Creating and Contesting Refugee Spaces

Despite a federal resettlement policy of dispersing Vietnamese refugees entering the United States after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, refugees resisted and resettled elsewhere. Within the first decade of settlement, the largest concentration of the refugees had formed in the Los Angeles area. This article identifies a number of factors in the rise of Vietnamese communities in Los Angeles, its San Gabriel Valley suburbs, and adjoining Orange County.

Building Gardens: Food Justice, Community Engagement, and Gardens for the Asian Pacific Islander Community in the San Gabriel Valley

Culturally relevant gardens can significantly benefit regions like the San Gabriel Valley, which contain nearly a third of Asian Americans who are low income, by providing organically grown produce for students (Asian Americans Advancing Justice, 2018). This article focuses on one service-learning program: Asian/Asian American Studies 3510 Food Justice, the Body, and the Environment in the API Community at Cal State LA that works with schools throughout the San Gabriel Valley to build culturally relevant produce gardens. While our work focuses on building gardens and considerations of food justice, one of the greatest barriers to community-university partnerships is the lack of procedural transparency embedded within the university structure and culture. The heart of this essay is this process.