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Different lenses illuminate questions of belonging, identity, and home

What does it mean for an immigrant to belong in the United States? How can migrants preserve their identity alongside a dominant culture? Where is home, and who gets to decide who can live there (and how)? Over two eventful days, three engaging speakers showed the power of meticulous research and expressive storytelling to explore answers to these questions. Taken together as well as individually, their work illuminates and informs audiences across time and space, evoking connections that expand our knowledge of the past while speaking to modern challenges.

A group of people around a table looking at an image on a computer screen — *Thandi Cai talks cookbooks with Duke students before a screening of* Bluff City Chinese

Thandi Cai’s 2024 documentary, Bluff City Chinese, explores the search by ethnic Chinese families for connections to their roots in Memphis, TN. In a pre-screening engagement with students, Cai noted the importance of food in preserving connections to cultural heritage. They shared a cookbook recently published by the MengCheng Collective: Jia Pu: Cooking Our Way Home; Recipes, Art & Stories from the Asian American South. The cookbook opens with stories from Memphis’ Chinese community gathered during MengCheng’s 2023 Crosstown Arts residency. The students shared their own book, a product of Professor Chow’s course on Asian Foodways in Migration, part of the Fall 2025 Asian Cultural Heritages Constellation.

Grounded in the extensive work of amateur historian Emerald (Emmy) Dunn, Bluff City Chinese weaves a compelling story of connection across time, space, and generations while exploring the untold narratives of Chinese settlers in the Mississippi Delta. The Thursday evening screening of this powerful film was co-sponsored by Cinematic Arts at Duke’s Screen/Society initiative, the Asian American & Diaspora Studies Program, and the Center for Documentary Studies.

Dunn and Cai encountered one another through their mutual connection to the Chinese Historical Society in 2020, a time which coincided with a new wave of anti-Asian animosity in the United States. As Cai revealed in a post-screening conversation with Professor Eileen Chow, the film’s exploration of timeless questions of birthright citizenship, immigrant rights, and institutionalized discrimination was also uniquely situated in the circumstances that arose from the global pandemic.

Two people sit in chairs, holding microphones; one is speaking — *(l–r) Professor Eileen Chow; artist and activist Thandi Cai*

During the Q&A, Cai was pleasantly surprised to discover a connection to an audience member, a Chinese American graduate student also from Memphis, who noted the importance of language for tracing heritage across generations. The primary language of the documentary interviews was English, but Cai explained the linguistic heritage differed across generations of immigrants to Memphis. The earliest Chinese migrants to the United States were predominantly Cantonese-speaking, while newer arrivals, particularly those who came in the 1950s and 1960s, spoke mainly Mandarin. Cai noted that, in conversations with Dunn, the latter would typically use Cantonese words to describe particular foods and holidays while Cai was more familiar with the Mandarin terms, leading to an interesting micro-dynamic between the two of figuring out how to speak across their relative languages.

Cai also shared frank advice about engaging in this type of documentary exercise and encouraged students who are undertaking similar projects in their own communities. In particular, Cai pointed out the importance of keeping an open mind, noting “while we were filming, we thought we had an idea what the themes would be, but it completely changed after we finished all the oral histories.”

A group of people gather for a large selfie in a theater — *Audience members gather together for a post-screening selfie with director Thandi Cai.*

Discussing the process, Cai observed that “Emmy [Dunn] is such a great example of what it looks like to be someone who’s of the older generation.” Reflecting on their experience working with Dunn, Cai expressed appreciation for their collaborator’s willingness to explore challenging questions, particularly those related to being Chinese during a time when the world seemed focused on a racialized lens that was only capable of seeing the world in Black and white.

Looking ahead to the future, Cai hopes to share additional stories, connecting the legacy of the civil rights movement in Memphis to the contemporary efforts of Asian American activists in the southeastern United States who frequently struggle with publicity and visibility for their work.

A person at a podium speaks to a seated audience while sharing a slide during a presentation — *Professor Yanshuo Zhang presents an illustration of the ethnic and linguistic diversity of southwestern China*

Earlier on Thursday, Professor Yanshuo Zhang’s talk on creative belonging, part of APSI’s Speaker Series, showcased findings from her ethnographic research about the Qiang ethnic minority in southwestern China. Professor Zhang is part of a generation of multilingual, multicultural young Chinese and Asian scholars who have embarked on a global scholarly journey that includes looking homeward to trace unexpected connections and forgotten cultural phenomena.

On Friday, historian Beth Lew-Williams of Princeton University discussed her insightful exploration of the local and state laws that shaped the lives of Chinese immigrants and Asian Americans of Chinese descent in the American West. The talk, collaboratively sponsored by the Provost’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry and Belonging, the Asian American & Diaspora Studies Program, APSI, the Duke Center on Law, Race, & Policy, and the Department of History, revealed that multiple western states, including California, Oregon, and Washington, passed over 5,000 discriminatory laws with the intent to marginalize and control Chinese and Chinese American residents.

While connecting the anti-Black Jim Crow laws of the southeastern U.S. to the anti-Chinese laws of the western and Pacific U.S., Lew-Williams’ work also pays particular attention to Chinese community leaders and ordinary citizens such as Lai Hock Yan. These activists worked diligently in their own circumstances to overturn legal discrimination by resisting unfair treatment under the law, preserving their heritage through cultural institutions, and advocating for their political rights.