Community Videos
Dr. Megan Asaka (University of California, Riverside) discusses her new book, "Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City" (University of Washington Press), which examines Seattle's migrant urban workforce–consisting overwhelmingly of Indigenous peoples and Asian immigrants–from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II. Tracing histories from labor camps, lumber towns, lodging houses, and so-called slums, Asaka shows the ways in which migrant laborers formed community and competed over jobs as municipal authorities, elites, and reformers continually depicted them as troublesome and as impediments to urban progress. By uncovering the presence of marginalized coastal groups and asserting their significance in the development of the coastal and marine spaces of the Puget Sound, Asaka offers a deeper understanding of Seattle.
