As one of the Bay Area’s stalwart Flamenco dancers, Cruz has carved out a niche in the traditional Spanish art form — becoming one of the most prolific practitioners in the East Bay where she makes her home. And yet, when it comes to heritage, Cruz’ chops aren’t Spanish at all — she was born in the Philippines. 

“It is a very curious,” she said with a pause, “I guess very unique thing to do.” 

Cruz’ life has traversed the unique since early on. She was four when her father moved the family from the Philippines to Brooklyn to take a medical job. Not long after, the family decamped to New Orleans where Cruz grew up. In a city known for gumbo and zydeco, the Cruz family instead found home ground among the city’s small Filipino community, where Cruz came to know her heritage. 

“I remember being sort of immersed in two very different cultures,” Cruz said, flanked by walls of mirrors in her Oakland dance studio, “New Orleans culture and Filipino culture.” 

It was in New Orleans that she began to discover yet another important culture – the world of dance. She took tap, jazz, ballet and a requisite New Orleans skill — baton twirling. But it wouldn’t be until later on, after she’d moved to the Bay Area to attend Cal Berkeley that she’d find her true calling. She planned to study law at Cal but a different seed was planted when her Spanish teacher showed the class a film of the opera Carmen put to Flamenco. 

“I don’t know how to describe it,” she said, “but I felt an urgency that I needed to do that.” 

She sought out Flamenco dance classes and then dove head-first to the art form. She was drawn to Flamenco’s simple yet powerful alchemy of guitar, voice and dance. The percussion of heels pummeling floor, hand claps, castanets and the dramatic gyrations of the dancers drew her in.  

As she progressed into Flamenco, more and more of her personality began to come out in her dancing. On occasion her footwork would summon the syncopated flurries of a rock drummer as she floated along with the rolling staccato accompaniment of a nylon string guitar. 

“The moments of most joy,” she said, “are those moments when I feel free in my interpretation.” 

And yet, as a Filipina woman performing a different culture’s signature art, Cruz felt a tinge of guilt. Perhaps what weighed on her most was the historical fact that Spain had occupied the Philippines for three-centuries. The other uncomfortable moments came when people would assume because she danced Flamenco Cruz she was of Latin heritage. 

“It’s very rare that people look at me and they identify me as Filipina,” she said. “It reminded me of my identity as being Filipina and how I feel doing this art form that is not mine really.” 

Cruz said the guilt comes and goes, but she carries on headfirst into a passion she loves purely. In her two decades as dancer, she performs as often as she can and now even teaches Flamenco classes from her Oakland studio. On top of that, the rhythms that percolated in her feet now permeate her entire being — as she plays drums in several bands, sometimes doing double duty as a dancer/percussionist. 

It’s almost as if Cruz had to dive into a different culture to truly find her place within her own, a melding of cultures and discovery that are hallmarks of the great melting pot. Those thoughts sometimes come to Cruz when she’s on a stage, in her traditional Flamenco clothing, with the music pulsing and a crowd’s emotions rising and twisting with her every move. 

“Those moments I’ve come to appreciate as being really unique and different every time,” Cruz said, “which in my mind is the best way to find out about yourself and who you are.” 

Some of the businesses in the neighborhood have been around for more than a century and are run by immigrant families.

In the video report above, we share the story and sacrifices of one family who is doing all they can to keep their now sixth generation family business running.

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“Cookies, I’ve always said, are the perfect platform for education, activism and healing because they are one of the most disarming, inviting and surprising mediums,” said Cho, who is also a baker.

She believes her art comes in part from a sense of not belonging that she felt growing up. May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, but Cho’s cookies bring attention to AAPIs every month.

The Korean American self-described “cookie activist” has gained fans over the last several years for her finely detailed cookie faces. Actors Awkwafina, Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita are among those who’ve gushed about receiving the cookie treatment.

The city of Pittsburgh, where she has lived since 2009, even issued a “Jasmine Cho Day” proclamation in 2020.

In 2016, Cho was contentedly making cute character cookies for her online bakery, Yummyholic, when she turned flour, sugar, butter and other ingredients into cookie likenesses of a friend for a birthday party. The cookies quickly grabbed social media attention. Others wanted them done too.

“I suddenly have this platform or this medium that everyone is paying attention to,” Cho said. “It felt like a sort of superpower.”

She had an “aha moment” of how to use her great power with greater responsibility.

The 39-year-old, who grew up in Southern California and New Mexico, always took notice when Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders weren’t present in a movie, TV show or history book. It contributed to her questioning her own sense of belonging in America.

“That was always a pain point for me growing up,” said Cho, who recently completed a master’s degree in art therapy. “So, I kind of always had this question: ‘I wonder if I could use this point of joy for me to address this pain point?’ And cookies was the answer.”

A few months after making those first cookie faces, Cho held her first portrait gallery show. She made cookies of Asian American Pittsburgh natives like actor Ming-Na Wen and Leah Lizarondo, the founder of 412 Food Rescue, which decreases food waste in over 25 cities in the U.S. and Canada by distributing unsold food to people in need.

Lizarondo remembers how surprised she was to find Cho had cookie-fied her. For the Filipino American, the tribute was definitely not a waste of food.

“I shared it as widely as I could as I was so proud to be among the people she did cookie portraits of,” Lizarondo said by email.

While cookies and cake tributes might come off as silly, Lizarondo saw something different in Cho’s art.

“It is such an accessible way to catalyze conversation,” said Lizarondo.

A one-woman crew, Cho needs between four and six hours for one portrait. She draws the cookie face by hand, fills it in with icing and then lets it dry.

Her “art-ivism” has taken her interesting places. In 2019, she wrote and illustrated a children’s book, “Role Models Who Look Like Me.” In the last few years, she has made over 20 virtual and in-person appearances at universities, elementary schools and conferences. If she isn’t giving a speech, she’s leading a cookie-decorating workshop.

The biggest thrill is when young Asian Americans, particularly females, feel inspired.

“They tell me things like, ‘I learned more in your 15-minute talk than I have in my whole class that’s about Asian American history,’ or something like that,” Cho said.

At a time when demanding to see Asian American history included in school curricula can get you branded as “woke,” even Cho’s seemingly innocuous cookies can be a target. Ahead of a university visit last February, someone Cho thought was a student journalist asked to talk to her. Cho later learned that person wasn’t a student but part of a far-right group. The school decided to increase security for the event — something that stunned her.

“It’s just cookies,” Cho said. “But, not to diminish the intent of what I’m actually using the cookies to do… Unfortunately, even something like cookies could be seen as a threat because of what they symbolize.”

They’re definitely not just cookies. They can evoke poignant moments.

Cho made a cookie portrait of Betty Ong, an American Airlines flight attendant who died on 9/11. Ong was credited as the first person to raise the alarm about the terrorists’ hijacking, passing along crucial information from a phone on the ill-fated plane. One of her nieces spotted Cho’s creation on Instagram and contacted her.

“For a family member to reach out and just thank me for sharing her story in the way that I did … reminding me of the tenderness that comes with this work, the importance of it,” Cho said. “I don’t ever want to upset a family member in any way. I’ve been very grateful that those who I have heard from understand my intention.”

Cho estimates she has between 50 and 70 of the cookie portraits now boxed up in storage. Some she dreams of giving to the subject ( Michelle Yeoh, if you’re reading this.). Others she would love to display, as well as publish a picture book of them.

Even with praise from families, celebrities and Instagram, Cho still has moments when she can be dismissive of her own work. “I’ll be like, ‘I’m just making cookies. What am I really doing?’”

But then she feels re-energized when encountering audiences who have never heard of figures like civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs or diver Sammy Lee, the first Asian American man to earn Olympic gold.

“Part of what keeps me going is one day, I do hope that my work maybe becomes irrelevant because everyone has access to this history and awareness of it.”

___

Tang, who reported from Phoenix, is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at @ttangAP.

Ayansh Grover, 7, says he observes Hindu culture and shared with his classmates how he celebrates holidays like Diwali and Holi.

Every Tuesday, the class practices saying “hello” in a language represented by a classmate and learns more about the country where that language is spoken. Lila Cortese, 6, shares how they greeted one another by saying “annyeonghaseyo,” or “hello” in Korean, that morning.

The Skinner North Elementary students in Chicago are some of the first to go through school in an era where lessons about Asian American history are a staple of their lesson plans.

Through the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History, or TEAACH, Act, Illinois public K-12 schools must include a unit on the history of Asian Americans in Illinois and the Midwest, as well as Asian Americans’ contributions toward advancing civil rights in the U.S. Illinois became the first state to pass such a law mandating these requirements in 2021.

Since then, similar laws have passed in New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island — and the movement is growing with support from students, teachers, parents and education advocates around the country.

‘They see themselves in these stories’

Smita Garg, 42, previously taught elementary school and is a mom of two children, ages 11 and 6, in the Chicago Public Schools system. She remembers growing up Indian American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and over time learning to celebrate and share her own multicultural heritage with others.

She didn’t know much about Asian American history even as she learned to be an educator: “Having grown up in public education in the Midwest and then learning to be a teacher in a master’s program and not having any of this background — it was jarring.” Garg says that by grad school, she began researching more about Asian American labor movements, immigration patterns, civic engagement and activism.

When the TEAACH Act passed in 2021, she joined Chicago’s chapter of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, or AAAJ, as a volunteer to pull together curricular resources for K-12 Asian American history lessons.

The resources share ways teachers can incorporate Asian American history and cultural studies into the Illinois School Board of Education’s existing learning standards.

For example, a kindergarten teacher planning a lesson about U.S. holidays may include holidays of diverse groups and the historical figures who make those days special, while a fourth grade democracy unit could include a lesson on Larry Itliong, the Filipino American labor organizer and one of the founders of the United Farm Workers union.

And starting with the 2022-23 school year, Illinois history teachers must include lessons about the wrongful incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, as well as the service of two Japanese American combat units, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Infantry Regiment.

Garg says it’s important for AAPI students to see themselves reflected in textbooks as critical to the development of the U.S, and for their non-AAPI peers to recognize that as well. “History and how you connect to it — or not — offers us a sense of identity. And so without that connection, it’s not quite the same then how you view your place in this country and perhaps how others see you in it.”

As a parent seeing her Asian American children now learning this curriculum, “I love it,” she says. “They see role models, and I think that’s really important. They see themselves in these stories.”

Advocates say teaching AAPI history is key to reducing anti-Asian discrimination and violence

Organizers with the AAAJ Chicago drafted the bill language for the TEAACH Act in February 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic stalled advocacy efforts. At the same time, the need for Asian American history standards were urgently clear: Individuals reported nearly 11,500 incidents of anti-Asian hate between March 2020 and March 2022, according to data from Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition formed to address the pandemic-era spike in racialized violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

“We saw Asian American history education as one critical part of combating the rise in anti-Asian racism, and sentiment,” says Grace Pai, executive director of AAAJ Chicago. “Without understanding why Asian Americans have been blamed and scapegoated for things like the pandemic, it’s hard to stop that behavior from escalating into incidents of harassment or violence.”

Advocates say the exclusion of Asian Americans at many levels, from classroom lessons to governing bodies to movies and TV screens, renders many AAPIs invisible to the general public. Three in 10 Americans can’t identify a significant Asian American historical event or policy, according to a 2023 survey of 5,235 people by The Asian American Foundation, or TAAF.

When asked what they know about AAPI history, the No. 1 response is about Japanese incarceration during WWII, “and only about 14% of Americans across the country are even familiar with Japanese incarceration,” says Norman Chen, CEO of TAAF. “It’s such a historic and painful moment in our country’s history, so it’s really necessary that we have more of AAPI history taught in schools to learn from the past and make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes that occurred.”

Progress and pushback

More work is being done to push for AAPI history requirements in public schools: One organization, Make Us Visible, has efforts in over a dozen states. A majority of Americans, 3 in 5, think incorporating the Asian American experience into the teaching of U.S. history is important, according to the TAAF survey.

In states where these initiatives now exist, “we’ve seen students and parents share with us stories about, how for the first time in their lives when they open a textbook, they’re starting to be able to learn more about our community,” Chen says. “It’s very powerful.”

But progress to teach inclusive American history, including of marginalized groups, isn’t happening evenly. During the 2020-21 school year, nearly 900 school districts across the U.S., representing 35% of all K-12 students, were affected by local district efforts to restrict so-called “critical race theory,” or lessons that discuss issues of race or racism, according to research from UCLA and UC San Diego.

Parents, educators and advocates are “deeply concerned” about efforts to restrict inclusive history curriculum, says Pai of AAAJ Chicago. “History is history. It shouldn’t be disputed what happened or what the facts are that we should be sharing with students, but unfortunately it’s become highly politicized. It is really a disservice to our young people when we are not telling the whole truth.”

‘This is a stated need’

Once the Illinois bill was signed into law in July 2021, AAAJ Chicago developed a professional workshop and has trained over 1,300 teachers from across the state how to teach Asian American history.

The teacher trainings are invaluable to Bigelow, 36, the first-grade teacher at Skinner North. He has been a teacher for 12 years and noticed that, after a stint in Michigan and returning to Chicago, the demographic makeup of his classroom shifted over the years, and “finding resources and books that match their identities was really difficult.”

Bigelow says he was was excited to see teacher training to incorporate AAPI social studies into his classroom and approaches the learning curve with “humility and a sense that my awareness of Asian American history is limited.”

He learns from his students as they learn from him. His students Valentina Zhu and Helena Zhang, both 7, gave him practice cards to learn Chinese phrases at the beginning of the year, and Rachel Tsang, 7, encouraged him to try Duolingo, the language-learning app.

The new cultural guidelines encourage classmates to build relationships and learn from each other. “A lot of educational theory is based on how most learning is social, and you have to have relationships to learn,’ Bigelow says. “If you don’t know who people are, you can’t learn very well from them.”

Pai adds that it’s important that lessons about AAPI history and culture are embedded into overall themes within classroom curriculum. “Often Asian American history is only talked about in the context of social sciences, but you can also incorporate Asian American history into English language arts, math, or into physical sciences,” she says.

“The great thing about the TEAACH Act is that it opens the door and says, ‘This is a stated need. This is something that we have to do,'” Bigelow adds. “And it provided [a resource] for me as an educator who wants to learn and do more.”

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Check out: ‘I feel like I was meant to do this’: Asian American activists reflect on their work in the last year

With a pop-up event of music, dance and cultural performances with a promise street fair events coming up this summer.

“I think it’s amazing,” said Oakland resident Peter Tubig. “I was able to learn about the different dances traditions. I think it’s been really good.”

Organizers hope the events will get people back out in the neighborhoods in San Francisco on the other side of the pandemic.

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed attended the event on Saturday.

“We talk about San Francisco as a being a global city and place of diversity and that is maintained by culture and it’s maintained by the history,” she said.

A robust month of programming is expected in the city.

“I think we are hoping there is something for everyone for different generations,” said Claudine Cheng with the APA Heritage Foundation

Tourism has been hit hard the last couple of years with the pandemic, Asian hate and an increase in robberies and vandalism.

Despite it all, the community remains resilient with shops starting to reopen and new stores opening. 

NBC Bay Area’s Janelle Wang visited Chinatown and has the full story in the video above.

“Having to be pulled away from high school and pack up everything into suitcases … and be hauled into a camp,” said Karen Leong, describing what her uncle Tatasuki Kanada endured at just 17 years old, ripped from Mt. Diablo High School and sent to an internment camp with his family during World War II.

“I was shocked knowing that people who actually attended my school had to go through something so bad,” said student Stephanie Patino. “It was just shocking.”

When the school’s ethnic studies students learned the Japanese American students never got their diplomas, they set out to change that.

“Innocent students that go here that wanted an education were stripped away from their education and sent to these camps,” said student Brandon Dominguez.

It took the students two years, writing letters and making speeches and in March, they learned their efforts paid off. Those diplomas will be issued in the names of each of the 40 students.

“I think it’s important because it gives them a chance to experience something they didn’t experience before,” said student James Hutalla.

“It’s just a small gesture really. We understand this is 80 years too late but we just wanted to tell them they matter to us and they’re part of our community,” said Ethnic Studies teacher Laura Valdez. 

Kanada’s niece and nephew will accept the diploma on their uncle’s behalf. The army veteran died in 2007.

“If he was still alive today he’d be humbled and overjoyed,” said Leong.

He and his three brothers all fought in World War II. One of them died in combat earning the Purple Heart.

“They were faithful to the country that’s why they served in the war to prove their worth as an American,” said Leong.

They say they’re grateful to kids who fought to right a wrong, getting Kanada’s diploma means everything to their family.

“I just wish he was here to get it himself,” said Leong.