The Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection, the acquisition of which was made possible in large part by a donation in memory of Dr. Wei-Yu Chen, contains over 10,000 items of Asian Americana that trace the representation of Asians and Asian Americans in American popular, political, academic, and literary media. Yoshio Kishi (1931-2012), a New York-born film editor, writer, and book dealer, assembled this extensive array of materials in diverse formats and mediums over the course of forty years with long-time friend Irene Yah-Ling Sun. The collection spans from 1860 to 2011 and contains books, magazines, prints, posters, newspapers, advertisements, postcards, films, videos, audio recordings, comics, toys, and other ephemera. It provides documentation of stereotypical images of Asian Americans, as well as Asian American cultural production, and provides unparalleled materials for the investigation of Asian American history and the history of Asians and Asian Americans in the white hegemonic imagination.
To learn more about the contents of the Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah Ling Sun Collection, located at the NYU Fales Library & Special Collection, view the collection’s finding aid and images from the collection on Flickr.