"Corky Lee's Asian America": Chinese American Legend Spent 50 Years Seeking "Photographic Justice"

As we mark Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States, we’re joined by Mae Ngai to discuss the life and work of legendary Chinese American photographer Corky Lee, who documented the Asian American community in a career that spanned five decades before his death from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Ngai is the co-editor of the new book Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice. We also play excerpts of the new documentary Dear Corky by filmmaker Curtis Chin, which features Lee himself discussing his activism and career. Lee “often said his aim in life was to break stereotypes of Asian Americans one photograph at a time. He wanted to make Asian Americans visible when we had been invisible, erased from American history,” says Ngai.