"Sharing Comfort and Care" explores the intergenerational and intercultural sharing of stories related to migration, health care, and food. We focus on two of the most underrepresented groups within the Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) category, namely Cambodians and NHPIs. California is home to the largest Cambodian American community and second largest Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (NHPI) community in the United States.

During the academic year 2020-2021, student and alum researchers from across Southern California and beyond conducted oral history interviews with AAPI community members, created digital "story maps" highlighting their lives, and collected family and community recipes. Please explore the rich stories of comfort and care that our project researchers collected and shared.

“Sharing Comfort and Care" is a project led by faculty and staff at the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with The Cambodian Family and Empowering Pacific Islander Communities, and funded by the California Humanities.

Dr. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
Professor of Asian American Studies, Director of the Humanities Center, UC Irvine

Dr. Dorothy Fujita-Rony
Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, UC Irvine

Dr. Thuy Vo Dang
Curator for the Southeast Asian Archive, Research Librarian for Asian American Studies, UCI Libraries

Madelynn Dickerson
Head of Digital Scholarship Services, UCI Libraries

Nichole Vendivil Dungo
Shiphrah Fepulea'i
Cynthia Fok
Kelly Hofschneider
Emory Chao Johnson
Shine Kim
Qianru Li
Gabby Lupola
Amira Noeuv
Catherine Pereda
Leeda Sea
Jennifer Tang
Phuc Duy Nhu To
Hong Andrew Tum

UCI Asian American Studies Department
UCI Humanities Center
UCI Libraries
The Cambodian Family
EPIC (Empowering Pacific Islander Communities)

We acknowledge and give thanks to the storytellers who participated in this project, and generously shared their stories and recipes.

Thank you to Tatiana Bryant, Research Librarian for digital humanities, History, and African American Studies for help with collecting recipe metadata.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org.