AAPI Heritage Month Begins: From California to New York, AAPI Communities Set the Stage

Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month kicks off this week with coast‑to‑coast energy, as communities in California and New York turn May into a month of parades, film festivals, markets, and neighborhood teach‑ins. From Los Angeles and the Bay Area to Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, AAPI organizers are using official “heritage” calendars to foreground stories that usually live in the margins.

California: AAPI Heritage as Everyday Infrastructure

In California, AAPI Heritage Month feels less like an add‑on and more like an extension of daily life. Statewide, organizations and cities treat May as an opportunity to highlight what’s already happening: Asian‑owned restaurants, boutiques, wineries, hotels, museums, and gardens that anchor daily routines. Guides encourage residents to celebrate by eating at Asian‑owned spots, booking stays at AAPI‑owned hotels, and seeking out cultural programming from San Diego to Sacramento.

The Bay Area concentrates that energy into a tight calendar. In San Francisco, the APA Heritage Awards at Herbst Theatre open the month by honoring AAPI organizations and individuals, while a citywide Celebration Guide curates events with partners like the Asian Art Museum, CAAM, and the San Francisco Public Library. Across the bay, Oakland folds AAPI Heritage Month into its existing culture of festivals, sports nights, and family activities, pairing restaurant crawls with celebration nights at local sports games and weekend programming at places like Children’s Fairyland.

Los Angeles: Citywide Ceremonies, Markets, and Family Festivals

Los Angeles functions as a kind of AAPI heritage capital for the state, with a city‑coordinated month that spans city hall, libraries, gardens, and historic neighborhoods.

The LA Department of Cultural Affairs frames May as a citywide celebration with cultural exhibits, film screenings, live performances, and online activities, anchored by a theme that emphasizes lifting others as you gain power. Highlights include the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, screenings like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” music in the Chinese Garden, and programs such as “AAPI Joy: Narratives, Storytelling, and History” at Central Library—a free, all‑ages festival with performances, hands‑on workshops, dance parties, and book readings.

An official City Hall kickoff centers AAPI leaders in civic space, with council presentations, honorees, and a public luncheon that bring community members inside government chambers. Beyond downtown, events like the Compound AAPI Art Night Market in Long Beach feature high‑school AAPI artists, Khmer and Laotian first‑generation creators such as Olivia Sawai, open mics, and workshops, making room for Southeast Asian youth who rarely appear in glossy brochures. LA County also layers in wellness‑oriented programming—from Tai Chi Wellness Day to Buddha Day ceremonies and family fairs at Chinese schools—that blend cultural, spiritual, and mental health support.

Los Angeles City Hall kicks off AAPI History month

Still, while LA’s guides spotlight landmarks like Chinatown, the Go For Broke Monument, and the Korean Bell of Friendship, they leave gaps around Pacific Islander and refugee narratives, as well as cross‑racial coalitions with Black, Latinx, and Indigenous Angelenos. The question for future years is how these calendars can better reflect the complexity of who keeps the region’s AAPI communities resilient—from care workers and street vendors to queer and trans organizers.

New York City: Parades, Parks, and Storytelling Hubs

On the other side of the country, New York City approaches AAPI Heritage Month as an opportunity to turn the entire city into a classroom and a stage. The city’s tourism and cultural agencies highlight a month of programming that stretches from Midtown parades to outer‑borough park workshops and library talks.

NYC Parks leans into free, interactive events: Chinese calligraphy workshops in Kissena Park, Filipino Tinikling dance at King Manor Museum, walking tours of Asian American historical landmarks, and programs that explore how the ocean and nature shape AAPI cultures. These outdoor events meet people where they already gather, making AAPI history visible in green spaces rather than confining it to lecture halls. In midtown, Bryant Park hosts an AAPI Heritage Month celebration with Kung Fu workshops, music and dance showcases, and recurring Tai Chi, ribbon dancing, and Mah Jongg socials that highlight AAPI instructors and elders in public view.

Libraries and museums fill in the narrative texture. The New York Public Library runs a slate of free author talks, panels, STEAM workshops, storytimes, and craft classes featuring AAPI creators and educators, while the Museum of Chinese in America’s core exhibition, “With a Single Step,” walks visitors through more than 160 years of Chinese American history via artifacts and personal stories. In Brooklyn, the Children’s Museum uses weekly storytimes and hands‑on activities—dumpling‑making, South Asian dance, bilingual storytelling—to introduce kids to AAPI cultures in age‑appropriate ways.

The month culminates with the annual AAPI Cultural Heritage Parade, which marches up Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and a separate Japan Parade earlier in May, both of which put AAPI cultural performance and political visibility literally on the city’s main thoroughfares. Yet across this landscape, Pacific Islander, Southwest Asian, and undocumented Asian communities appear less prominently, and cross‑racial organizing (for example, around policing or displacement) tends to stay off the official flyers.

Coast-to-Coast Connections—and Who’s Missing

Taken together, California and New York show how AAPI Heritage Month can look when cities treat it as infrastructure rather than a one‑off campaign: coordinated calendars, deep partnerships with cultural institutions, and an emphasis on free or low‑cost events that invite whole families in. They also reveal patterns in who gets the mic—East Asian and South Asian communities are highly visible, with increasing but still limited space for Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial AAPI communities.

Across both coasts, the gaps are similar: Pacific Islander leadership is under‑featured relative to the “PI” in AAPI; Black, Indigenous, and Latinx solidarity is often implied but rarely named; and disabled, queer, and working‑class AAPI communities are more present in grassroots spaces than in official city guides. For storytellers and organizers, the opportunity this May is to use the visibility of film festivals, parades, markets, and park programs to surface those missing stories—whether that means commissioning Pacific Islander artists in LA, uplifting Southeast Asian refugee orgs in the Bay, or spotlighting South Asian and Chinatown mutual‑aid groups in New York.

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