Houston's Asian American history preserved at Rice University

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- To wander among the boxes and shelves at the Fondren Library with Dr. Anne Chao is a uniquely eye-opening experience.

"Oh, here's the chimpanzee that went into space!" She would exclaim, pulling out a vintage photo carefully preserved in an acid-free sleeve.

"And look, this is Connie Chung when she came to do a story," Dr. Chao would say, pointing at a photo of the iconic broadcaster as a little-known reporter early in her career.

Each memento, artifact, or photo captures a moment in Houston's Asian American immigrant story that Dr. Anne Chao yearns to tell.

"Personally, it's extremely rewarding. I'm a historian, so I'd like to accumulate history," she says with a glint in her eyes. "This is raw history that is unaltered by me or anyone. It's just information out there for any researcher and scholar to use for their own purpose."

Dr. Anne Chao got her master's and Ph.D. in history at Rice University in the early aughts. To many Houstonians, she and her husband may be better known as philanthropists, their names gracing buildings and institutions around Houston. But her main passion is history, specifically Asian American history.

Dr. Chao recalls that it was until a dinner conversation 15 years ago, that she realized Houston's Asian American immigrant stories were disappearing with time.

"Houston is one of the largest cities of Asian American population, and yet we don't have any really solid repository of Asian American stories and lives," she said.

So, she decided to change that. Dr. Chao, her students, and interns began collecting the stories. Lots and lots of stories.

In time, they developed the Houston Asian American Archive (HAAA), now housed in the Chao Center for Asian Studies.

If you asked Dr. Chao to highlight a few of the stories, she could easily stretch the conversation into hours.

"So, the Gee Family story is one," she says, referring to the name of the largest documented Chinese American immigrant group in Houston. "They mainly came to Houston as Chinese grocers before moving onto white-collar careers."

Members of the well-known Gee family include immigration attorney and Texans minority owner Harry Gee, late community activist "Uncle George" Gee, political consultant Rogene Gee Calvert, and Betty Gee, well known for keeping the Miss Chinatown Pageant going for decades.

"The Vietnamese-American story, the boat people's escape from Vietnam, is another amazing group of stories," Dr. Chao said, "and, of course, Glen Gondo, the Japanese-American Story, how they emerged from internment camp and how they regrouped and then succeeded is another amazing story."

The late Glen Gondo's family opened the first Japanese American restaurant in Houston. Decades later, the family now runs and operates hundreds of sushi counters at HEBs grocery stores around the country.

Historic documents that document these stories, and frankly, every Asian story the curators could find, now make up the HAAA collection. The most significant collection though, are the hundreds of oral histories, stories of lives lived, in a searchable database.

These interviews are in audio and video form. Collecting them are the primary responsibilities of interns who work with Dr. Chao.

"It's like through individuals narrating their own lives, I think I've really been able to understand how I fit in better," intern Ruchi Tiwari, who first learned about HAAA at a Rice student fair, said.

Tiwari's own family immigrated to Houston from Nepal. Like so many children who immigrate, she did not know about her own history. That is, until she began documenting the history of others.

"(I learned) my voice matters, my story matters, and that I do take space in history and all the things that I really do have an impact and a reckoning," Tiwari said. "I think that even these little stories, they amount to so much and just speak volumes."

On Tuesday, the oral archives comprise of over five hundred interviews. The boxes of historical documents and photographs, have long outgrown Rice's Fondren Library, many are housed off site. It is a sign, Dr. Chao says, of just how significant the Asian American history is in Houston and beyond.

"I just want this to grow and grow and grow because we have such a large community and we just barely scratch the surface on the amount of information we can get," she says.

To access the online archives, visit the Houston Asian American Archive's website You can also make an appointment with the Fondren Library to see the artifacts firsthand.

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