In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Raymond Pun (Madden Library) moderated an inspiring REFORMA event entitled, “Awakening Stories: Asian-Pacific American Librarians in the Central Valley Community and Beyond” on May 6, 2018 at Bitwise Industries.

Raymond is the First Year Student Success Librarian and Library Diversity Committee Co-Chair, Henry Madden Library. He coordinated the event with Sandra Rios Balderrama, president, REFORMA del Valle Central; Bryan Medina, Fresno Poet Laureate, and Yer Vang, Library Assistant II, Fresno County Public Library.

They brought together a dynamic and diverse group of speakers, including librarians, educators, poets, and writers mainly from the Central Valley, each with their own provocative thoughts, passionate stories, and varied experiences surrounding the importance of intentionally moving forward diversity and inclusion in our workplaces and communities.

Raymond also brought up the important issues of emotional labor and cultural taxation often attached to this work. A common thread that many speakers shared was how they found their professional beginnings in their neighborhood public libraries as places that were safe and filled their young minds with knowledge.

Library leaders —Del Hornbuckle, library dean, Fresno State Madden Library, and Haipeng Li, university librarian, UC Merced Library — graced the stage with poignant speeches. The program opened and closed with heartfelt remarks from Fresno current Poet Laureate, Bryan Medina, and Fresno Poet Laureate Emeritus, Lee Herrick, Fresno City College.

The speakers echoed chapters in the new book, Asian American Librarians and Library Services: Activism, Collaboration, and Strategies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), edited by Ramond Pun, Janet Hyunju Clarke, and Monnee Tong. A number of Fresno State librarians collaborated in writing chapters for this book, including Raymond Pun, Hiromi Kubo, Vang Vang, Tiewei Liu, Tammy Lau, and Julie Moore.