For over 150 years, Manhattan’s Chinatown has been celebrated, imagined and caricatured in American literature, news reports and in popular song. Whose Chinatown is this anyway? What is real and what is simply fantasy? Your favorite place for egg custards is someone else's least favorite. The best soy milk in town, in your opinion, makes your neighbor gag. And let's not get started on Hong Kong!
At “Chinatown, My Chinatown”: A Literary Evening, get to know Chinatown through the words of New Yorkers who know this neighborhood best! Hosted by Ed Lin, join us for an evening of readings from novels and unpublished memoirs about the “real” Chinatown from renowned authors and artists, Henry Chang, Ava Chin (Mott Street), Ping Chong, Alvin Eng (Our Laundry, Our Town), S.J. Rozan (The Murder of Mr. Ma), and Radha Vatsal (No. 10 Doyers Street). Books will be available for purchase on site by our friends and neighbor, Yu & Me Books.
Pay-as-you-can RSVP required!
HENRY CHANG is a native son of Chinatown and a lifetime New Yorker. He writes from the world of the urban Chinese immigrant demimonde, and his work has appeared in Murdaland2, Gangs in New York's Chinatown, The NuyorAsian Anthology, and Bridge Magazine.
His acclaimed 'Chinatown Trilogy' of CHINATOWN BEAT, YEAR OF THE DOG, and RED JADE, is the hard-boiled reflection of lifelong experiences in the Chinese community, and the books have received high praise from the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe, among others.Henry has appeared on 'Asian America' WNYC TV,on Asia Pacific Forum radio WBAI,and has been featured in 'The Voice' NY Times, the 'Book Mark' NYPL, the Downtown Express news, and in the World Journal, Sing Tao, and Ming Pao Chinese news press.
The Author is a graduate of CCNY and the Chinatown School 'of hard knocks'. He has been a Security Director for major hotels and commercial properties in New York City and he continues to reside in Chinatown.
AVA CHIN, a 5th generation Chinese American New Yorker, is the author of the nonfiction narrative MOTT STREET: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (April 2023, Penguin Press), an intimate portrayal of the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act laws (1882-1943) on four generations of Chin’s family as they attempted to lay down roots in America. MOTT STREET is a TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2023, San Francisco Chronicle Favorite Nonfiction, Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023, and an ALA Notable Book.
A professor and a journalist, Chin is the author of the award-winning Eating Wildly (Simon & Schuster, 2014), winner of the MFK Fisher Book Award, the editor of SPLIT (McGraw Hill, 2002), and the former Urban Forager columnist for the New York Times (2009-2013). Ava Chin has written for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Marie Claire, the Village Voice, SPIN, and VIBE, among others. She has held fellowships at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, the U.S. Fulbright Scholar’s program, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A. from Queens College. She is an associate professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the CUNY Graduate Center’s MA Program in Biography & Memoir, and in the English department at the College of Staten Island. The Huffington Post named her one of “9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading.” She lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.
PING CHONG is an internationally acclaimed theater director, playwright, video and installation artist and a seminal figure in the interdisciplinary theater community. He is the founder of Ping Chong and Company. Since 1972, he has created over 100 original works for the stage across the United States and around the world. Signature works include, Nosferatu, Angels of Swedenborg, Kindness, the East/West Quartet and the puppet theater works, Kwaidan and Cathay, three tales of China. In 1992, Chong created the first Undesirable Elements production in an ongoing series of community-based oral history performances exploring culture and identity, a work that encourages connection in a divided world. In 2023, he released his film adaptation of his stage production, Chinoiserie which premiered at Asia Society.
Published works include The East/West Quartet and a volume on Undesirable Elements. The first comprehensive volume on his body of work, The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness on Stage by Yuko Kurahashi, was released in 2019. Recent publications include Claudia Orenstein’s Elizabeth Le Compte, Ping Chong, Robert Lepage: Multi-Media Interrogations, was released in 2021 and Sara Farrington’s The Lost Conversations: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde, was released in 2022.
Ping Chong is the recipient of numerous awards including a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, the National Medal of the Arts Award in 2014 and a Lifetime Achievement Obie Award in 2022
ALVIN ENG is a native NYC author, playwright, activist, educator and acoustic punk raconteur. He is currently a New York Public Library Fellow––developing a companion book to his memoir, OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond. His next book, Urban Oracle Bones, will examine the profound impact of The Opium Wars and opium on the Chinese diaspora in NYC as well as on the 1970s “heroin chic” punk counterculture of Alvin’s teenage years. Other books include THREE TREES (Alberto Giacometti historical drama) and Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage (oral history/performance text anthology). His plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, in Paris, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China. Alvin made his Think! Chinatown debut at the 2019 Chinatown Arts Week––performing monologues from his play, The Last Emperor of Flushing, at the Chen Dance Center at 70 Mulberry Street. At the 2021 Chinatown Arts Festival, he performed monologues and songs from “HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk),” with special guest, Geoff Lee on lead guitar, at the 21 Pell St Chinatown Door Jams. Last year, the Festival co-hosted the paperback launch of Our Laundry, Our Town with the Chatham Square Library...tonight he’s baaack!
Ed Lin, a native New Yorker of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. His latest book in his Taipei Mystery series, Death Doesn't Forget, was published by Soho Crime. His young adult debut David Tung Can't Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College, was published by Kaya Press. Lin lives in Brooklyn with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung, and son.
Born in the Bronx, SJ Rozan lives in lower Manhattan. Her nineteen novels and eighty-plus short stories have won multiple awards, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, Macavity, and Japanese Maltese Falcon. She's received Life Achievement Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. SJ teaches and lectures widely, including an annual summer workshop in Assisi, Italy. (www.artworkshopintl.com.) Her newest books are THE MAYORS OF NEW YORK and THE MURDER OF MR. MA. www.sjrozan.net
Radha Vatsal’s new historical crime novel, No. 10 Doyers Street (coming March 2025), takes place in New York City’s Chinatown in the early 1900s. She is also the author of the acclaimed Kitty Weeks mystery novels set in World War I-era New York. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she earned her Ph.D. in Film History from Duke University and has worked as a film curator, political speechwriter, and freelance journalist. She lives in New York City.
Thank you to our community partner, Asian American Writers' Workshop!
