Texas Tech University Press Statement on Anti-Asian Violence

The staff of Texas Tech University Press (TTUP), and the entire Texas Tech community, vigorously condemn anti-Asian racism and all acts of violence and cruelty that arise from it. We stand with the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community against anti-Asian harassment and abuse of all types.

At TTUP, we have made amplifying the voices of Asian and Asian American writers and scholars one of our central missions. Through our fastest-growing book series, the Peace and Conflict Series, we seek to enhance and expand critical research, creative scholarship, and practical education in the fields of war and society, global peacemaking, conflict resolution, and society’s response to such efforts, with a special focus on the Vietnam War. The first book in that series was a memoir penned by the ninety-year-old South Vietnamese government official Nguyen Thai. Crooked Bamboo: A Memoir from Inside the Diem Regime examines the political unrest that characterized the Diem regime and Thai’s efforts to help bring the war to a negotiated end. An upcoming memoir in our 2021 catalog focuses on the life and accomplishments of Kim Vui, a celebrated South Vietnamese actress dubbed the “Sophia Loren of Saigon” during her heyday in the 1960s who went on to become a successful businesswoman and immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. Another forthcoming memoir, Soldier On: My Father, His General, and the Long Road from Vietnam, is written by Tran B. Quan, the daughter of a South Vietnamese soldier who recounts a reunion in Orlando between her father and his beloved general, Tran Ba Di, forty years after the war in Vietnam and their subsequent road trip to Key West. We also recently announced a new partnership with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) to annually publish a new novel or memoir by a member of the Vietnam diaspora.

Today, we redouble our efforts to use our platform to share the perspectives, research, analysis, experiences, and creativity of the AAPI community with the wider world. These stories and works of scholarship are pivotal to understanding the character of our regional, national, and transnational past, present, and future, and TTUP remains committed to lifting them up, to quote our own publishing process explanation, “not just because it is right but because it helps us meet the mission of Texas Tech University, which is to advance knowledge through innovative research and scholarship and to commit to ethical leadership.”

More information about our partnership with DVAN is available here.

TTU’s Statement of Support for the AAPI community is located here.

The Association of University Presses has also issued a Statement on Anti-Asian Violence, which is posted here.

Those seeking additional ways of supporting the AAPI community can find resources to do so here and here.