2010 (Austin, Texas)

Individual Community Service Award
Ms. Amy Wong Mok is the Founder of the Asian American Cultural Center and the President of the Asian American Community Partnership in Austin, Texas. These two organizations have initiated many activities that foster the community spirit, preserve the history, advocate awareness of APIDA issues, and empower political participation of Asian Americans. Amy has served on numerous civic boards and won many honors by exercising her leadership role. She is the first Asian American to be elected President of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. She tirelessly advocates justice for Asian Americans by providing culturally significant information to the Austin Police cadets training yearly. Proud of her Asian American cultural heritage, Amy has instituted many cultural events including the annual Dragon Boat Race and Festival. She is an outstanding community servant, a mentor and a leader who works diligently and effectively for the APIDA community. Because of her passion to civic service, Amy was selected in the American Trustee Project.

Organizational Community Service Award
SAHELI for Asian Families is a non-profit organization that provides a broad range of services from counseling to crisis intervention to emergency housing for domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking victims of Asian descent. SAHELI stands for Support, Advocate, Heal, Empower, Listen, and Inform.

From its founding in 1992 as a support group for the Asian Indian community, SAHELI has evolved to address the cultural and language needs of all Asian and other immigrant families affected by domestic violence. The agency also provides phone support, referrals, and system advocacy to all parts of Texas and outside of the state for those who cannot access similar services within their local jurisdiction. Linda Phan was hired in 2005 as SAHELI’s first full-time executive director and also represents the Austin APA community as a representative to the Commission on Immigrant Affairs providing advice to Austin’s City Council.

SAHELI’s bold, creative approach has helped it develop a reputation as not only a domestic violence program, but a go-to organization for advocacy on a range of issues affecting the entire Asian American and immigrant community. SAHELI has become a resource of choice for not only the Asian American community, but also the African, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern immigrant communities. See http://www.saheli-austin.org/

Event Community Service Award
Austin Asian American Film Festival (AAAFF) is committed to celebrating the best in independent Asian cinema and bringing awareness to global issues and causes. The 6th annual Austin Asian American Film Festival was held during November 12-15, 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and funded, in part, by the City of Austin Cultural Arts Grant. It featured 40 films and various social and networking events. Numerous free events and films were held at The Mexican American Cultural Center and The University of Texas at Austin, including a panel discussion and the film, 'White on Rice' with 300 in attendance. Two awards, "Best Feature" and "Best Short", were given to films that embodied innovation, entertainment value, and community empowerment. The success of this festival is due to the commitment and tireless efforts of the Executive Director, Masashi Niwano, and his volunteer staff. Our community is fortunate to be enriched by this incredible annual event celebrating Asian culture and heritage through films.

Book Awards
Awards given for books published in 2008

Cultural Studies
Lisa Nakamura
Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (University of Minnesota Press)

Poetry / Prose
Preeta Samarasan
Evening is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Honorable Mention:
Wendy Lee
Happy Family (Grove Atlantic, Inc)

Julie Shikeguni
Unending Nora (Red Hen Press)

Social Science
Lynn Fujiwara
Mothers Without Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Families and Welfare Reform (University of Minnesota Press)

Jamillah Karim
American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender Within the Ummah (New York University Press)

History
Scott Kurashige
The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton University Press)

Honorable Mention:
Gordon H. Chang
Mark Dean Johnson, and Paul J. Karlstrom, Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 (Stanford University Press)

Literary Studies
Josephine Nock-Hee Park
Apparitions of Asia: Modernist Form and Asian American Poetics (Oxford University Press)

Honorable Mention:
Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn
Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography (Wilfrid Laurier University Press)

2009 (Hawai'i)

Lifetime Achievement Award
Ron Takaki

Engaged Scholar Award
Don T. Nakanishi

Outstanding Service Award
Hawai'i's People's Fund

Chinese Community Action Coalition

Bamboo Ridge Press.

Special Commendation to a University Initiative Engaging Students in Community Service
The Program for Engaged Scholarship and Service Learning, Ethnic Studies Department, University of Hawai'i, Manoa

Anita Affeldt Graduate Award
Ronak Kapadia

Anthony Ocampo

Book Awards
Awards given for books published in 2007

Cultural Studies Award
Celine Parrenas Shimizu
The Hypersexuality of Race (Duke University Press)