The Boston Women's Health Book Collective began in 1969 when a small group of women gathered after a workshop on women and their bodies at a Boston-area female liberation conference to talk about some crucial health issues and to confront a medical establishment viewed as paternalistic and condescending. Perhaps best known for their pioneering handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves (1971 and subsequent editions and international adaptations), the Collective helped to create worldwide networks of women involved in health education and advocacy. Includes international correspondence to/from Asian countries, notably China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand. See also Boston Women's Health Book Collective (Printed Collection).

Author, lecturer, business consultant, and citizen-diplomat, Anna Chen Chennault was born in Beijing, China, on June 23, 1923. Anna moved with her sisters to unoccupied China, where she attended Linguan University, eventually receiving a B.A. in journalism in 1945. She covered the U.S. 14th Air Force, where she developed a relationship with General Claire Lee Chennault (1893-1958), former commander of the famed Flying Tigers and an ardent supporter of the China Lobby. They married December 21, 1947, and the marriage brought her to the attention of the National Government of the Republic of China concerned with U.S.-Asian relations. In 1946, Claire Chennault co-founded Chinese Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Air Transport, later known as Civil Air Transport to fly relief supplies into interior China. They spoke out against the dangers of communism in China, with Anna frequently addressing American groups on the subject of Taiwan and Chinese-American relations. Her active involvement with the Republican Party began in 1960, when she campaigned for Richard Nixon and helped to organize minority groups. In 1968, she became Vice President for International Affairs of the Flying Tiger Line, a freight airline established by former members of the Flying Tigers; the first female vice president of an airline, she established Asian landing rights for the airline and traveled extensively through Southeast Asia on the airline's behalf.

Chinese American culinary instructor and author Grace Zia Chu was born August 23, 1899, in Shanghai, China. In 1928 she married Shih-Ming Chu. Early in her career, Madame Chu was very involved with the World Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), serving as international vice-president from 1942-1947. She returned to the United States in 1941 when her husband was appointed military attaché to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., later becoming a U.S. citizen in 1955. In 1954 Madame Chu established her career as an instructor of Chinese cooking when she was invited to New York City to teach at the China Institute in America.

The highest ranking female judoist in the world, Keiko Fukuda was the granddaughter of a samurai who taught jujitsu in Tokyo. One of his students, Jigoro Kano, transformed jujitsu into judo and in the 1930s he invited Fukuda to study at his school. Although she had already earned a degree in Japanese literature, Fukuda found her calling in judo and devoted the rest of her life to its teaching and study. When judo was recognized as an Olympic sport in 1964, she received worldwide recognition by demonstrating her art at the Olympic games. She moved to the San Francisco area in the 1960s, teaching at local colleges, at her Women's Judo Club in San Francisco, as well as around the world. She became an American citizen after training dozens of women who were then newly entering the police force, arguing to the immigration authorities that her work was vital to the defense of the country.

Carol Haddad, is an Arab American whose grandparents emigrated to Boston from Lebanon and Syria in the early 20th century. In 1982 she founded the Feminist Arab-American Network (FAN), an organization of feminists of Arab heritage residing primarily in the United States. FAN was established to give voice to the perspectives of Arab-American feminists on a wide variety of issues, including foreign policy and stereotypical views of Arabs within the American feminist community; it was active from 1982-86. More recently (2003-07), Haddad was a member of a Michigan women's dialogue group: Zeitouna, Arab & Jewish Women Working for Peace and Justice.

Letter written by a missionary on behalf of a convert begins with an introduction to "a few facts in the life of Kashibaie." It continues with a portion purportedly by Kashibaie addressed to her husband and with a portion addressed to "all Christian sisters in England, and Ireland and Scotland and America." Letter details her marriage at age five, family disappointment at the birth of her daughter, ostracism of her daughter upon the death of the daughter's husband, and Kashibaie's conversion to Christianity.

Founded in 1917 by a group of Syrian-Lebanese immigrant women as the Society for the Relief of Syria and Lebanon, the Society sought to raise funds and provide aid (food and relief supplies) to the suffering people of "Greater Syria" during World War I. Following the war, the organization devoted its efforts to helping new immigrants and needy Syrian-Lebanese people in greater Boston and surrounding areas by providing food, shelter, financial assistance, medical and legal support, etc. The headquarters served as the central gathering place for the Syrian-Lebanese community for nearly thirty years as the organization engaged in weekly fundraising activities such as rummage sales and dinners, and hosting plays, haflis, sahra, holiday parties, etc., to support its charitable works. In 1962, the group changed its name to the Lebanese Syrian Ladies' Aid Society and relocated to West Roxbury where it continues to provide financial assistance to scholarship funds, local and national social agencies, victims of natural disasters and wars, and to the elderly.

Ida Pruitt was a writer, educator, and social worker born in China, the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries. Later in life, while living in Beijing Pruitt adopted two girls, one Chinese, Kueiching [Kwei-ching], the other a Russian refugee, Tania Manooiloff. They were educated in English schools in China, then sent to the United States. This collection contains a great deal of correspondence with Kueiching, and includes a letter discussing Kueiching's view of her childhood as depicted in A China Childhood.

A support group for Asian gay men and lesbians in Massachusetts and the surrounding New England states, the Queer Asian Pacific Alliance was formed in 1979 by Siong-Huat Chua, and was first known as the Boston Asian Gay Men and Lesbians (BAGMAL) until 1988 and then as the Alliance of Massachusetts Asian Lesbians and Gay Men. It holds social events and discussion sessions, issues newsletters, organizes special events, and coordinates with gay/lesbian organizations nationally and internationally in order to raise awareness and understanding in Asian communities about gay people.

Manuscripts and typescripts of American and Chinese recipes; the Chinese recipes were compiled by an American in Beijing in about 1900. This collection has been digitized and can be accessed through these links:
Folder 1 and Folder 2

Cheng Imm Tan was born January 19, 1958 in Penang, Malaysia. She came to the United States in 1978 to enroll at Wilson College, and graduated from Dickinson College in 1981. Tan received a M.Div from Harvard Divinity School in 1986. While working as a Community Minister in Boston with the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, Tan founded the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence in 1986. The Task Force operates the Asian Shelter and Advocacy Project, which opened the first domestic violence shelter for Asian American families in the early 1990s. In the mid 1990s, Tan founded Ricesticks and Tea, a food pantry project offering culturally appropriate food for Asian American families. In 1998, Tan was hired by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to start the Mayor's Office of New Bostonians, which attempted to recognize and attend to the need and concerns of Boston's diverse immigrant communities. In 1998, Tan founded Gund Kwok, an all women Asian Lion Dance troupe. The Lion Dance has traditionally been performed only by male dancers, and Tan wished to change that tradition and create new ways for Asian women to show and celebrate their power and strength.

Cookbook author Elizabeth Ahn Toupin was born and raised in Hawaii, the youngest child of Won Kiu Ahn and Chung Shong Ahn. She received a BS in political science from Bennington College and an MS in labor management relations from the University of Hawaii. She worked as an intelligence specialist in NATO affairs and later as a research assistant to Senator Daniel Inoye. She married Richard A. Toupin, a scientist at IBM, and had three children. Toupin also served as associate dean of liberal arts at Tufts University. She is the author of The Entertaining Wife or The Lady Who Came to Dinner (1963) and The Hawaii Cookbook and Backyard Luau (1967). This collection includes correspondence, mostly with publishers and others (including James Michener) interested in her cookbooks; contracts; clippings; and typed drafts of unpublished cookbooks.

Kiong Tien VandenBerg is the mother of Fernande R. V. Duffly, the first Asian American to serve on the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts.

The Women's History Research Center was started in 1968 in Berkeley, California, by Laura X, in response to a lack of academic interest in women's history. The WHRC documented the women's movement of the late-1960s and 1970s, collecting periodicals, clippings from newspapers and magazines, pamphlets, songs, leaflets, graphics, research papers, theses, and poems, which they used to answer research inquiries from across the United States and, to a lesser extent, from abroad. In addition, they published directories of sources for women's films, tape recordings, art, women's studies courses, and bibliographies. Includes: Asian Women's Center, Los Angeles, 1973 and Asian Women's Journal, 1971-1973.

Includes transcripts from: (1) Ka Yang interview, 1983. Ka Yang discusses escaping Laos, living in a refugee camp in Thailand, missing her home, the difficulty of immigrating to the United States. (2) Mary Tsukamoto interview, 1981. Tsukamoto talks about farm work, how her parents immigrated to the United States, early school memories, learning English, anti-Japanese sentiment (being referred to as a problem), and lack of citizenship rights for Japanese people. (3) Sopath Chin Ngeth interview, 1983. Ngeth talks about escaping her home country on a boat with her husband, torture and repression in Cambodia, missing her parents still in Cambodia, and not knowing English.