Translate
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.
Cal Poly Men's Baseball will have a first pitch thrown out by a local alumnus, Stan Ikeda on Friday, 5/15 against Long Beach in a game that celebrates APIDA Heritage Month and Japanese American baseball at large!
Thi Bui: Artist and Writer
APIDA Heritage Month Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
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 will open at 4:45pm, followed by the event, which will run from 5 to 6:15pm with a Q&A and Book Signing to follow.
AANHPI/APIDA Book Circle (Students Only)
Sign up for one of our book circle discussions and 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 sign up for one of the 2 book circles will receive a copy of the book and are invited to join us for a discussion in the MCC with the APIDA Center.
