Introducing Not Fade Away

Welcome to the website of Not Fade Away: Preserving Overlooked AAPI Experiences!   This is an oral history project that has been marinating behind a back room for several years.  As a veteran of the original Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley, and as an activist in the Asian American Movement, I had been keenly aware of the various stories and experiences that had helped engineer my personal development.  On the one hand, this project is an offspring of the Chinese Marxist Left — a term coined by the late Him Mark Lai — revered as the “dean of Chinese American History” — and particularly the progressive literacy and cultural association Mun Ching he was associated with.  H. Mark Lai was not just a close family friend, he delivered the Cantonese language eulogy at my father’s memorial in 1998.

I landed with the term Not Fade Away as I was inspired by the book of interviews by rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres because it just resonated. Classic rock fans may remember that Not Fade Away was first introduced into the cultural sphere by Buddy Holly and the Crickets, followed by a cover by the Rolling Stones in 1964.  (Subsequent covers were taken up by the Grateful Dead and others.)  So “Not Fade Away” had left an indelible phraseology in the music sphere, and I thought it most appropriate for this oral history project — Not Fade Away: Preserving Overlooked AAPI Experiences. 

Even before I retired from professional life entering my seventies, I was acutely aware of the responsibility of seeking to excavate and preserve this legacy based on my family’s background and experiences, and the further enrichment of this background as I integrated with my wife’s Japanese American heritage. (Today both sides of our families are ethnically cross-pollinated with Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Vietnamese heritages.) This need to preserve was also an itching from within my family itself.  However, this has proven to be a substantive challenge as many of the CML have passed away, and those few survivors (in their late 80s) have been reluctant to speak due to the ravages of the McCarthy era. Hence I’ve called this particular mission “Chasing the Legacy of the Chinese Progressive Left (CML).”   

I understood that while H. Mark Lai himself had contributed many major articles and essays about the experiences of the CML in various journals, Mark Lai was president of Mun Ching from its inception to its closing.  However, there was also something that begged exposition as he was a participant in the CML.  And that was the legacy the CML had left behind. This compulsion was further fueled upon reading Richard Aston’s self-published book, Views From Gold Mountain: History, Memory, Voices, I felt that this indirect approach was one method to begin to uncover the richness of this legacy.  Hence we shall see the interviews with Chinatown social firebrand and later professor George Woo, and with my sister and retired principal Shannon Yip, and their social impact on Asian American communities and beyond. 

As I plumb through our family experiences, the history of the Chinese in Arizona rose to prominence as my mother’s family has been located in Arizona for over 120 years and my cousins in Phoenix are working on the question, How did we get here? Then the melding of the Chinese and  Japanese experiences found expression in my family as we see that the interview with former JACL head Floyd Mori comes not from the Nikkei side, but from the Chinese side, and the appreciation of the work of Pearl Wong of the Jazz at Pearl’s fame came from the Nikkei side and not from the Chinese side.

The future intent of this project is unwritten but the immediate aim is to uncover, record, and document the overlooked stories and interviews that have been captured.  

Steve Yip, New York City, March 31, 2025

Thanks! Many thanks go to the following from friends and former colleagues at the Chinese-American Planning Council who helped get this off the ground. Special thanks to the interns Laila Rahman, Samantha Moreno, and Vincy Chen, from the  2024-25 Work Learn Grow cohort who help bring transcriptions to finality and website development. And to Raihan Mondal and Erica Ng from CPC Education and Career Services, Mary Cheng. CPC Director of Childhood Development Services, and Elizabeth Hendler, CPC Director of Institutional Advancement  Additional thanks to Glenn Magpantay and students from his 2022 Asian American Civil Rights and the Law class who help with initial transcriptions.

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