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AANHPI Events
Upcoming Events
Through a Diamond: Celebrating the Legacy of Japanese American Baseball
A partnership between Cal Poly AANHPI Initiatives and the Japanese American Citizens League.
May 11–June 28 | Robert E. Kennedy Library, First Floor Gallery
Come check out this wonderful exhibit with photos, video, and artifacts from both local and national Japanese American baseball players. Learn more about the role that baseball played during the incarceration of the Japanese Americans in internment campus during World War II and the history of this great game in the lives of this population.
Viet Thanh Nguyen: Pulitzer Prize Winner & Bestselling Author
Migration Celebration Inaugural Keynote
Wednesday, June 3, 2026 | 4–6pm | Chumash Auditorium
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, and one of the leading voices in contemporary conversations about war, memory, refugees, and the immigrant experience. Born in Vietnam, Nguyen fled the country with his family after the fall of Saigon and resettled in the United States as a refugee, an experience that profoundly shapes his fiction, criticism, and public advocacy. He is a University Professor and Aerol Arnold Chair of English at the University of Southern California (USC).
Nguyen rose to international prominence with his debut novel The Sympathizer (2015), which combines the suspense of a thriller with the prose of a literary master through the story of an army captain building a life in America after the fall of Saigon while secretly working as a communist double agent. The novel won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was later adapted into an HBO limited series.
His other acclaimed works include The Committed, The Refugees, and the memoir A Man of Two Faces, which was a finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. Blending personal history with political and cultural criticism, the memoir examines the lasting effects of war, colonialism, family trauma, and the complexities of identity and belonging for refugees and immigrants in America. His recent nonfiction book, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, explores what it means to be an outsider from a variety of perspectives.
Nguyen studied at UC Berkeley, where he earned undergraduate degrees in English and Ethnic Studies and a doctorate in English, and taught for nearly three decades at USC. A powerful advocate for immigrants and refugees and a passionate believer in the principles of community, solidarity, and service, he helped to build the nonprofit Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network and serves on the Boards of the Pulitzer Prizes and the International Rescue Committee.
In recognition of the impact of his scholarship and advocacy on conversations surrounding migration, identity, and belonging, Culture and Institutional Excellence (CIX) is proud to host Viet Thanh Nguyen as this year’s Migration Celebration Keynote Speaker as part of Cal Poly’s Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Initiatives, helping kick off the Dream Center’s annual Migration Celebration.
Doors will open at 3:45 p.m., followed by the keynote event from 4:00 to 5:15 p.m., with a Q&A and book signing immediately afterward.
Audiences are also invited to attend the following day’s Migration Celebration community event on June 4, 2026, from 4:00–7:00 p.m. at the UU Plaza, featuring free food, merch, games, performances, and opportunities to connect with campus resources.
Past Events
Thi Bui: Artist and Writer
APIDA Heritage Month Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 | 5–7pm | Chumash Auditorium
Thi Bui is a Vietnamese-born American cartoonist and graphic novelist who came to the US in 1978 as part of the “boat people” wave of refugees at the end of the Vietnam War.
Her best-selling debut 2017 memoir, The Best We Could Do, follows Thi Bui’s parents’ life before and during the Vietnam War, their escape during the war, and their migration to the US as refugees. It won the American Book Award and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography and the Eisner Award for reality-based comics. It was also selected as a Big Read title by the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been featured as a Community Read by multiple colleges, universities, and communities, including UCLA, the city of Seattle, and San Francisco public libraries.
Thi has been an illustrator on many books, including A Different Pond, written by poet Bao Phi, and Finding Papa, by Angela Pham Krans. Along with her son, Hien, Thi co-illustrated a children’s book, Chicken of the Sea, alongside Viet Thanh Nguyen and his son, Ellison.
She is currently working on a work of graphic nonfiction about immigrant detention and deportation, which will come out through One World, Random House.
Doors opened at 4:45pm, followed by the event, which ran from 5 to 6:15pm with a Q&A and Book Signing that followed.
AANHPI/APIDA Book Circle (Students Only)
Students had the opportunity to sign up for one of our book circle discussions to receive a copy of The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. This 2017 illustrated memoir tells the powerful story of Bui’s parents’ journey from Vietnam to the United States as refugees after the Vietnam War. Through a blend of text and drawings, the book explores themes of family, war, migration, and identity.
Participants who signed up for one of the 2 book circles received a copy of the book and were invited to join us for a discussion in the Multicultural Center.
