Explore Seattle from the Margins with historian Megan Asaka

View Seattle’s history from a new vantage point, that of the migrant workers who built the city with a discussion between Megan Asaka, author of Seattle From the Margins: Migrant labor History in 19th and 20th Centuries, and Seattle Times columnist Naomi Ishisaka, at 2:30pm on December 3rd at the Central Library.

The eagerly anticipated Peak Pick, Seattle from the Margins: Migrant Labor History in 19th & 20th Centuries by Megan Asaka is on library shelves now!

Seattle from the Margins examines the intersection of race and class in historical migrant communities that worked in the Pacific Northwest and built Seattle in the 19th and 20th centuries. Migrant workers are people whose lives are transient as they follow seasonal or temporary work, such as farming, logging, and fishing, all of which were—and still are—major contributors to Western Washington’s economy. Asaka was partially inspired by her own family’s history and weaves together the complex lives of displaced Coast Salish Indigenous peoples and immigrants from Japan and China; and how their communities intermingled. Seattle became a “stopping place” where people would gather as the work shifted up and down the Puget Sound, up into Alaska, and down into Oregon, but also became a place where migrants found solidarity and built communities and families together.

From the Margins uses poignant primary sources such as diaries, photographs, and newspapers to illustrate these lives, but it goes further as well, asking readers and future scholars to think about the history of Seattle in a new light: that the very institutions and systems we rely on today were designed in the 19^th and 20^th century with delicate balance: to create a stable labor market of migrant workers their lives needed to be displaced and destabilized to the point that people had no choice but to follow the work. Ironically the more stable the migrant job market, the more migrant workers’ lives were in a constant state of disruption.

Join us Saturday, December 3rd, at 2:30pm at the Central Library to understand Seattle’s past from a new perspective and the reasons why this book is so important to its future.

For more about Seattle’s history from the perspective of working class and marginalized people, check out the following books and resources:

- - - The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein – Learn more about the practice of redlining, and how it segregated communities in Seattle and across the country.
    - Native Seattle by Coll Thrush – A comprehensive accounting of the experiences Seattle’s first people, including their displacement and migrations, to the current day.
    - Wing Luke Museum – Local cultural and historical museum dedicated to uplifting the history and voices of Seattle’s Asian American communities.
    - Daybreak Star Center – Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center is a land base and community center for Native Americans in the Seattle area, and United Indians’ headquarters.
    - Recorded talk with Megan Asaka on her book, from the Seattle Channel: Seattle from the Margins: Migrant Labor History in 19th & 20th centuries