Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
Born 1941 in Oakland, California’s Chinatown, William Gee Wong is the only son of his father, known as Pop. Born in Guangdong Province, China, Pop emigrated to Oakland as a teenager during the Chinese Exclusion era in 1912 and entered the U.S. legally as the “son of a native,” despite having partially false papers. Sons of Chinatown is Wong’s evocative dual memoir of his and his father’s parallel experiences in America.
Prof. Edward T. Chang will present on University of California, Riverside’s traveling exhibition to preserve and share the history of America’s first Koreatown — Pachappa Camp — a community of Korean migrant workers in Riverside who contributed to the city’s citrus development.
Prof. Francisco Delgado’s current project examines how Chamorro poets reimagine the landscape of California as an extension of their home island. In particular, through a careful reading of works by Chamorro poets like Clarissa Mendiola and Lehua Taitano, both of whom are currently based out of California, he argues that the nature of Chamorro identity and community is as fluid and vast as the Pacific Ocean itself.
PANDEMIC BRINGS US TO PANDEMONIUM, not the center of Hell—Pandemonium in Milton’s Paradise Lost—but tumult, chaos, the upending of our quotidian lives due to the infernal virus, on which we have conferred the somewhat majestic title, Novel Corona Virus-19. Normalcy is a far-away country, and even with all its attendant and even discordant notes, seems … Read more