Documentary 'Asian Americans' wins Peabody Award

The 5-episode documentary Asian Americans  is a winner of the 2021 Peabody Awards, one of most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism.

“History and solidarity were always central concepts of the Asian Americans. We wanted to tell our own story within the context of race and justice in the U.S. Not the story of the Model Minority or the Perpetual Foreigner,” says series producer Renee Tajima-Peña. 

The critically acclaimed PBS documentary series Asian Americans was premiered a year ago on PBS. It is a production of WETA Washington, DC and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) for PBS

“Being selected for a Peabody Award is a tremendous honor for CAAM and an acknowledgement of our four decades of work to bring Asian American stories to the broadest possible audience,” says CAAM Director of Programs Donald Young, who is also one of the executive producers of Asian Americans. 

“Respected for its integrity and revered for its standards of excellence, the Peabody Awards elevate stories that defend the public interest, encourage empathy with others, and teach us to expand our understanding of the world around us--all goals that we here at CAAM value,” he said.

The expansive five-part series chronicles over 250 years of Asian American experiences, which are deeply intertwined with United States history at large. 

“One thing that’s really important about the team that came together to make Asian Americans is that everyone has a long track record of being invested in the Asian American story. And we could locate our own family stories in the series. We figured out that Don’s family has been here the longest, back to the early Chinese migration in the 1800s,” says Tajima-Peña. “My grandparents came in the early 1900s—sugar cane workers, picture brides, all of whom had no pathway to citizenship for 50 years in America. Jean Tsien, Grace Lee and Geeta Gandbhir could trace their families’ arrivals to the 1965 immigration reforms. S. Leo Chiang was a parachute kid. Duc Nguyen, one of our archivists, arrived as a refugee from Vietnam.”

Asian Americans is one of the 30 works cited this year. The Peabody 30 are the best of over 1,300 entries submitted from television, podcasts/radio and the web in entertainment, news, documentary, arts, children’s/youth, public service and multimedia programming.

For the complete list of Peabody awardees, click here.

Asian Americans, narrated by Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita, chronicles the role of Asian Americans who did the most dangerous work of tunneling through the Sierras to build the Transcontinental Railroad, petitioned the Supreme Court to grant birthright citizenship, and challenged racial school segregation. And this history continued through the 20th century and into the 21st century. 

“Asian Americans continued to fight for justice in the courts, at the ballot box, in the streets, the fields, on campuses and in the culture. We’re fighting today. That’s the story we wanted to tell.”