- We wanted to take this last week of Women's history month to highlight some Asian-American trailblazers. Patsy Mink, a third generation Japanese-American, became the first Asian-American woman (and the first woman from an ethnic minority group) to be elected to the United States Congress in 1964.
In her four decades there, she worked to amplify the voices and rights of immigrants, women and aggressively championed Title IX, the legislation that brought academic and athletic equity to American educational institutions.
- Chien-Shiung Wu who is known as the "First Lady of Physics" is a Chinese-born, American trained physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project which helped the United States develop the atomic bomb during World War II. In 1975, she became the first female president of the American Physical Society. Wu once remarked, "There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes and that is not going to the lab at all."
- Amy Tan is both a beloved writer and trailblazer in the literary world. Her bestselling 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club offered a portrait of Asian-American family life that was both specific to the community and universally felt.
- Tammy Duckworth, a U.S. senator currently representing the state of Illinois, has achieved an impressive number of firsts: She was the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress in Illinois, the first woman with a disability to be elected to Congress, the first female double amputee in the Senate. She lost both legs while serving as a helicopter pilot in the Iraq War. She is also the first member of Congress born in Thailand.
