“No greater calamity could now befall the United States than to have the Pacific slope fill up with a Mongolian population”.

Our 26th President Theodore Roosevelt wrote this in 1886. In 2026, #StopAsianHate is still a thing. Didn't we learn anything in the last 140 years?

The story of Asians in America can be told through the discrimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It can be told through the exploitation of Chinese labor to build America's Transcontinental Railroad. It can be told through the myth of the model minority.

But all these stories eventually come down to people, to roots, to family.

Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming by Ava Chin is just such a story. She traces her family back five generations. Maternal great-great-grandfather Wong Yuan Son arrives in the 1860s. Another maternal great-great-grandfather Ng Dek Foon arrives later in 1885. Both land in California aka “Gum San" or Gold Mountain to the new arrivals. Paternal great-great-grandfather Chin On crosses over from Canada into upstate New York.

By the 1900s, all three great-great-grandparents settle in New York City, specifically Chinatown. Good fortune has them coincidentally at 37 Mott Street, a coveted new building built in 1915 that still stands today. 

Not too long ago I stood in front of that same building and took the photo above. Connected only by race, I imagined the multiple generations of all three families looking out their windows onto the street below, each generation seeing a different America, each family chasing different dreams, each person fighting different battles. What were they thinking about? Surely none could have predict the future. They could only deal with the present. And at present, for Asian-Americans, our generation is still fighting the same damn fights. 

“Have you heard?” is our way of sharing another point of view on commonly held beliefs. Through this we hope to encourage curiosity, dialogue, and tolerance of diverse ideas.