WE Blog @ AABANY

Please join the Asian American / Asian Research Institute for a special trilingual program, Chinese, English, Spanish: Writing a Third Literature of the Americas, on Friday, December 14, 2012, from 5:30PM to 9:30PM, at 25 West 43rd Street, 10th Floor, Room 1000, between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan. This program is free and open to the general public, however pre-registration is necessary due to limited space. A free boxed dinner is available to the first 50 registrants.

Since 30 years ago when writers such as Kingston, Huang, and Chin first made American readers aware of Chinese American literature, exciting new developments have taken place. Readers and scholars alike have discovered that “Chinese American literature” can no longer be limited to works written in English alone. Due to a number of factors including globalization, the rise of China, ethnic studies, and new critical scholarship, we are finding that the 21st century signals a “third literature of the Americas”—novels, stories, and poems written in English, Chinese, and Spanish.

These new developments have resulted in a special volume of Amerasia Journal published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center entitled “Towards a Third Literature: Chinese Writing in the Americas” edited by Russell C. Leong (CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at AAARI); Evelyn Hu-DeHart (Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at Brown University); and Wang Ning (Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Tsinghua University, Beijing). This trilingual program consists of an exciting panel discussion and a reading of selected works in English, Chinese, and Spanish by some of the editors and contributors to this special volume of Amerasia Journal (available at a special booksigning price during the program).

• Prof. Evelyn Hu-Dehart will provide a keynote overview of how and why Asians entered the literary scene of Central and Latin America. Prof. Dehart will introduce Prof. Kathleen López, a Latin American expert who will provide commentary. (Talk in English and Spanish.)

• Prof. Kathleen López is Assistant Professor in the Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies (LHCS) and the Department of History at Rutgers University. Her book, Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History, is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press (2013). Her research and teaching focus on the historical intersections between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, post-emancipation Caribbean societies, race and ethnicity in the Americas, and international migration.

• Prof. Russell Leong will introduce the special volume of Amerasia Journal. (Talk in English)

• Dr. Maan Lin, Associate Professor of Chinese and Spanish and Coordinator of the Chinese Program at Queensborough Community College, will talk about translating Kam Wen Siu’s “La primera espada del imperio.” (Talk in Chinese and Spanish.)

• Dr. Yibing Huang, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature at Connecticut College and past contributor to Amerasia Journal, will talk about Simon Ortiz in China, and bringing ethnic and minority writers for cross-literary exchanges in China. (Talk in Chinese and English.)

• Dr. Wen Jin, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, will talk about the future of racial and minority literary contacts from two nations. (Talk in Chinese and English.)

Co-Sponsors: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Asian American Studies Program – Hunter College, and Brown University 

For details and to register for this talk, please visit www.aaari.info/12-12-14Literature.htm