'Round Here

January 22, 2013

Making a new friend on a swamp tour in New Orleans in 2012

Some 250 years ago, a group of Filipinos escaped Spanish galleons off the coast of Louisiana. They were the first Asian Americans. In this issue, we explore the South, a region vital to, but often overlooked in, Asian American history.

Although most of the Asian American community today lives in the West, our numbers are growing fastest down South: Our population increased there by 69 percent during the last decade, according to the Census. In some counties in Texas, Florida and Georgia, the population exploded by 200 percent or more. It is also in the South where the relatively newer face of the community has emerged, with Vietnamese, Indians and Koreans comprising the largest populations.

So mosey with us, from Chinese restaurants to Hindu temples, from statehouse halls to a Birmingham civil rights museum. Is this incredibly dynamic region, full of deliciously rich culture and history, one we should be keeping our eye on? We reckon so.

Lisa Wong Macabasco
Editor in Chief

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Lisa Wong Macabasco

Former Editor in chief

Lisa Wong Macabasco joined Hyphen in 2006; she has worked as the magazine's features editor, managing editor, and editor in chief. She has written for Mother Jones, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, AsianWeek, Audrey, Filipinas and ColorLines’ RaceWire. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and co-founded the National Asian American Student Conference. She was formerly an editor at AsianWeek newspaper and an editor in the marketing department of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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