Chloé Zhao
Credit: © Chris Pizzello, Reuters/Alamy Images

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

In April, the Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao became the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for the motion picture Nomadland (2020). The film tells the story of a widow who travels across the United States in a van after losing everything in an economic recession. Zhao was only the second woman to win the Oscar for best director, after the American director Kathryn Bigelow won it in 2010. In addition to directing, Zhao also has written and produced many of her films.

Frances McDormand as Fern in the film “Nomadland” (2020).
Credit: © Searchlight Pictures

Chloé Zhao was born Zhao Ting on March 31, 1982, in Beijing, China. She attended boarding school in London, England. She finished high school in the United States. She then attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. In 2005, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. Zhao later studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Zhao won several awards for her short film Daughters (2010). It tells the story of a young woman in rural China forced into an arranged marriage. Zhao’s first feature-length film was Songs My Brothers Taught Me. It explores the relationship between a Lakota Sioux brother and sister. Zhao’s other movies include The Rider (2017).

United States Senator Tammy Duckworth
Credit: U.S. Congress

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, was elected to the United States Senate in 2016. As a senator, she has been a champion for civil rights, environmental justice, and veterans’ affairs.

Ladda Tammy Duckworth was born in Bangkok, Thailand, on March 12, 1968, to a Thai mother and an American father. Her father had been serving in Southeast Asia in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War (1957-1975). When Tammy Duckworth was a child, the family moved around the region while her father worked with the United Nations and private corporations. She became fluent in Thai, Indonesian, and English. The family later moved to Hawaii, where Duckworth finished high school. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Hawaii (also spelled University of Hawai‘i) in 1989.

Duckworth joined the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in 1990 while working on a master’s degree in international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She completed her degree in 1992. That year, she also got her commission as a reserve officer and trained as an army helicopter pilot. In 1996, while studying for a doctorate in political science at Northern Illinois University, she transferred to the Illinois National Guard. She later completed a doctorate in human services at Capella University, an online-based school.

In 2004, while Duckworth was still a student at Northern Illinois, her National Guard regiment was sent to Iraq. On November 12, her helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. She lost both legs and some of the use of her right arm. In December, she was awarded a Purple Heart for her injuries. The Purple Heart is a medal given to soldiers of the U.S. armed forces who are wounded or killed in combat. Following a lengthy recovery, Duckworth began working for better medical care for veterans. In 2006, she ran unsuccessfully for an Illinois seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich then named her director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed her assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs.

In 2012, Duckworth was elected to the U.S. House, representing a district in the Chicago suburbs. She was reelected in 2014. Also in 2014, she retired from the Army Reserves, having achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 2016, Duckworth defeated incumbent Republican Senator Mark Kirk to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Duckworth married Bryan Bowlsbey, an officer in the Army National Guard, in 1993. In 2018, she became the first sitting U.S. senator to give birth when she delivered a daughter, Maile Pearl. The couple’s first child, Abigail, was born in 2014, while Duckworth was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Duckworth’s memoir, Every Day is a Gift, was published in 2021.

American actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Credit: © Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been many things: a professional football player, a professional wrestler, a skyscraper-investigating FBI agent, a shape-shifting demi-god, and even the tooth fairy. By excelling in a variety of roles—both in real life and in film—Johnson has inspired many people throughout the world.

Dwayne Douglas Johnson was born on May 2, 1972, in Hayward, California. His father was the Canadian professional wrestler Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather was the Samoan wrestler Peter Maivia. The family moved frequently as Dwayne was growing up, because of his father’s career. Dwayne played football for the University of Miami and graduated in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree. He briefly played for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League before leaving to pursue a career in wrestling.

Beginning in 1996, Johnson gained fame wrestling under the name Rocky Maivia in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF; now known as World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.). Soon after, he began using the nickname “The Rock.” He became one of the most famous wrestlers in the organization. Johnson’s matches served as main attractions at such large wrestling events as WrestleMania and SummerSlam. Johnson co-wrote the memoir The Rock Says… (2000) with Joe Layden.

Johnson began his motion picture acting career with a minor role in the adventure film The Mummy Returns (2001) and a starring role in the related fantasy film The Scorpion King (2002). He has starred in many other action films, including The Rundown (2003), Walking Tall (2004), Doom (2005), and Skyscraper (2018). Johnson has appeared in several of the automotive action films in the “Fast & Furious” series, beginning with Fast Five (2011). His other notable movies include the disaster film San Andreas (2015); the family comedies The Game Plan (2007) and Tooth Fairy (2010); and the adventure comedies Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019). The muscular Johnson often plays brawny characters that can be by turns intimidating and likable. Johnson has provided his voice for video games and animations. For example, he voiced the character Maui in the animated movie Moana (2016).

The evening of Wednesday, May 12, marks the beginning of Id al-Fitr (also spelled Eid al-Fitr) in many parts of the world. Id al-Fitr celebrates the end of Ramadan, an Islamic holy month when Muslims may not eat or drink from morning until night. Muslims celebrate their accomplishment of the monthlong fast by offering gifts and charity and sharing festive meals. Id al-Fitr means Feast of Fast-Breaking in Arabic.

Id al-Fitr takes place during the first three days of Shawwal, the 10th month of the Islamic calendar. It moves backward through the seasons, because the Islamic calendar is based on the moon. That makes the Islamic year much shorter than the solar year. Id al-Fitr is also called the smaller festival, in comparison with Id al-Ad-ha, the other major festival of Islam, which lasts four days.

In the morning on the first day of Id al-Fitr, Muslims gather in open spaces or in a mosque an hour after sunrise to perform a special community festival prayer service, which includes a special prayer called the salat al-id. The three days of the festival are filled with visits and meals shared with family, friends, and neighbors. Children receive gifts.

In Turkey, Id al-Fitr is called the sweets festival. A popular dessert is baklava, made of thin layers of pastry, honey, and chopped nuts. Another pastry, kadayif, is made with shredded wheat.

Yo-Yo Ma is a world-famous cello player known for his performances as a soloist with symphony orchestras and in chamber music groups.
Credit: © Fulya Atalay, Shutterstock

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

Long before such teenage stars as JoJo Siwa and Olivia Rodrigo, there was a teenage cello-playing star named Yo-Yo Ma. Nearly 50 years later, Ma continues to be one of the world’s greatest and most popular cello players.

He has won praise for the warmth and sensitivity of his performances. Ma performs equally well playing solo cello, as part of chamber groups, and as a soloist with orchestras. He plays a broad repertoire that includes music from the 1600′s as well as the works of modern composers. In his live performances and recordings, he has united the Western classical music tradition with the music of non-Western cultures.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma performs for people waiting in line at a COVID-19 vaccination site at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on March 13, 2021.
Credit: © Berkshire Community College

Ma was born in Paris on Oct. 5, 1955, to Chinese-born parents. He moved to the United States with his family at the age of 7. He studied with the famous cellist Leonard Rose from 1964 to 1971. Ma gained his first major exposure at the age of 15 when conductor Leonard Bernstein presented him on a television program.

After studying at Harvard University from 1972 to 1976, Ma began his career as a soloist. Since then, he has appeared with the world’s major symphony orchestras and played chamber music with many distinguished musicians.

In 2009, Ma became a creative consultant with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the country’s highest civilian honors, in 2011. That year, Ma also became a Kennedy Center Honoree.

Cinco de Mayo celebration in Austin, Texas
© Stephanie Friedman, Alamy Images

May 5 is Cinco de Mayo, a holiday to commemorate the victory of Mexico over France at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Many Mexicans and Mexican Americans celebrate the day. Its name is Spanish for Fifth of May.

The battle occurred after Emperor Napoleon III of France sent troops to Mexico to conquer the country. The Mexican army, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza, won the battle, even though the French force was larger and better armed.  Despite the Mexican victory at Puebla, the French later gained control of Mexico City and established a French-supported government there. In 1866 and 1867, however, France withdrew its troops from Mexico because of resistance by many Mexicans and pressure from the United States. The French-backed government soon fell.

Cinco de Mayo, a holiday celebrated by Mexicans and Mexican Americans, commemorates the victory of a Mexican army over a French army at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Its name is Spanish for Fifth of May. These performers in Mexico City celebrate the holiday with a re-enactment of the battle. Credit: © Jorge Uzon, AFP/Getty Images

Cinco de Mayo is celebrated differently, depending on where you are. Some Mexican towns hold small celebrations, including parades or town meetings and speeches. In the United States, celebrations often include parades, folk dancing, speeches, carnival rides, and Mexican music.

Like so many holidays this year, Cinco de Mayo might look different than in years past. In many places, efforts are being made to prevent the spread of the pandemic (global outbreak) of the coronavirus disease COVID-19. Such efforts often include social distancing, meant to limit contact among people and thus the spread of germs. But, limiting the spread of germs doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo!

One socially distant way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo is to make a popular Mexican food: tacos. A taco consists of a folded tortilla filled with such ingredients as meats, vegetables, and cheeses. Common fillings include beef, pork, and spicy peppers. Authentic Mexican tacos are topped with cilantro and white onions. The simple, informal nature of the taco helps to inspire creativity among chefs. So, we encourage you to make your taco unique! However you choose to celebrate, we hope you have a safe and happy Cinco de Mayo!

Indian-born American astronaut Kalpana Chawla
Credit: NASA

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

In 1997, the American astronaut Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) became the first Indian-born woman to travel into space. Chawla served on two missions aboard the United States space shuttle Columbia as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator.

Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, northern India. Karnal was part of the state of Punjab at that time. Today, it is part of the state of Haryana. She graduated from the Punjab Engineering College in 1982. That same year, she immigrated to the United States. In 1984, she earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin. She married Jean-Pierre Harrison, an aviation teacher and author, in 1983. She received her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1988. She then went to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1994, she was selected for training as an astronaut candidate.

In 1997, Chawla flew her first mission on the shuttle Columbia. She was the second person of Indian descent to travel in space, following the Indian-born cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, who traveled on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in 1984. Chawla’s duties involved conducting experiments in microgravity, sometimes called zero gravity or weightlessness, and launching a satellite using the shuttle’s robotic arm. Her second mission was on the same shuttle in 2003. However, on Feb. 1, 2003, as the Columbia was returning to Earth after the 16-day mission, the spacecraft broke apart high over Texas. Chawla and six other crew members were killed.

Chawla received many honors for her work in space. They include the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In addition, an asteroid that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter is named the 51826 Kalpanachawla in her honor.

American poet Allen Ginsberg.
Credit: Public Domain (Dutch National Archives)

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness….”

So begins the epic poem Howl by the American poet Allen Ginsberg. In the poem, Ginsberg rails at length against dehumanizing forces in modern society. He also laments their effect on the people in his life.

Howl, first read publicly in October 1955, shocked audiences with its graphic descriptions of violence, mental illness, sexuality, and drug abuse. The poem’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was even charged with obscenity. However, Howl came to be seen as a revolutionary work of great indignation and humanity, and Ginsberg has come to be honored among the greatest modern poets.

Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. He became known as a leader of the beat literary movement of the 1950′s and also of the cultural and political protests of the 1960′s. Critics have praised him as a prophetic poet in the tradition of William Blake of England and Walt Whitman of the United States.

Ginsberg’s writing combines the spiritual and rhythmic qualities of certain Eastern and Western religious texts with the language, imagery, and subject matter of modern life. Many critics see him as representing a struggle for spiritual survival in a dehumanized, repressive society.

The death of Ginsberg’s mother in 1956 inspired his famous elegy “Kaddish” (1961). His other works include Reality Sandwiches (1963), The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1972), and Mind Breaths (1978). Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997. His Collected Poems 1947-1997 was published in 2006. Wait Till I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems was published in 2016.

Credit: WORLD BOOK photo

April 23 is World Book Day, a celebration of the special role that books play in our lives. To celebrate, we at World Book (get it?) invited author William D. Adams to talk about his experience creating a special set of books, Out of This World 2.

I’m Will Adams, a content creator at World Book. I’ve had the privilege of working on many books during my career at World Book, most recently by writing the second series of Out of This World.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the local library and browsing the science and science fiction sections. But as I got older, I got frustrated by the technological leaps required in science fiction. Why couldn’t we live in space and travel among the stars already?

Out of This World is World Book’s collaboration with a branch of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called the NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). NASA is world-famous, but you may never have heard of NIAC before. NIAC is working to bring some of that technology from science fiction into existence.

NIAC is a bit like a startup incubator for space exploration projects. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, or anyone else from across the United States may submit a proposal to NIAC about an idea that could revolutionize the way we reach, explore, or live in space. The idea has to be revolutionary and largely unstudied: no small plans are allowed. A committee reviews the proposals and awards small grants to the most deserving projects.

The NIAC inventors use the money to test their ideas and to work out details of their designs. The hope is that the best ideas become part of NASA missions or get picked up by the private space industry.

One of the most prominent ideas to “graduate” NIAC is the starshade. A starshade is a spacecraft with a giant, unfolding shade, a bit like a giant umbrella. The shade can block out a distant star’s light, enabling a space telescope to directly image any exoplanets (distant planets) orbiting around it. It’s the same principle as using your hand to block the sun’s light when trying to see something in the bright sky. Engineers hope to launch a starshade in the next 5 to 10 years.

I had so much fun interviewing the scientists and engineers for this series. They’re all incredibly smart people, of course, but also down to earth and from a wide variety of backgrounds. And—no surprise here—many of them were inspired by books growing up, both fiction and nonfiction.

Out of This World reads like a blueprint for the future. It shows how we can study other planets, how we can get to those planets faster, how we can live in space or on other planets, and even what to wear when we get there!

Amazingly, Out of This World 1 & 2 only scratch the surface of the innovative concepts that NIAC has funded. And, NIAC’s blueprint for the future grows every year. Just a couple of weeks ago, on April 8, they released their 2021 Phase II and III grants. These awards are for projects that are proven to work but need more research and development before they can be incorporated into mission designs.

One 2021 Phase II grant is to further study plans for a huge radio telescope. Remember the Arecibo telescope that collapsed last year? Think of this as an extra-large replacement—but located on the far side of the moon! NASA engineer Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay proposes sending a robotic probe to construct a giant radio dish in a lunar crater. Shielded from the noisy radio-wave emissions of human technology on Earth, such a telescope could study the early history of the universe. I can’t wait to write about it in series 3!

I hope you celebrate World Book Day by picking up a book and getting inspired, just as many of the NIAC inventors did. Maybe you’ll be inspired to think about things a different way, to write your own story, or even to explore the stars.

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg
Credit: © Alexandros Michailidis, Shutterstock

April 22 is Earth Day, an annual observance to increase public awareness of environmental issues. Each year on Earth Day, millions of people throughout the world gather to clean up litter, protest threats to the environment, and celebrate progress in reducing pollution.

Earth Day began in the United States. In 1969, the U.S. Senator Gaylord A. Nelson suggested that a day of environmental education be held on college campuses. The following year, the lawyer and environmentalist Denis Hayes, then a recent graduate of Stanford University, led hundreds of students in planning and organizing the observance of Earth Day on April 22, 1970. About 20 million people participated in this celebration.

The observance of Earth Day in 1970 helped alert people to the dangers of pollution and stimulated a new environmental movement. That same year, Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency to set and enforce pollution standards. Congress also passed the Clean Air Act of 1970, which limited the amount of air pollution that cars, utilities, and industries could release. Other new environmental laws soon followed.

One modern champion for the environment is the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. She has worked to convince politicians to take action against climate change due to global warming. Global warming is an observed increase in Earth’s average surface temperature. As a teenager, Thunberg became known for her boldness in confronting adult politicians for their inaction on climate change. She has called upon leaders to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide. Such gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet’s surface.

Thunberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on Jan. 3, 2003. She was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at a young age. As a child, she showed an interest in environmental issues. She convinced her family to reduce their carbon footprint by becoming vegan and giving up air travel. Carbon footprint is a measure of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with human activities.

In 2018, at the age of 15, Thunberg protested for action on climate change outside the Swedish parliament, inspiring other student protesters. Together, they organized school strikes to demand action on climate change. In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, in the United Kingdom, to New York City, in the United States, on a “carbon neutral” voyage. Thunberg sailed aboard a yacht that got its electric power from solar panels and underwater turbines. While in the United States, she addressed the United Nations as part of its Climate Action Summit. During her speech, she announced that she and a group of other children were filing a lawsuit against five nations not on track to meet their emission-reduction targets under the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a global treaty designed to fight global warming.