Asian American and Pacific Islander Timeline

1873-00-00: Stoddard, Charles Warren. South-Sea Idyls. 1873. Reprint. Sidney: Wentworth Press, 2019.

1889-10-02: Margaret Chung, the first Chinese American female doctor, is born in Santa Barbara, California.

1902-00-00: Noguchi, Yone. The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, edited by Edward Marx and Laura E. Franey. 1902. Reprint, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.

1903-00-00: Noguchi, Yone. The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid. 1903. Reprint, Kessinger Publishing, 2018.

1904-00-00: Noguchi, Yone. “In the Bungalow with Charles Warren Stoddard.” National Magazine 21 (December 1904): 304-308.

1904-00-00: Noguchi, Yone. Through the Torii. Boston: Four Seas Company, 1922.

1914-00-00: Margaret Chung co-founds a medical sorority, Nu Sigma Phi, at the University of Southern California’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. While enrolled there, Chung also experiments with her gender and cultural identities by wearing dark suits and ties and slicking her hair back. She also gives several lectures about providing health care for Chinese people in Los Angeles.

1914-00-00: Noguchi, Yone. The Story of Yone Noguchi: Told by Himself, Illustrated by Yoshio Markino. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company, 1914.

1914-09-24: Esther Eng is born in California on September 24, 1914, to parents who had immigrated from China. See Esther Eng (1914-1970): Filmmaker, Restaurateur, Gender Rebel, by Christianne A. Gadd

1925-00-00: Margaret Chung helps found the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

1931-00-00: Following the outbreak of World War Two, Margaret Chung establishes a kinship network of pilots, soldiers, and submariners, most of whom are white men. With these contacts, she helps recruit pilots for the Flying Tigers, the American volunteer air force in Asia, and advocates for the creation of a women’s naval reserve (WAVES).

1941-08-24: Merle Woo is born in San Francisco’s Chinatown to a Korean mother and Chinese father. In the 1960s, she earns a B.A. and M.A. at San Francisco State University and becomes an outspoken activist for Asian Americans, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. After her job as an Asian American Studies lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, is terminated in 1982, she sues the school, suspecting that her activism against the university is what caused the termination. In 1986, she publishes Yellow Woman Speaks, a poetry anthology, making her one of the first Asian American women to openly publish lesbian poetry.

1943-05-09: Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a Japanese American civil rights, antiwar, gay liberation, and AIDS activist, is born in a Wyoming Japanese American internment camp. After moving to Philadelphia in the 1960s, he becomes involved in multiple social movements and takes part in sit-ins, marches, and protests, including the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Annual Reminder demonstration at Independence Hall. In the early 1970s, he founds and leads the Gay Liberation Front in Philadelphia and represents the Male Homosexual Workshop at the Black Panther Party’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention. During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, he participates in many ACT UP protests and founds the People With AIDS (PWA) Coalition. He also creates the Critical Care Project for people with HIV/AIDS in Philadelphia.

1946-02-18: Willyce Kim, a Korean American lesbian poet and writer, is born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After earning a B.A. in English from San Francisco College for Women, she moves to Oakland to join the Women’s Press Collective. She begins travelling across the country to distribute her self-published poetry books at alternative/women’s bookstores. As one of the few published Asian American lesbian authors in the 1970s, she becomes a role model to many aspiring writers. In the 1980s, she publishes two novels: Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid (1985) and Dead Heat (1988).

1949-10-27: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang, who later becomes an influential Asian American gay activist and scholar, is born in Hong Kong.

1952-09-04: Kitty Tsui is born in Kowloon, Hong Kong. While studying creative writing at San Francisco State University, she becomes an active member of the Third World student movement and comes out as a lesbian. In the late 1970s, she comes out to the broader Asian American community as queer with her article “Coming Out: We Are Here in the Asian Community: A Dialogue with Three Asian Women.”

1953-01-14: Barbara Noda, a third-generation Japanese American, is born in Stockton, California.

1953-04-25: Michiyo Fukaya (Margaret Cornell), a biracial lesbian writer and activist, is born in Japan.

1954-10-24: Siong-huat Chua, a writer and activist for queer and Asian American rights, is born in Malacca, Malaysia.

1955-10-19: Having coming up with the idea of forming a group for lesbians, Rose Bamberger, a Filipina American, is one of eight women at the founding meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Based in San Francisco, the DOB becomes a national organization for lesbians.

1956-06-06: June Chan is born. She later becomes an American lesbian activist and biologist. The organizer and co-founder of Asian Lesbians of the East Coast (ALOEC) in the 1980s, Chan raises awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in the Asian American community.

1960-00-00: John Nojima, a Japanese American man, becomes the longtime partner, political ally, and financial supporter of W. Dorr Legg, an influential homophile activist, the long-time the leader of ONE, Incorporated, and the longtime editor of ONE magazine, both founded in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Nojima and Legg remain together until Legg’s death in 1994.

1960-11-00: ONE magazine features a Japanese man on its cover and the issue includes two articles about Japanese men: “I Sought Love” by Danshoku Okagami and “Even in Japan” by Jonathan Gabriel. See Carly Simpson: Introduction to Asia and the Pacific in the U.S. Homophile Press, 1953-64

1963-06-17: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of a Swiss gay immigrant threatened with deportation in Fleuti v. Rosenberg; he is represented by Hiram Kwan, a straight Korean American immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles.

1964-00-00: Alfred Sawahata, a Japanese American man who earned an architecture degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1930s and was interned in the 1940s before moving to Chicago and New York, serves as the membership committee chair of the Mattachine Society of New York.

1964-11-00: Ger van Bram, a young gay Djakarta woman, is the first Asian or Asian American to be featured on the cover of The Ladder, a monthly magazine published by the Daughters of Bilitis, a national organization for lesbians Her writings appear in The Ladder from August 1963 to December 1964. See Carly Simpson: Introduction to Asia and the Pacific in the U.S. Homophile Press, 1953-64

1965-07-04: Kiyoshi Kuromiya marches in the first Annual Reminder gay rights demonstration at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. See Annual Reminders in Philadelphia, July 4, 1965-July 4, 1969, by Marc Stein

1966-11-29: Reverend Mineo Katagiri, a straight United Church of Christ minister, testifies in support of gay bars and gay rights at a Seattle City Council committee hearing; he becomes an important ally of Seattle’s Dorian Society in the 1960s.

1970-01-25: Esther Eng dies from cancer at the age of fifty-five at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. See Esther Eng (1914-1970): Filmmaker, Restaurateur, Gender Rebel, by Christianne A. Gadd

1970-05-00: Kiyoshi Kuromiya co-founds and becomes the leader of Philadelphia’s Gay Liberation Front. See Profiles of Ten LGBT Activists for Social Justice, 2013/2017, by Rich Wilson and Philadelphia LGBT History Project, 1940-1980, by Marc Stein

1970-09-06: Kiyoshi Kuromiya presents the report of the Male Homosexual Workshop at the Black Panther Party’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. See Philadelphia LGBT History Project, 1940-1980, by Marc Stein

1972-00-00: Kim, Willyce. Eating Artichokes. Oakland, CA: Women’s Press Collective, 1972.

1972-00-00: Kitty Tsui co-edits a publication called Third World Women. She is also the director of the Third World Poetry Space. Through the power of the written word, she hopes to empower and increase the visibility of Asian Americans.

1975-00-00: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang works with other LGBTQ+ activists as part of the Graduate Employees Organization to organize the first teacher strike at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They demand the inclusion of a sexual preference non-discrimination clause in the university’s employee contract.

1975-00-00: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang publishes “Gay Awareness” in Bridge: An Asian American Perspective, the first national Asian American magazine. This essay condemns the lack of discussion surrounding the issue of being both Asian and gay and inspires many Asian LGBTQ+ people to attend the first National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington, D.C., in 1979.

1975-00-00: Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters. Atsumi, Ikuko, editor. Tokyo: The Yone Noguchi Society, 1975.

1976-00-00: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang teaches “Politics of Gay Liberation,” one of the first classes on LGBTQ+ issues at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He later co-teaches a class called “Lesbian and Gay Experience.”

1977-00-00: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang founds the Midwest Gay Academic Journal, hoping to increase the amount of research and writing about and by LGBTQ+ people.

1979-00-00: Barbara Noda, a queer Japanese American, publishes her first book of poetry, entitled Strawberries. Her poems feature gentle, nostalgic moments from her coming-of-age, while also challenging any universal conceptions of feminists and lesbians.

1979-00-00: Noda, Barbara, Kitty Tsui, and Zee Wong. “Coming Out: We Are Here in the Asian American Community: A Dialogue with Three Asian Women.” Bridge: An Asian American Perspective.

1979-00-00: Siong-Huat Chua becomes involved with Boston Asian Gay Men and Lesbians, which expands in 1988 to become the Alliance of Massachusetts Asian Lesbians and Gay Men (AMALGAM). He collaborates with Nusrat Retina to include more lesbians in the group.

1979-10-11: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang helps organize a gathering of Asian American lesbians and gay men at the five-day National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference, which is held at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

1979-10-13: Tana Loy, a Chinese American lesbian, delivers a speech titled “Who’s the Barbarian?” at the National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference. The speech criticizes American imperialism and declares the conference “history-making” because it is the first time gay Asians from many different parts of Asia have embraced each other with “open hearts and minds” and not allowed imperialism to alienate people of different ethnicities, nationalities, and religions.

1979-10-14: Michiyo Fukaya represents Asian American gays and lesbians at the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights rally. Her speech, “Living in Asian America,” delivered at the Washington Monument, explains the struggles she faces as a poor lesbian woman of color and marks one of the first times in which the struggles of Asian American LGBTQ+ people are heard by a large audience. She also implores Asians in the crowd to come out despite fears of rejection, as to not do so “would be living a lie.”

1980-00-00: Asian Pacific Lesbians and Gays, the first LGBTQ Asian Pacific Islander organization on the West Coast, is founded in Los Angeles, California.

1980-00-00: The cover of a 1980 issue of the periodical Gay Insurgents  prompts a national search to learn about the Asian Americans who took part in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. 

1980-00-00: Loy, Tana. “Who’s the Barbarian? An Asian American Lesbian Speaks Before the Third World Conference.” Gay Insurgent: A Gay Left Journal, no. 6 (Summer 1980): 15.

1981-00-00: Anzaldúa, Gloria and Cherrie Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, MA: Persephone, 1981.

1981-00-00: Kitty Tsui, Nancy Hom, Genny Lim, Canyon Sam, Nellie Wong, and Merle Woo found Unbound Feet, a female performance group that challenges stereotypes about Asian American women. Sam, Woo, and Tsui are lesbians and Unbound Feet’s performances become popular in San Francisco among Asian American lesbians.

1981-00-00: Michiyo Fukaya, one of the earliest outspoken activists against racism within the LGBTQ+ community, publishes a book of poems called Lesbian Lyrics.

1981-05-00: Barbara Noda directs a play called Aw Shucks! (Shigata Ga Nai) at the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco. The play takes the form of a three-part conversation between lesbians White, Pink, and Green about monetary success, intimacy, love, drugs, and religion.

1983-00-00: After the Los Angeles-based organization Asian Pacific Lesbians and Gays becomes exclusively male and renames itself Asian Pacific Gays and Friends, a group of women form a separate organization called Asian Pacific Lesbians and Friends.

1983-00-00: June Chan and Katherine Hall meet and begin working on cultural and historical projects, including  a slide show about Asian lesbians in history and literature. The slide show is later described as "grassroots scholarship" by librarian and archivist Polly Thistlethwaite.

1983-00-00: Duran, Khalid. “Homosexuality and Islam.” In Homosexuality and World Religions. Edited by Arlene Swidler. Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1983.

1983-00-00: Tsui, Kitty. The Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire. New York: Spinsters Ink, 1983.

1984-00-00: An organization called Asians and Friends--Chicago is created by thirteen gay men with the goal of providing a supportive environment for other gay Asians. They march in the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Parade.

1984-03-00: Asian Lesbians of the East Coast Newsletter begins publication.

1985-00-00: Kim, Willyce. Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid. Boston: Alyson, 1985.

1985-00-00: Patricia Kimura, Mutiara Timor, and Lola Lai Jong found an organization called Chicago Asian Lesbians Moving (CALM). They also create CALM Voices, which is the first Midwestern API lesbian newsletter.

1986-00-00: In San Francisco, the first Asian-focused AIDS task force is founded to conduct a needs assessment and raise funds. The task force later becomes the Asian Pacific AIDS Coalition, which includes the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA).

1986-00-00: Kitty Tsui, a bodybuilder, writer, and LGBTQ+ activist, wins a bronze medal in women’s physique at the second Gay Games.

1986-00-00: SANGAT Chicago, one of the first LGBTQ+ South Asian support groups in the United States, is created by Viru Joshi, Paul Samuelson, Ifti Nasim, and Ravi Joshi. It is originally named Trikone, the word for “triangle” in many South Asian languages (likely a reference to the pink triangle symbol used in gay liberation movements), but the name is later changed to SANGAT, the Sanskrit word for “companionship and togetherness.”

1986-00-00: Trikone, a newsletter for LGBTQ+ people of South Asian descent, is first published in Palo Alto, California. More chapters of Trikone soon form all over the world.

1986-00-00: Woo, Merle. Yellow Woman Speaks: Selected Poems. Seattle: Radical Women, 1986.

1987-00-00: Chung, C., A. Kim, and A. K. Lemeshewsky, eds. Between the Lines: An Anthology of Pacific/Asian Lesbians of Santa Cruz, California. Santa Cruz, CA: Dancing Bird, 1987.

1987-00-00: Siong-huat Chua joins the board of Gay/Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, through which he helps introduce new computer technology. He also organizes forums on lesbian and gay immigrants in Boston.

1988-00-00: Ichioka, Yuji. The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885- 1924. New York: The Free Press, 1988.

1988-00-00: Partly in response to the growing AIDS epidemic, the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance forms in San Francisco. Similar groups throughout the country (including Gay Asians and Pacific Islanders of Chicago and Asian and Pacific Islander Queers United for Action in ?) hold meetings discussing participants’ experiences with racism, heterosexism, and oppression within their communities. Though these groups often struggle with balancing support and advocacy, many are successful in joining with queer women’s groups to bring greater visibility to pride marches and cultural celebrations.

1988-00-00: The Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society (GLAS) is founded in the United States, later expanding to include chapters in other countries. The goal of the society is to provide a support network for LGBTQ+ Arab people, fight negative portrayals of Arab people within the LGBTQ+ community, and help prevent discrimination against all LGBTQ+ people.

1989-00-00: Issan (Tommy Dorsey), a leader in the early LGBTQ+ Buddhist movement, becomes the Abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco. Members of the HSZC later create Maitri, a hospice for AIDS patients.

1989-00-00: Judy Chen, Lola Lai Jong, and Mars create the Pacifica Asian Lesbian Networking-Chicago group, which lasts for ten years. PALs is a social and political group open exclusively to lesbian, bisexual, and questioning women.

1989-00-00: Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, Mayumi Tsutakawa and Margarita Donnelly, editors. The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's Anthology. Corvallis OR: Calyx Books, 1989.

1989-00-00: Ramzi Zakharia establishes the Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society in Washington, D.C. Over the course of seven years, GLAS chapters form in Los Angeles and New York.

1989-00-00: The first national Asian Pacific Lesbian retreat, entitled “Coming Together, Moving Forward,” is held in Santa Cruz, California.

1989-05-00: Huda Jadallah founds the Arab Lesbian Network, the first Arab American lesbian organization, in Berkeley, California. To be more inclusive, the name is later changed to Arab Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Network.

1990-00-00: Roberto Alfajora founds the Asian American AIDS Foundation (AAAF) with the goal of increasing the visibility of AIDS within Chicago’s Asian communities, fundraising to support those with AIDS, and bridging the gap between gay and non-gay Asian communities in Chicago.

1990-06-10: The Lesbian Arab Network meets for the first time at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City. The organization only lasts a year, but most members continue to be active in Arab American LGBTQ+ groups.

1991-00-00: Austen, Roger. Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard. Ed. John W. Crowley. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991.

1991-00-00: After the creation of the San Francisco organization FABRIC (Fresh Asians Becoming Real in the Community), several support and social organizations for queer Asian Pacific Islander youth form all over the country. For example, the PAY (Pride for Asian Youth) program is created in Atlanta and the Slice of Rice group is created in Boston.

1991-00-00: Hutchins, Loraine, and Lani Kaahumanu, eds. Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991.

1991-00-00: Kambal sa Lusog, an organization for LGBTQ+ Filipinos and Filipinas in New York City, forms in response to the controversy over the racism and sexism of the Broadway show Miss Saigon.

1991-00-00: The Gay Buddhist Fraternity, an independent society for LGBTQ+ Buddhists, is founded in San Francisco. The fraternity is mostly joined by men.

1991-04-00: After a months-long protest campaign initiated by Asian Lesbians of the East Coast and Gay Asian and Pacific Islander Men of New York, 500 LGBTQ activists demonstrate at and disrupt a New York fundraising event for Lambda Legal Defense featuring a performance of Miss Saigon.  

1993-00-00: Ratti, Rakesh, ed. A Lotus of Another Color: An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience. Boston: Alyson, 1993.

1993-00-00: Students at the University of California, Berkeley, form CAL-B-GAY (Cal Asian Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Alliances You-nited). Several other queer API alliances form on college campuses in the early 2000s, including Mothra at the University of Michigan,  Ann Arbor, and Trikone-Tejas at the University of Texas, Austin.

1993-00-00: Tsang, Daniel C. “Breaking the Silence: The Emergence of the Lesbian and Gay Asian Press in North America.” In Bearing Dreams, Shaping Visions: Asian Pacific American Perspectives. Edited by Linda A. Revilla et al. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1993.

1993-07-00: Aguilar-San Juan, Karin. “Landmarks in Literature by Asian Americans.” Signs 18, no. 4 (July 1993): 936-943.

1994-00-00: Amerasia Journal: Dimensions in Desire 20, no. 1 (1994).

1994-00-00: Kilawin Kolektibo, a networking and support group for LGBTQ+ Filipinas, is formed in New York City.

1994-00-00: Lim-Hing, Sharon. The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women. Toronto: Sister Vision, 1994.

1994-00-00: Makoto, Furukawa and Angus Lockyer. “The Changing Nature of Sexuality: The Three Codes Framing Homosexuality in Modern Japan.” U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, English Supplement, no. 7 (1994): 98-127.

1994-00-00: The Japanese American Citizens League, a national civil rights organization, creates an Asian Pacific Islander Lambda chapter to help address LGBTQ+ issues among APAs.

1994-09-02: Tsang, Daniel C. “Founder of First Gay and Lesbian Asian Group Succumbs to AIDS.” Asian Week 2 September 1994, 19.

1995-00-00: After attending the 1994 Rice Festival in New York, Pauline Park, I Li Hsiao, Lance Chen Hayes, and Sam Chiu are inspired to found an organization called Gay Asian Pacific Islanders of Chicago (GAPIC).

1995-00-00: After suing the Central Intelligence Agency for surveilling him and other radical activists in the late 1980s, Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang wins a settlement of $46,000. The CIA agrees to stop surveilling him.

1995-00-00: Henry, Jim (1995). "June Chan." In Zia, Helen; Gall, Susan B. (eds.). Notable Asian Americans. Gale Research.

1995-00-00: Khuli Zaban, a group for South and West Asian queer women, forms in Chicago.

1995-00-00: Leupp, Gary. Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

1995-00-00: Neena Hemmady and Arzu co-found Khuli Zaban, a support group for South and West Asian lesbian, bisexual, and questioning women. In 1997, they publish a special edition of the Shamakami Newsletter, an international publication run by South Asian lesbian and bisexual women.

1995-00-00: The organization O Moi forms as a support network for Vietnamese lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people living in Los Angeles and Orange County, California.

1995-00-00: Ting, Jennifer. “Bachelor Society: Deviant Heterosexuality and Asian American Historiography.” In Privileging Positions: The Sites of Asian American Studies. Edited by Gary Y. Okihiro et al. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1995.

1995-00-00: The San Francisco chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) creates the API-PFLAG Family Project (also called API Family Pride), which produces a video documentary to help APA families discuss sexual orientation and a support network for APA parents and families.

1995-00-00: Villanueva, Chea. Jessie’s Song and Other Stories. New York: Masquerade, 1995.

1996-00-00: Gil Guag creates Chingusai-Chicago, a Korean American group for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. The word “chingusai” means “between friends” in Korean.

1996-00-00: Hall, Lisa, Kahaleole Chang, and J. Kehaulani Kauanui. “Same-Sex Sexuality in Pacific Literature.” In Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience. Edited by Russell Leong. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 1996.

1996-00-00: Jesook Song and Sunyoo Kim create the Korean American Lesbian Advocate (KoALA) with the goal of maintaining connections with other Korean lesbians and fostering LGBTQ+ acceptance in Korean communities.

1996-00-00: Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a gay Japanese American activist, becomes the plaintiff in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the Communications Decency Act. He fights for the right to distribute sex education information to youth.

1996-00-00: Leong, Russell, ed. Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience. New York: Routledge, 1996.

1996-00-00: Many LGBTQ+ API groups, such as Chingusai, GAPIC, Khuli Zaban, KoALA, PALs Networking-Chicago, and SANGAT, join together to form the Asian Pacific Islander and South Asian Coalition (APISAC).

1996-00-00: Reyes, Eric Estuar. “Strategies for Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Spaces.” In Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience. Edited by Russell Leong. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 1996.

1996-00-00: Tsui, Kitty. Breathless: Erotica. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1996.

1996-03-00: Katherine Sherif forms the first Arab lesbian, bisexual, and transgender email list following the rise of the Internet. The women on the list participate in an annual gathering in places like the Marin Headlands of California and the Catskills in New York.

1996-05-00: APISAC marches in the Chicago Asian American Parade, making history as the first explicitly Asian LGBTQ+ group to march in the parade. In June 1996, APISAC marches in Chicago’s Pride Parade, along with the Asian American AIDS Foundation (AAAF) and Asians and Friends-Chicago (AFC).

1996-09-00: Wilkinson, Willie, "Out, Loud, and Seen, The Asian and Pacifica Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Movement Past and Present," Curve, September 1996.

1997-00-00: Fumia, Molly. Honor Thy Children: One Family’s Journey to Wholeness. Berkeley, CA: Conari, 1997.

1997-00-00: Khan, Badruddin. Sex, Longing, and Not Belonging: A Gay Muslim’s Quest for Love and Meaning. Oakland, Calif.: Floating Lotus, 1997.

1997-00-00: Tyrkus, Michael, Gay & Lesbian Biography. Detroit: St. James Press.

1997-00-00: Villanueva, Chea.  Bulletproof Butches. New York: Hard Candy, 1997.

1997-04-00: Twelve lesbian and bisexual Arab and Iranian American women form a group for Arab and Iranian lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women, later named Assal East Coast. The group’s mission is to provide a space for queer Arab American women to empower themselves, foster connections, and advocate for acceptance within Arab and Iranian communities.

1997-04-26: California State University’s Asian American Studies Department joins together with the Center for Sex Research, the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry, and the Gay Vietnamese Alliance to sponsor “CrossTalk: Asian and Pacific American Sensuality and Sexuality.”

1997-11-00: The Al-Fatitha Foundation, a support and advocacy group for LGBTQ+ Muslims, is founded by Faisal Alam. He creates a listserv (an online email discussion group) for LGBTQ+ Muslims and the group decides to hold the First International Retreat for LGBT Muslims a year later in Boston, Massachusetts.

1998-00-00:  Carmichael Jr., James Vinson. Daring to Find Our Names: The Search for Lesbigay Library History. Praeger. p. 162 on June Chan.

1998-00-00: Eng, David L. and Alice Y. Hom, eds. Q&A: Queer in Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

1998-00-00: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang, an Asian American LGBTQ+ activist, helps organize the first Tongzhi Conference alongside activists like Russell Leong, the editor of the Amerasia Journal.

1998-00-00: The Gay Polynesians Alliance of California, later renamed United Territories of Pacific Islanders Alliance (UTOPIA), forms in San Francisco.

1998-00-00: Thistlethwaite, Polly. An Activist's Guide to Lesbian History: A Companion to the Video Not Just Passing Through. CUNY Academic Works.

1999-00-00: Al and Jane Nakatani, the parents of two queer APA children, found an educational organization called Honor Thy Children with the goal of promoting the acceptance of human diversity among all children.

1999-00-00: Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

1999-00-00: Over twenty ethnically-specific women’s organizations join the API Queer Women’s Coalition.

1999-00-00: The Bay Area-based Mandarin Asian Pacific Lesbian Bisexual Network produces a booklet titled “Beloved Daughter” to help Chinese American families communicate about sexual orientation.

1999-01-00: Bassam Kassab founds Karama (also known as the New England Lavender Society), a support group of LGBTQ+ Arabs, Persians, and Turks. Members participate in monthly gatherings, book readings, and lectures, and thirteen members march in the 1999 Boston Pride Parade.

1999-04-09: Arizona State University’s Asian Pacific American Studies Program hosts a conference with the theme “Asian Pacific American Genders and Sexualities,” representing an increase in queer visibility within the academic world.

2000-00-00: Bao, Quang and Hanya Yanagihara, eds. Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America. New York: Asian American Writer’s Workshop, 2000.

2000-00-00: Daniel Chuen-Tuen Tsang, an Asian American LGBTQ activist, is awarded the Media Award by Orange County Culture Pride. He is also awarded the Jackie Eubanks Memorial Award by the American Library Association’s Alternatives in Print Task Force.

2000-00-00: Members of the Asian Pacific Islander Lesbian, Women, and Transgender Network (APLBTN) spearhead the API LGBT Task Force, which provides testimonies and recommendations for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

2000-00-00: Ordona, Trinity Ann. “Coming Out Together: An Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women’s and Transgendered People’s Movement of San Francisco.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Santa Cruz, 2000.

2000-00-00: Woo, Merle. “Three Decades of Class Struggle on Campus.” In Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America. Edited by Fred Ho. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Big Red Media, 2000.

2000-00-00: Zia, Helen. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

2000-09-00: Heba Nimr, Laura Farha, and Bassam Kassab found the Southwest Asian and North African Bay Area Queers, a support and discussion forum that includes LGBTQ+ Afghans, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Berbers, Cypriots, Kurds, Persians, and Turks. Members of the group participate in regular gatherings and parties, and over thirty march in the 2002 San Francisco Pride Parade.

2001-00-00: Eng, David. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.

2001-00-00: Matzner, Andrew, ed. ‘O Au No Keia: Voices from Hawai’i’s Mahu and Transgender Communities. Xlibris Corporation, 2001.

2001-00-00: Masequesmay, Gina. Becoming Queer and Vietnamese American: Negotiating Multiple Identities in an Ethnic Support Group of Lesbians, Bisexual Women, and Female-to-Male Transgenders. Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 2001.

2001-00-00: Ordona, Trinity Ann. Coming Out Together: An Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women’s and Transgendered People’s Movement of San Francisco (California). Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Cruz, 2001.

2001-00-00: Shah, Nayan. “Perversity, Contamination, and the Dangers of Queer Domesticity.” In his Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

2001-00-00: Varney, Joan Ariki. “Undressing the Normal: Community Efforts for Queer Asian and Asian American Youth.” In Troubling Intersections of Race and Sexuality: Queer Students of Color and Anti-Oppressive Education. Edited by Kevin K. Kumashiro. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

2001-00-00: Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun.“Was Mom Chung a ‘Sister Lesbian’? Asian American Gender Experimentation and Interracial Homoeroticism.” Journal of Women’s History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 58–82.

2002-00-00: Baroudi, Lina. I Exist: Voices from the Lesbian and Gay Middle Eastern Community in the U.S., a film produced by Peter Barbosa and Garrett Lenoir. San Francisco: EyeBite Productions, 2002.

2002-00-00: Dana Y. Takagi becomes the first openly lesbian leader of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS).

2002-00-00: De Jesus, Melinda. “Rereading History, Rewriting Desire: Reclaiming Queerness in Carlos Bulosan’s ‘America Is in the Heart’ and Bienvenido Santos’ ‘Scent of Apples.’ ” Journal of Asian American Studies 5, no. 2 (2002): 91-111.

2002-00-00: Massad, Joseph. “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World.” Public Culture 14, no. 2 (2002): 361–385.

2002-00-00: Naber, Nadine. “Arab San Francisco: On Gender, Cultural Citizenship and Belonging.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Davis, 2002.

2002-00-00: Okazaki, Sumie. “Influences of Culture on Asian Americans’ Sexuality.” Journal of Sex Research 39, no. 1 (2002) 34-41.

2002-00-00: Robertson, Carolina E. “The M~hã of Hawai’i.” In Pacific Disapora: Island Peoples in the United States and Across the Pacific. Edited by Paul Spickard, Joanne L. Rondilla, and Debbie Hippolite Wright. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002.

2002-00-00: Wat, Eric C. The Making of a Gay Asian Community: An Oral History of Pre-AIDS Los Angeles. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

2003-00-00: Hsu, Madeline Y.  “Unwrapping Orientalist Constraints: Restoring Homosocial Normativity to Chinese American History,” Amerasia Journal 29, no. 2 (2003): 230-253.

2003-00-00: Lai, Eric Yo Ping. “Queer APA Households by the Numbers.” In The New Face of Asian Pacific America: Numbers, Diversity, and Change in the 21st Century. Edited by Eric Yo Ping Lai and Dennis Arguelles. San Francisco: Asian Week, 2003.

2003-00-00: Manalansan, Martin. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

2003-08-00: Approximately seventy LGBTQ+ Muslims and allies meet in New York City for “Our Individual Lives; Our Collective Journey,” a national conference in which different panels discuss LGBTQ+ Muslim life and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

2004-00-00: Kao, Don. "Reminiscences of Don Kao: Oral History, 2004.

2004-00-00: Lavender Phoenix, a national coalition of queer API activists, is formed in response to a 6,000-person rally attempting to attack marriage equality. The rally is held by Chinese Christian leaders in San Francisco. Originally the Asian Pacific American Coalition for Equality, Lavender Phoenix uses storytelling, organizing, and advocacy to fight for the rights of queer API people nationwide.

2004-00-00: Lee, Joon Oluchi. “Joy of the Castrated Boy.” Social Text 23, no. 3 (2004): 35-56.

2005-00-00: Azuma, Eiichiro. Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

2005-00-00: Dang, Alain and Mandy Hu. Asian Pacific American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People: A Community Portrait. A Report from New York’s Queer Asian Pacific Legacy Conference, 2004. New York: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, 2005.

2005-00-00: Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

2005-00-00: Shah, Nayan. “Between ‘Oriental Depravity’ and ‘Natural Degenerates’: Spatial Borderlands and the Making of Ordinary Americans.” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005) 703-725.

2005-00-00: Tzu-Chun Wu, Judy. Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

2006-00-00: Yoshino, Kenji. Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. New York: Random House.

2006-00-00: Amerasia Journal: “Marriage Equality Debate” 32, no. 1 (2006).

2007-00-00: Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

2008-00-00: Beatie, Thomas. Labor of Love: The Story of One Man’s Extraordinary Pregnancy. Berkeley: Seal, 2008.

2008-00-00: Howard, John. Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese American in the House of Jim Crow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

2009-00-00: Masequesmay, Gina and Metzger, Sean. Embodying Asian/American Sexualities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009.

2011-00-00: Amerasia Journal: Further Desire—Asian and Asian American Sexualities 37, no. 2 (2011).

2011-00-00: Hom, Alice. “Unifying Differences: Lesbian of Color Organizing in Los Angeles and New York.” Ph.D. dissertation, Claremont Graduate University, 2011.

2011-00-00: Shah, Nayan. Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

2011-00-00: Sueyoshi, Amy. “Miss Morning Glory: Orientalism and Misogyny in the Queer Writings of Yone Noguchi.” Amerasia Journal 37, no. 2 (2011): 2-27.

2012-00-00: Aizumi, Marsha. Two Spirits, One Heart: A Mother, Her Transgender Son, and Their Journey to Love and Acceptance. Bronx, NY: Magnus, 2012.

2012-00-00: Cutler, Phoebe. “Joaquin Miller and the Social Circle at the Hights.” California History 90, no. 1, (2012): 40-61, 66-69.

2012-00-00: Parreñas Shimizu, Celine. Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Masculinities in the Movies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.

2012-00-00: Sueyoshi, Amy. Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012.

2013-00-00: Takemoto, Tina. “Looking for Jiro Onuma: A Queer Meditation on the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 20, no. 3. 241-275. 2013.

2014-00-00: Hoang, Nguyen Tan. A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

2014-00-00: Lim, Eng-Beng. Brown Boys and Rice Queens: Spellbinding Performances in the Asias. New York: New York University Press, 2014.

2014-00-00: Nagarajan, Mala. “Queer South Asian Organizing in the United States.” Trikone Magazine 28, no. 1 (2014): 4-7.

2014-00-00: Shah, Nayan. “Race-ing Sex.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 35, no. 1 (2014): 26-36.

2014-00-00: Sueyoshi, Amy. “Mindful Masquerades: Que(e)rying Japanese Immigrant Dress in Turn-of-the-Century San Francisco.” In Contingent Maps: Rethinking the North American West and Western Women’s History edited by Susan Gray and Gayle Gullett. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014.

2014-00-00: Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: Penguin, 2014. 

2015-00-00: Leong, Andrew. “The Pocket and the Watch: A Collective Individualist Reading of Japanese  American Literature.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1, no. 2 (2015): 76-114.

2015-00-00: Sueyoshi, Amy. “Why Queer Asian American Studies?” Pan-Japan: The International Journal of the Japanese Diaspora, Special Issue - Conjecturing Communities: The Ebbs and Flows of Japanese 11, nos. 1 & 2, ed., Lane Ryo Hirabayashi (Summer 2015): 104-120.

2016-00-00: Kitty Tsui, a writer and LGBTQ+ activist, is awarded the Phoenix Award for lifetime achievement from the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community.

2016-00-00: Clara Yoon, the co-founder and president of Korean American Rainbow Parents, organizes the first national Korean American LGBTQ+ seminar in Washington, D.C. Apprxoimately sixty people from the United States and Korea attend.

2016-00-00: Sueyoshi, Amy. "Breathing Fire: Remembering Asian Pacific American Activism in Queer History. Chapter 11 in Megan E. Springate, editor, LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (National Park Foundation and the National Park Service, 2016).

2016-00-00: Sueyoshi, Amy. “Queer Asian American Historiography.” In Oxford Handbook of Asian American History, edited by Eiichiro Azuma and David Yoo, 267-278. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

2016-00-00: The Society for Queer Asian Studies is established s an affiliate of the Association for Asian Studies.

2017-00-00: Stoddard, Charles Warren. “A South Sea Idyl,” from The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman and Other Queer Nineteenth-Century Short Stories. Ed. Christopher Looby. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

2018-06-06: Lee, Patrick G., “Searching for Queer Asian Pacific America,” NBC News, Part 1 of 5, June 6, 2018. Episode 1: "‘We’re Asians, Gay & Proud’: The Story behind the Photo."

2018-06-13: Lee, Patrick G., "Searching for Queer Asian Pacific America," NBC News, Part 2 of 5, June. Episode 2: API TransFusion: The Journey to the Historic Retreat The story behind API TransFusion, the first national gathering for Asian and Pacific Islander transmasculine people, opens up conversations with LGBTQ activists who have fought for liberation since the 1980s.

2018-06-20: Lee, Patrick G., "Searching for Queer Asian Pacific America," NBC News, Part 3 of 5, June 20, 2018.) Episode 3: Visibility at Pride: The Pacific Islanders Who Marched in 1982

2018-06-26: Lee, Patrick G., "Searching for Queer Asian Pacific America," NBC News, Part 4 of 5, Episode 4: Exploring the Roots of Chicago’s Queer South Asian Community, June 26, 2018.

2018-06-28: Lee, Patrick G., "Searching for Queer America," NBC News, Part 5 of 5, June 28, 2018. Episode 5: Tracing the Evolution of Asian-Pacific Islander LGBTQ Nightlife Spaces. LGBTQ nightlife spaces can be key to building community. For Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, building those spaces with other communities of color can also help provide a sense of home. 

2020-00-00: Patrick G Lee, director. Unspoken. Documentary about Six LGBTQ Asian Americans Coming Out to Their Immigrant Parents.

2022-02-08: Chantale Wong is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as U.S. director of the Asian Development Bank after being nominated by U.S. President Joseph Biden. She is the first out lesbian and LGBTQ+ person of color to serve in an ambassador-level position in the United States. In a White House press release, she is described as “a leading authority in international development policy with over 30 years of experience in the multi-disciplinary field that includes finance, technology, and the environment.”