July 27 · 7:00pm - 7:30pm
Location The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 W. 27th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY
Galleries, luxury condos, displacement, rezoning, affordable housing, neighborhood preservation. These are a few keywords in the active and ongoing conversation about gentrification, development, and urban change more broadly. But what is the role of writing in the face of this kind of urban change? Two activists, scholar Peter Kwong of Hunter College/CUNY and artist Fay Chiang, will thread personal accounts of their lives as scholars and artists in Chinatown/Loisada with broader analyses of neighborhoods in flux. Their discussion will launch the Workshop’s community-based writers fellowship, "OPEN CITY: Blogging Urban Change," where fellows collect oral history from residents of Chinatown/LES, Sunset Park, and Flushing. Partnering with the Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA) and its Archeology of Change Project, Open City is an innovative spin on the neighborhood blog, one that incorporates oral history, video/audio content, and new interdisciplinary writing.
Chiang’s recently released book of selected poems, 7 Continents, 9 Lives, spans 20 years of poetry as a Queens native and a Lower East Side activist, revealing the multiple lives of the city, ranging from widows to a man’s final steps into an AIDS hospice. Kwong’s classic study The New Chinatown, was heralded as a “splendid antidote to the consistent misrepresentation of Chinese-American life in the press and in scholarly writings” by David Montgomery of Yale University.
@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Free and open to the public.
Programs funded, in part, by the New York City Council for the Humanities.
More information here.
Location The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 W. 27th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY
Galleries, luxury condos, displacement, rezoning, affordable housing, neighborhood preservation. These are a few keywords in the active and ongoing conversation about gentrification, development, and urban change more broadly. But what is the role of writing in the face of this kind of urban change? Two activists, scholar Peter Kwong of Hunter College/CUNY and artist Fay Chiang, will thread personal accounts of their lives as scholars and artists in Chinatown/Loisada with broader analyses of neighborhoods in flux. Their discussion will launch the Workshop’s community-based writers fellowship, "OPEN CITY: Blogging Urban Change," where fellows collect oral history from residents of Chinatown/LES, Sunset Park, and Flushing. Partnering with the Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA) and its Archeology of Change Project, Open City is an innovative spin on the neighborhood blog, one that incorporates oral history, video/audio content, and new interdisciplinary writing.
Chiang’s recently released book of selected poems, 7 Continents, 9 Lives, spans 20 years of poetry as a Queens native and a Lower East Side activist, revealing the multiple lives of the city, ranging from widows to a man’s final steps into an AIDS hospice. Kwong’s classic study The New Chinatown, was heralded as a “splendid antidote to the consistent misrepresentation of Chinese-American life in the press and in scholarly writings” by David Montgomery of Yale University.
@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Free and open to the public.
Programs funded, in part, by the New York City Council for the Humanities.
More information here.
