Helen Zia
Helen Zia didn’t set out to become a journalist. She graduated as a member of the first class of Princeton to include women. She then went to medical school but dropped out, going on to do construction labor, auto work, and community organizing in Detroit.
In 1982, she responded to the racially motivated beating and killing of Vincent Chin, an autoworker in Detroit, by writing about it in local papers. She also co-founded American Citizens for Justice to bring about awareness of inequalities and hate crimes faced by Asian Americans.
“Part of my journey was wanting to do something about the wrongs I saw in the world and how I could, as one individual, make a difference using my own voice and finding my way as a writer,” says Zia.
Since then she has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Detroit News, A.Magazine, Essence, The Advocate, OUT, and numerous other publications, and was the editor in chief at Ms. Magazine in the ’90s. Zia sits on the board of directors of The Women’s Media Center, which was created in 2004 to represent women’s experiences and perspectives.
She wrote Asian American Dreams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), which describes the pan-Asian movement in American that united the many different Asian ethnicities into the one identity of Asian American. Zia will go to China this year to do research for her new book on Shanghai prior to the 1949 Communist revolution.
Zia received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Law School of the City University of New York for bringing important matters of law and civil rights into public view.
“I want to hear and tell stories told from all of our communities. Voices on the margins of society need to be heard,” says Zia. “It’s not just about me and my voice. Everyone has a story that needs to be told.” –RD
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