Asian Heritage Month 2024 Offers Fashion, Sports, Film and Fellowship

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) proudly presents Asian Heritage Month 2024.

The Asian Heritage Month co-chairs are Mark Goodloe, Technical Director in the BMCC Tribeca Performing Art Center; Albert Lee, Student Success Outreach and Programming Coordinator; Lisa White, Videographer, the BMCC Media Center and Erwin Wong, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Together, they have put together a schedule of events that celebrates the rich diversity of Asian culture around the world and right here on the BMCC campus.

Celebrate filmmakers from Spike Lee to Jan Lee

Jan Lee, community activist and co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal (NUBC) will be joined in conversation with BMCC Professor Alvin Eng on April 4.

Jan Lee will discuss mobilizing the Chinatown/Asian American community in protests against the Mega Jail set to be built in Chinatown and considered a threat to the unique character and lifestyle of the Chinatown community.

Mr. Lee will also discuss his role in the Award-winning documentary film, “Big Fight In Little Chinatown,” and screen an excerpt from that film.

Film screenings will continue on April 8 with “Swing Kids,” a South Korean musical drama that takes place in Geoje prison camp during the Korean War in 1951.

On April 11, the BMCC community will be treated to a screening of “Raazi,” a 2018 Indian Hindi-language spy thriller.

On April 13, the Asian Heritage Month committee is thrilled to present “Da 5 Bloods,” a 2020 American war drama film directed, produced and co-written by Spike Lee.

Set during the Vietnam War, the film follows a squad of Black U.S. Army soldiers of the First Infantry Division. They dub themselves the “Bloods,” secure the site of a CIA airplane crash and recover its cargo, a locker of gold bars intended as payment for the Lahu people for their help in fighting the Viet Cong.

“Youth,” scheduled for April 15, is a moving 2017 Chinese coming-of-age drama that follows a group of idealistic adolescents who join a military art troupe in the People’s Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution.

“In this Corner of the World,” set for April 17, is a 2016 Japanese animated wartime drama that takes place in the 1930s and 1940s in Hiroshima and Kure in Japan, roughly 10 years before and after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Game on!

For seasoned athletes as well as anyone wanting to try their hand at a new sport, there is a Pickleball tournament on April 4 that starts with a tutorial and rules review. Participants can sign up with a partner, or solo.

The pickleball tournament will also feature a not-to-be-missed match-up featuring renown campus athletes Marva Craig, Vice President of Student Affairs, and Provost Wong, who will take on the formidable twosome Jay Francisco, Associate Director of Career Services, and Ian Wentworth, Student Life Manager for Student Conduct and Academic Integrity in Student Affairs. 

On April 9, BMCC students, faculty and staff at all levels of athletic ability are invited to join a Volleyball Tournament, and a Table Tennis event welcomes participants on April 18.

Feeling literary? Artistic? Fashion forward?

Back by popular demand, the Annual Haiku Contest welcomes students, faculty and staff to try their hand at writing a haiku, a Japanese poetic form that consists of three lines; five syllables in the first line, seven in the second and five in the third.

The theme of haiku contest, which runs April 1 through 12, is “peace.”

On April 8, the BMCC community will have the unique opportunity to watch a Chongsam Fashion Show with performers from the New York Cheongsam Association in association with the Chinese Culture Association Club.

Cheongsam or zansae, also known as “the qipao” and sometimes referred to as “the mandarin gown,” is a Chinese dress worn by women which takes inspiration from the qizhuang, the ethnic clothing of the Manchu people.

If anime is your thing—or you want to learn more about this internationally popular genre—join fellow enthusiasts April 12 in an Anime Screening, Manga Lending and Co-Splay Contest co-presented by the A. Philip Randolph Memorial Library, the Animation Club and Women in Animation Chapter at BMCC.

Attendees are encouraged to show up dressed in their fave fandom to compete for prizes like a logo bag of swag from Anime Expo Los Angeles and Anime NYC.

They can also watch Anime on the theme of “Peace” and browse selections to borrow from the Library’s Manga and Graphic Novel Collection.

Is “ramen” a noodle or a telescope?

The Asian Heritage Month Committee and the Health and Wellness Club will come together for a Tea Tasting and conversation on April 10.

Moving down the menu from tea to noodles, on April 17, the BMCC community is invited to stop by the BMCC Science Department Lab at 199 Chambers Street, Room N-786, for a Raman Fest – Chemistry and Noodles.

The Science Lab at N-786 is home to BMCC’s WiTec alpha 300R Confocal Raman Microscope, which has three lasers.

It wouldn’t be here without the early 20^th-Century research findings of an Indian physicist, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), who developed a spectrograph with his student K. S. Krishnan.

The spectrograph showed that when light traverses a transparent material, the deflected light changes its wavelength and frequency.

BMCC’s Raman Microscope, with its Raman Spectroscopy, has biological, forensic and nano-technological applications.

Feeling famished by all that science? The event will also provide ramen noodles to snack on.

And because sharing a meal and building community go hand in hand, Asian Heritage Month will close out on April 18 with an Asian Heritage Month Dinner at the iconic Golden Unicorn Restaurant.

Visit the complete list of Asian Heritage Month events.

Students who attend two or more Asian Heritage Month events are eligible to receive Co-Curricular Transcript (CCT) credit.

For more information, contact Erwin Wong at ewong@bmcc.cuny.edu.