aaww presents come together: arts in the asian american movement

Short notice, but this event happening tomorrow afternoon a the Asian American Writers' Workshop sounds really cool: Come Together: Arts in the Asian American Movement. The event will feature a reading from author Karen Tei Yamashita and a panel with artist/activists Corky Lee, Tomie Arai and Jack Tchen. Here are the details:

Come Together: Arts in the Asian American Movement

Come hear one of the foremost Asian American novelists of her generation and the artist-activists who defined what it means for all of us to be Asian American. This special symposium features key activists CORKY LEE, TOMIE ARAI, and JACK TCHEN alongside KAREN TEI YAMASHITA, whose new novel, I-Hotel, is destined to be a future classic of Asian American literature.

2-3PM, PANEL ON ASIAN AMERICAN ARTS AND ACTIVISM
Corky Lee, the pre-eminent photojournalist and documentarian of the Asian Pacific American community in New York, and Tomie Arai, pioneering Asian American artist and activist, present their works from the 1970s and today. In a conversation led by Jack Tchen, founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University, we hear how the arts create a collective memory of change.

3-4PM, KAREN TEI YAMASHITA READS FROM I-HOTEL
Karen Tei Yamashita reads from her newest novel and her magnum opus, I-Hotel, which takes its name from San Francisco's International Hotel. When the I-Hotel's mainly Filipino residents were hit with eviction notices in the name of urban renewal, this Manilatown institution became the epicenter for the Yellow Power Movement. The hip, inventive novel follows a motley cast of students, laborers, artists, revolutionaries, and provocateurs through a riptide of politics and passion, clashing ideologies and personal turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s. Written in 10 chapters that read as novellas, each opening with a die showing 6-sides of the Asian American movement—like Aiko Masaoka, the 1969 TWLF Strike, the death of Bruce Lee and Eldridge Cleaver in exile—I-Hotel jumps from screenplay to fairy tale in a formally ambitious testament to the Asian American movement. By the time the survivors unite to save the International Hotel—epicenter of the Yellow Power movement—their stories have come to define the very heart of the American experience.

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues

This sounds like an awesome opportunity to hear from and celebrate some influential artists/activists who have been a key part of the Asian American movement, from the 1970s to today. For more information, visit the Asian American Writers' Workshop website here and the Facebook event page here.