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Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage

An illustration of an Asian woman with various symbols above her head including an American Flag, an "I voted" sticker, a ballot box, and a Chinese character.

The Weight of the Asian American Vote

When Asian Americans adopt a new nation, how might voting serve as a means for expressing our varied senses of identity and community?

Anto Kilislian prepares lahmajoun at the 2018 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. (Photo by Sonya Pencheva, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

Food and Longing in the Armenian Diaspora

Armenians both borrowed from and contributed to the culinary lexicons of the regions they inhabit

Making crates to leave the camp, September 1945, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. (Illustration by Estelle Ishigo, courtesy Estelle Ishigo Collection, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. Gift of Bacon Sakatani in Memory of Arthur and Estelle Ishigo)

What They Carried When the Japanese American Incarceration Camps Closed

The closing of the World War II camps marks its seventy-sixth anniversary in 2021.

Three of Yosl Cutler’s surviving puppets: two Jewish characters and one Russian. These were constructed circa 1933. (Photo courtesy of the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)

The Life and Death of a Yiddish Puppet Theater

Puppets weren’t a common form of entertainment in Jewish culture.

After composing and transcribing music for my wedding day, Red Baraat was born. Dave Sharma leads the baraat (wedding procession) on dhol, as I walk with my mother, family, and friends. August 27, 2005. (Photo courtesy of Sunny Jain)

The Tradition of Now: Jainism, Jazz, and the Punjabi Dhol Drum

While the originations of the dhol are not known with complete certainty, what is known is that it is a sound that has migrated.

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