ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Ceniza Choy has studied and taught Asian American history for more than twenty years. She is the author of the book Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (2003), which explores how and why the Philippines became the leading exporter of professional nurses to the United States. Empire of Care received the 2003 American Journal of Nursing History and Public Policy Book Award and the 2005 Association for Asian American Studies History Book Award. Her second book, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (2013), unearthed the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States beginning with the post–World War II presence of the US military in Asia. Choy also co-edited the anthology Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (2017), with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu. An engaged public scholar, Choy has been interviewed in many media outlets, including ABC’s 20/20, The Atlantic, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, the New York Times, ProPublica, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time, and Vox, about the history of anti-Asian hate and violence, the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on Filipino nurses in the United States, and racism and misogyny in the March 16, 2021, Atlanta murders.

Choy is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and associate dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society. She is a former chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies and associate dean of the Undergraduate Studies Division. The daughter of Filipino immigrants, Choy was born and raised in New York City. She received her PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her BA in history from Pomona College. She lives in Berkeley with her husband and their two children.