Monterey Park: The Making of America’s First Suburban Chinatown

A mass shooting in Monterey Park, California – on the eve of Lunar New Year – sent shockwaves through the predominantly Asian American ethnoburb and the Asian American community nationwide.

The toll of mass shootings this year in the U.S. is already in the dozens in just the first month of 2023. In Monterey Park, California, a majority Asian American community shaken by loss of lives at the hands of an armed gunman, emotions are high given the circumstances. The victims were at a celebration for Lunar New Year in a city known as America’s first suburban Chinatown. To learn more about Monterey Park and its history, host Kai Wright speaks with James Zarsadiaz, a professor of history at the University of San Francisco and the author of “Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia and LA”. They discuss the town’s significance for the greater Asian American community and how people are processing this tragedy amid persisting fears of anti-Asian hate.

Companion listening for this episode:

The Dangerous Cycle of Fear (4/11/2022)

Asian American New Yorkers explain how Covid-era bigotry and violence changed their lives, and what’s at stake for everybody when we fear each other. 

“Notes from America” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on notesfromamerica.org or on WNYC’s YouTube channel.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.