Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
AAARI Reads fosters a communal reading experience for CUNY students, staff, and faculty of work by Asian American and Pacific Islander writers. AAARI Reads focuses on texts that reflect the complex and heterogeneous identities and experiences of AAPI New Yorkers. Our inaugural selection is Rajiv Mohabir’s Antiman: a Hybrid Memoir, an experimental genre-blending exploration of … Read more
Our Laundry, Our Town (Empire State Editions, 2022) is a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban oracle bones of Alvin Eng’s growing up in Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood of that singular universe that was New York City in the 1970s. As a theatre practitioner and professor, Alvin discovered the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s seminal Americana drama, Our Town.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, blue-collar Filipino Americans, or Pinoys, lived a hardscrabble existence. In this collection of autobiographical essays, acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Peter Bacho centers the experiences of the Pinoy generation that grew up in Seattle’s multiethnic neighborhoods, from the Central Area to Beacon Hill to Rainier Valley.
AAARI co-founder, Betty Lee Sung, will read from her recently published memoir, Defiant Second Daughter: My First 90 Years. This is Prof. Sung’s ninth book. What started as a request by Dr. Sung’s granddaughter to learn more about her grandmother, turned into a memoir that discusses her life as the daughter of a Paper Son, teaching Asian American Studies at CUNY, and other triumphs and struggles.
AAARI co-founder, Betty Lee Sung, has published her memoir, Defiant Second Daughter: My First 90 Years, available on Amazon. Betty Lee Sung is a leading authority on the Chinese in America. Her first book, Mountain of Gold, was a pioneer in its filed and laid the foundation for Asian American Studies at City College of … Read more
AAARI co-founder, Betty Lee Sung, has published her memoir, Defiant Second Daughter: My First 90 Years, available on Amazon. Betty Lee Sung is a leading authority on the Chinese in America. Her first book, Mountain of Gold, was a pioneer in its filed and laid the foundation for Asian American Studies at City College of … Read more