February 15, 2026

Hello AACP Newsletter Blog Readers.

Happy Lunar New Year! Ramadan Mubarak to you and your family!

I’m not sure how often this happens, but the start of Ramadan in the United States also falls on the start of the Lunar New Year this year, February 17, 2026. The Pew Research Center found that over 26% of Asians and Pacific Islanders are Muslim (nearly 1.2 billion people). A Brandeis University web page states that an estimated 2 billion people celebrate the Lunar New Year. That's a lot of people.

------------------

To those that may be reading this after meeting us at the San Jose Day of Remembrance event today, welcome to our newsletter page. Thank you for your interest.

------------------

Our January newsletter is now connected up to this page for those of you that only read the newsletter online. Have a look.

This newsletter is the latest edition of our January poetry series. For our first article we feature an interview with poet Frances Kakugawa after the recent release of her book “The Outhouse Poet.” For those of you that get the email version of the newsletter, you may not have read the feedback from another reader of the article who commented about the Japanese word omoiyari that I asked Frances about in the interview. The feedback adds to the interview. Check it all out.

For our featured books we included ten poetry books and ten books for the Lunar New Year. Check them all out.

That’s all time I have right now – got to go to the San Jose Day Remembrance event soon.

Thanks again for come.

Take care.

Leonard Chan