Miss America, Kina Grannis for APAHW

In celebration of the 21st annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Week , which starts this Sunday, Asian-American student groups across campus will come together for a six-day series of events, including a talk by 2013 Miss America Nina Davuluri .

The theme of this year’s celebration is “The APAHW Network,” with a focus on connecting students both inside and out of the Asian-American community. APAHW, which has been in the works since April, is jam-packed with speaking events, workshops and collaborations with other student groups for each day of the week.

On Sunday, APAHW is teaming up with the University of Pennsylvania Asian Alumni Network to host an alumni brunch, for which more than 30 alumni have already RSVP’d, where current students can network with Penn graduates. The brunch will begin at 11 a.m. in the Claudia Cohen Terrace Room.

Starting off the school week, there will be a Happy Hour Extravaganza from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday in Houston’s Hall of Flags “because it’s our 21st anniversary,” Wharton and Engineering senior Srishti Kedia , executive treasurer of APAHW, said.

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“This has been an event since Heritage Week started,” she added. “All the Asian groups get together, and it’s a carnival where every organization brings some sort of food. This year, each organization is bringing a tea from our culture. The purpose is to emphasize the shared commonalities.”

For Tuesday’s event, the organizers of APAHW have collaborated with the Asian American Studies Program to host a TEDx-style discussion at 7 p.m. in Bodek Lounge. Professors will initiate conversations on issues relevant specifically to Penn’s Asian community — touching on such subjects as cultural and geographical divisions among Asian students, meeting the expectations of immigrant parents and the current low enrollment in the University’s Asian-American Studies minor.

On Wednesday, Miss America Nina Davuluri will be delivering a talk, co-sponsored by the South Asian Society.

Kedia explained that APAHW had initially struggled with deciding on a keynote speaker for the week, but after this year’s Miss America competition and the resulting controversy around its winner, they thought that Davuluri could attract a large and diverse audience.

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“One of the reasons [Davuluri] is so great is because she represents not only the Asian-Pacific identity, but also the American identity — so she bridges that gap in our week’s program,” Kedia said.

The Social Planning and Events Committee is also helping to fund and publicize Davuluri’s appearance on campus, which will take place in Ambani Auditorium in Huntsman Hall at 7 p.m. Ticket sales for the event open this weekend.

Singer-songwriter Kina Grannis — who is half-Japanese — will be performing a sold-out show in Bodek Lounge on Thursday night.

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APAHW will then host three workshops on Friday. The first — a collaboration with the Penn Women’s Center — will cover sexual violence as it relates to Asian Americans on college campuses. The next two will be a student-led cooking tutorial at the LGBT Center and a slam poetry workshop with New York-based poet Kilusan Bautista , respectively.

Finally, the week will close with a APAHW classic, Big Asian — a pageant competition where nine different Asian-Pacific interest groups each nominate a candidate. Each candidate will then perform special acts, answer questions and finally be judged by a panel.

According to Wharton senior Paulo Bautista , one of the APAHW programming chairs, all proceeds from Big Asian will benefit the winner’s charity of choice.

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