Pasadena Libraries Mark AAPI Month With Tea Tastings, Storytimes, and a Scholar Who Carries the History

On the last Saturday of May, a Pasadena tea house will set up inside a branch library and teach visitors how to taste their way through the cultures that gave the world some of its oldest drinks.

That event — a free public tea tasting led by Callisto Tea House, a woman-owned Pasadena business — is one of a dozen programs the City of Pasadena has assembled for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May 2026, according to a press release issued April 23 by the City Manager’s Office. The series spans children’s workshops, bilingual storytimes, and book discussions across multiple branch libraries and community centers. On May 16, at Lamanda Park Library on South Altadena Drive, USC scholar Susan H. Kamei — a descendant of wartime incarcerees herself — will provide historical context for a graphic memoir that has become the centerpiece of a national conversation.

That memoir is They Called Us Enemy, a 2019 New York Times bestselling graphic memoir by George Takei recounting his childhood imprisonment in American incarceration camps following Executive Order 9066 in 1942, alongside more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them U.S. citizens. The book is the inaugural selection for One Book, One Coast, a multi-state reading initiative organized by LA County Library that has drawn more than 140 library systems across California, Oregon, and Washington. According to the city’s press release, books are available for checkout at the Pasadena Public Library in print and digital formats.

“Through this shared reading initiative, our libraries are opening doors for communities to explore a complex chapter of our nation’s history,” said Dr. Skye Patrick, County Librarian and Director of LA County Library, in a statement issued when the program was announced in February.

Takei, describing his own family’s experience in an interview with The Seattle Times, said that as a child in the camps, he and his family were treated simply as threats. “We were all categorized just, arbitrarily, as ‘enemy alien,'” he said. “There was no due process, no trial.”

Kamei, who is adjunct professor of history at USC and managing director of the USC Spatial Sciences Institute, is the author of When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during World War II. Her May 16 appearance at 3 p.m. will draw on firsthand accounts and behind-the-scenes context for Takei’s memoir. No registration information was listed in the city’s press release for that event.

The month opens May 9 with two simultaneous programs: a Rice in a Pot gardening workshop at Hill Avenue Branch Library — presented by staff from the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Garden — and the first of three One Book, One Coast book discussions, at Allendale Branch Library. Both begin at 10:30 a.m. All library programs are sponsored by The Friends of the Pasadena Public Library, according to the press release.

Additional events include a Japanese book binding workshop for ages 8–18 at Jefferson Branch Library on May 16; a bilingual Chinese/English storytime for ages 3–5 at Hill Avenue Branch on May 23; a graphic memoir workshop at Santa Catalina Branch on May 21; and a second tea-focused event — Explore the Culture and Craft of Asian Tea — at Jackie Robinson Community Center on May 22 for adults 18 and over (registration required; call (626) 744-7300).

Throughout May, the City’s Communication and Marketing Division and Economic Development Division will spotlight AAPI-owned businesses in Pasadena on social media at @CityOfPasadena on Facebook and Instagram and @PasadenaGov on Twitter, according to the press release.

The month closes May 31 with a George Takei author talk and book signing at East Los Angeles County Library, 4837 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles — a public event that will also be livestreamed on YouTube beginning at 2 p.m. Pacific Time. Takei will be joined by LA County Library Director Dr. Skye Patrick and Long Beach Public Library Director Cathy de Leon.

Registration and event details for library programs are available at CityOfPasadena.net/Library/Calendar/.

The tea tastings, the storytime, the Huntington’s rice seedlings — in Pasadena’s libraries this May, the widest possible range of Asian and Pacific Islander culture is arriving in the smallest possible packages, one pot, one page, and one shared book at a time.