about your history
Our cultures are drenched in rich histories that are often equal parts challenging and distressing, but also beautiful testaments to the resilience and innovation of the AANHPI community. To celebrate, you could seek out exhibits or historical sites that showcase this, like the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Washington D.C., or the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. The more we learn about our histories and stay connected with our past, the more difficult it is for our heritage to be erased by prejudice that demands us to assimilate or be rejected.
Spend time with family
Your best connection to your homeland and cultural traditions are the people that keep them alive. AANHPI Month is a beautiful reminder to tap into your roots by connecting with your older relatives. You could set yourself some specific goals like setting aside quality time to ask them about their experiences, their journey of immigration or what traditions are most important to them. In addition to being a valuable way to learn more about your history, it will also be a touching display of honour for your relatives to receive. Being curious and listening can be a great gift to our family, especially when they know our intention is to preserve these stories and continue passing them down.
Support AANHPI businesses
Lastly, we can’t ignore that in today’s society we vote with our dollar. So, a fantastic way to contribute to the prosperity and thriving of the AANHPI community is to support their initiatives, ideas and businesses. Whether you seek out some local Asian-run-stores, donate to an AANHPI mental health organization or diversify your social media feed and follow more inspiring AANHPI influencers, this can help more than you think and keep our cultures alive and thriving. If you need some inspiration about which brands to support, check out this article we’ve previously published!
Happy AANHPI Month!
AANHPI Month is a time to embrace and embody all that it means to be a part of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Community. To reflect on our histories of resilience and triumph, to take time to particularly savor our foods, languages, traditions, and to put effort into connecting with our families and uplifting one another.
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This May, let’s celebrate in all the ways that feel most meaningful to us.
