Zhang Ling (author)

Zhang Ling is a senior audiologist and fiction writer in Canada. She was born in Wenzhou, China and came to Canada in 1986 to pursue her MA in English at University of Calgary. She obtained her second MA degree in Communication disorders at the University of Cincinnati. She has published three novels, and two collections of short stories.

Prices

* "Lamb" and A Journey Home ranked among top ten by the Chinese Academy of Fiction Writing
* Winner of the Yuan Prize for Literature
* The People's Literature Award in China

Bibliography

* 《邮购新娘》 北京：作家，2004。
* 《雁过澡溪》 (四川成都：成都时代，2006。
* 《盲约》。广东广州：花城，2005。
* 《尘世》。广西南宁：广西人民，2004。

External websites

* Reading at York University
* Reading at University of Toronto at Scarborough

Xiaowen Zeng

Xiaowen Zeng（ 曾晓文） is a Chinese author living in Toronto, Canada. She was born in Heilongjiang, China, and received a Master degree in Literature from Nankai University, and a Master of Science from Syracuse University. She lived in the for 9 years, and immigrated to Canada in 2003. She currently works as an information systems manager. She is the vice- president of Chinese Pen Society of Canada, and a weekly columnist in the newspaper . She has published a few hundred short stories, pieces of prose, poems, and essays. Her works have been included in a number of literature collections.

Awards

* Literature award from Central Daily News in 1996 for short story “The Netter”.
* United Daily Literature Award for short story "The Spinning Coin" in 2004
* “The love and Mystery of Prague” won third place in World Chinese Travelogue Competition in 2008

Bibliography

* Shattered Dream in Texas . Tianjin Bai Hua Publishing House

Sun Bo

Introduction

Sun Bo is a senior editor of newspaper and writer in Toronto, Canada. He is the President of Chinese Pen Society of Canada . He is member of the Toronto Chinese Writers' Association .

Bibliography

Sun Bo was born in Shanghai,had been a lecturer at University before coming to Canada in 1990. He is the President of Chinese Pen Society of Canada from 2003.He has published over 10 books in Chinese, including the novels Reflux, Tears of Camellia, Men in 30’s and Juvenile Visa Students in Tears.

Novels

* Sun Bo ，《男人三十》 。北京：文化艺术，2000。
* Sun Bo ，《茶花泪》（Chahua lei）（Tears of Camellia） 北京：中国青年，2001.
* Sun Bo ，《茶花泪》（Chahua lei）（Tears of Camellia） 台湾：生智，2002
* Sun Bo ，《回流》 北京：中国青年，2002。
* Sun Bo ，《小留学生泪洒异国》（Xiao Liuxuesheng Leisa Yiguo）（Juvenile Visa Students in Tears） 北京：群众，2004。

Collections

* Wu Hua（吴华）、Sun Bo 、Shi Heng（诗恒）主编《西方月亮──加华作家短篇小说精选集》 台湾：水牛,2004。

* Wu Hua（吴华）、Sun Bo 、Shi Heng（诗恒）主编《叛逆玫瑰──加华作家中篇小说精选集》 台湾：水牛, 2004。

* Sun Bo 主编《旋转的硬币──加中笔会作品集》 四川成都: 成都时代，2007。

* Sun Bo 主编《走遍天下──首届世界华人游记征文大赛精选集》 加拿大：多蒙，2008。

* Xu Xueqing（徐学清）、Sun Bo 主编《枫情万种──加华作家散文精选集》 ,繁体字版（Traditional chinese character edition) 台湾：水牛,2005 。

* Xu Xueqing（徐学清）、Sun Bo 主编《枫情万种──加华作家散文精选集》 ，简体字版 北京：作家，2006。

* Sun Bo 、Yu YueYing（余月瑛），纪实文学集《小留学生闯世界》（Reportage Collection of The Interview with Visa Students）上海：少年儿童，2001。

* Sun Bo 、Yu YueYing（余月瑛），纪实文学集《枫叶国里建家园》 台湾：水牛, 1996。

* Sun Bo ，散文集《您好！多伦多》（Essay Collection of Hello Toronto）台湾：水牛,1995。

* Sun Bo ， 旅游集《多伦多》（Travel Collection of Toronto）台湾：太雅，first edition 2001,new edition 2006。

* Sun Bo ， 旅游集《上海》（Travel Collection of Shanghai）台湾：太雅，first edition 2001, new edition 2007。

Ma Jian (writer)

Ma Jian is a Chinese writer. He was born in Qingdao on the August 18 1953. In 1986, he moved to Hong Kong after a clampdown in which some his works were banned. In 1997, he moved to Germany, and in 1999 he again moved to England. He now lives in London with his partner and translator, Flora Drew.

Ma came to the attention of the English-speaking world with his story collection ''Stick Out Your Tongue'', translated into English in 2006. The stories are set in Tibet. Their most remarked-upon feature is that traditional Tibetan culture is not idealised, but rather depicted as harsh and often inhuman; one reviewer noted that the "stories sketch multi-generational incest, routine sexual abuse and ritual rape". The book was banned in as a "vulgar and obscene book that defames the image of our Tibetan compatriots."

His ''Beijing Coma'' tells the story of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 from the point of view of the fictional Dai Wei, a participant in the events left in a coma by the violent end of the protests. The comatose narrator functions as a metaphor for the ability to remember and the inability to act.

Works

*''Stick Out Your Tongue'' with 2006 English translation. Banned in China.
*''''
*''The Noodle Maker''
*''Beijing Coma''

Iasyr Shivaza

Iasyr Shivaza or Shiwaza was a Soviet Dungan poet, writer, editor, and scholar.

Name spelling

The writer's name was spelled ''Jas?l S?vaz?'' in the Latin-based alphabet that was in use in 1932-53, and Ясыр Шывазы in the modern Cyrillic Dungan alphabet. According to Rimsky-Korsakoff , his family name, Shivazy , has the meaning 'the tenth child'; the expression could be written in Chinese as 十娃子 . This kind of three-syllable family name is common among the Dungan people of the former Soviet Union.

Life

Iasyr Shivaza was born on May 18, 1906 in the village of Sokuluk some 30 km west of Bishkek, in what today is the Chuy Province of Kyrgyzstan. His parents and grandparents were born in China's Shaanxi province, and came to Kyrgyzstan from the in the early 1880s, after the defeat of the and the .

In 1916, when he was 10 years old, he was sent to study at the village's , and, as he mentioned later, it was only by luck that he has not become a mullah, like the other three students who reached the graduation.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Shivaza's father, Dzhudzhuza Shivaza participated in establishing Soviet power in the region, joining the in 1919, and later becoming the chairman of the .

Seventeen-year old Iasir Shivaza was chosen, by drawing lots , to go study at the Tatar Institute for Education of the Minority Group in Tashkent.
During the six years that he spent there, Shivaza, together with other Dungan students started working on designing a suitable alphabet for the Dungan language, and writing poetry in Dungan.

After graduation, he spent two month in the fall of 1930 teaching at a Dungan school in , participating in the creation of the first Dungan spelling books and readers. He was then transferred to an editing job at Kirgizgosizdat , where he worked until 1938, and then again in 1954-57. He continued both to work on textbooks for his people and to write poetry. At least three of his textbooks were published in 1933, and at 1934 he was admitted to the prestigious Union of Soviet Writers. He started translating Russian classics into the Dungan language as well, his translation of several Pushkin's poems being published in Frunze in 1937.

He worked for the Union of Kyrgyz Writers in 1938-1941, and then again in 1946-54. When the Nazi Germany , he started to do war work, in Moscow and sometimes on the front lines, primarily writing and translating materials for the news-sheets published for the 100,000 or so Kyrgyz soldiers in the Red Army.

The after-war period was a productive one in Shivaza's writing career. He also participated in the committees designing the new, Cyrillic-based Dungan alphabet, which was eventually introduced in 1953. In the 1950s he was finally able to meet Chinese writers from China, who would visit the Soviet Union at the time, and he made a trip to China himself in 1957 with a Soviet Dungan delegation.

As the Soviet Dungan newspaper resumed publication in 1957, Shivaza was appointed its editor-in-chief, holding that post until his retirement in 1965. The newspaper appeared for a while as "С?лян хуэйз? бо" , and was renamed "Шый?эди чи" .

Iasir Shivaza died on June 18, 1988.

Original works

Shivaza's literary production was ample and versatile. Along with politically loaded poems and stories, expected from any author who was to survive in Stalin's era, he wrote love poetry, poems out the past and present of his people and his land, about China, children's literature. Some of his poetry addressed to China, the land of his ancestors, welcoming the Communist revolution that was happening, or had just happened there.

Soviet Dungans being largely separated from China's written culture, the language of Shivaza's poetry and prose - and the Dungan literary language in general - is closer to the colloquial, sometimes dialectal Chinese than to the traditional written Chinese.
He was, however, familiar with some of the modern Chinese literature, such as works of Lu Xun, but, since he never had opportunity to learn Chinese characters, he read them in Russian translation.

Poem sample: "White Butterfly"

Following is Shivaza's short poem, "White Butterfly", originally published in 1974, along with its morpheme-by-morpheme "transcription" into the Chinese characters and the English translation by Rimsky-Korsakoff , p. 188-189.









The poet writes of a butterfly, who is happy in the here-and-now of the spring, but who is not going to see the fall with its golden leaves. He appears to make a botanical error, however, mentioning a variety of chrysanthemum ( among spring flowers, even though in reality they bloom in the fall.

Translations

Having participated in the creation of the Dungan alphabet and bringing literacy to the Dungan people, Shivaza also did a large amount of work in making literary works from other languages available in Dungan. He rendered a number of classical and modern works of Russian poetry into the Dungan language. He has translated a number of works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky. He translated song lyrics by Lebedev-Kumach and prose works by Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Maxim Gorky.

He also translated into Dungan some poems of the Ukrainian classic , of the Kyrgyz poets Sashylganov and Tokombaev, and even of the Belarusian Yanka Kupala.

Being fluent in Kyrgyz, Shivaza also translated some of his works into Kyrgyz.

Translation sample

Following are the first two stanzas of Shivaza's translation of Pushkin's The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda, its morpheme-by-morpheme "transcription" into the Chinese characters, and an English translation.:

Scholarly work

Main source

*Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer, "Iasyr Shivaza: The Life and Works of a Soviet Dungan Poet". Verlag Peter Lang GmbH, 1991. ISBN 3-631-43963-6. .

Other literature

* Сушанло Мухамед, Имазов Мухаме. "Совет хуэйз? вынщ??". Фрунзе, "Мектеп" чубанш?, 1988. . ISBN 5-658-00068-8.

Iris Chang

Iris Shun-Ru Chang was an historian and journalist. She was best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, ''''. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004. Chang is the subject of the 2007 biographical book, ''Finding Iris Chang'', as well as the 2007 documentary film ''Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking''.

Early life

The daughter of two mainland China-born university professors who emigrated from Taiwan, Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey and was raised in , where she attended University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois and graduated in 1985. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989, a master's degree in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and later worked as a ''New York Times'' stringer from Urbana-Champaign, in which capacity she wrote six front-page articles over the course of one year. After brief stints at the Associated Press and the ''Chicago Tribune'', she began her career as a writer, and also lectured and wrote articles for various magazines. She married Bretton Lee Douglas, whom she had met in college, and had one son, Christopher, who was 2 years old at the time of her death. She lived in San Jose, California in the final years of her life.

Works

Chang wrote three books documenting the experiences of s and Chinese Americans in history. Her first book, titled ''Thread of the Silkworm'' , tells the life story of the professor, Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen during the in the 1950s. Although Tsien was one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , and helped the military of the United States debrief scientists from Nazi Germany for many years, he was suddenly falsely accused of being a spy, a member of the Communist Party USA, and placed under house arrest from 1950 to 1955. Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen left for the People's Republic of China in September 1955 aboard the merchant ship ''President Cleveland''. Upon his return to China, Tsien developed the Dongfeng missile program, and later the Silkworm missile, which ironically would later be used against the United States by the Iraqi army during the and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

Her second book, '''' , was published on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, and was motivated in part by her own grandparents' stories about their escape from the massacre. It documents atrocities committed against Chinese by forces of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and includes interviews with victims. The book attracted both praise from some quarters for exposing the details of the atrocity, and criticism from others because of alleged inaccuracies. After publication of the book, she campaigned to persuade the Japanese government to apologise for its troops' wartime conduct and to pay compensation. The work was the first English-language full-length nonfiction account of the atrocity itself, and remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for 10 weeks. is a history of Chinese-Americans which argued that Chinese Americans were treated as perpetual outsiders. Consistent with the style of her earlier works, the book relied heavily on personal accounts, drawing its strong emotional content from each of their stories. She wrote, "The America of today would not be the same America without the achievements of its ethnic Chinese," and that "scratch the surface of every American celebrity of Chinese heritage and you will find that, no matter how stellar their achievements, no matter how great their contribution to U.S. society, virtually all of them have had their identities questioned at one point or another."

Public notability

Success as an author propelled Iris Chang into becoming a public figure. ''The Rape of Nanking'' placed her in great demand as a speaker and as an interview subject, and, more broadly, as a spokesperson for an entire viewpoint that the Japanese government had not done enough to compensate victims of their invasion of China. This became a political issue in the United States shortly after the book was published; Chang was one of the major advocates of a Congressional resolution proposed in 1997 to have the Japanese government apologize for war crimes, and met with First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1999 to discuss the issue. In one often mentioned incident :

...she confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on television, demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with his mere acknowledgement "that really unfortunate things happened, acts of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military". "It is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated," was her reaction.

Chang's visibility as a public figure increased with her final work, ''The Chinese in America'', where she argued that Chinese Americans were treated as perpetual outsiders. After her death she became the subject of tributes from fellow writers. Mo Hayder dedicated a novel to her. Reporter Richard Rongstad eulogized her as "Iris Chang lit a flame and passed it to others and we should not allow that flame to be extinguished."

In 2007, the documentary was dedicated to Chang, as well as the Chinese victims of Nanking.

Depression and death

Chang suffered a nervous breakdown in August 2004, which her family, friends and doctors attributed in part to constant sleep deprivation. At the time, she was several months into research for her fourth book, about the Bataan Death March, while simultaneously promoting ''The Chinese in America''. While on route to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where she planned to gain access to a "time capsule" of audio recordings from servicemen, she suffered an extreme bout of that left her unable to leave her hotel room in . A local veteran who was assisting her research helped her check into Norton Psychiatric Hospital in Louisville, where she was diagnosed with , placed on medication for three days and then released to her parents. After the release from the hospital, she continued to suffer from depression and was considered at risk for developing bipolar disorder. Chang was also reportedly deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research. Her work in Nanjing left her physically weak, according to one of her co-researchers.

On November 9, 2004 at about 9 a.m., Chang was found dead in her car by a county water district employee on a rural road south of and west of , in . Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself through the mouth with a revolver. At the time of her death she had been taking the medications Depakote and Risperdal to stabilize her mood.

The third note included:
There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about this than I do. I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.

Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention at Norton Hospital was the 's attempt to discredit me.

I had considered running away, but I will never be able to escape from myself and my thoughts. I am doing this because I am too weak to withstand the years of pain and agony ahead.

Reports said that news of her suicide hit the massacre survivor community in Nanjing hard. In tribute to Chang, the survivors held a service at the same time as her funeral, held at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Cupertino, California on Friday, November 12 2004, at the victims' memorial hall in Nanjing. In 2005, the victims memorial hall in Nanjing, which collects documents, photos, and human remains from the massacre, added a wing dedicated to Chang.

Him Mark Lai

Him Mark Lai is an historian. He is known as the “Dean of Chinese American History” by his academic peers, despite the fact that he is professionally trained as a mechanical engineer with no advanced training in the academic field of History. Him Mark Lai co-taught the first college course on Chinese American History with Philip Choy at San Francisco State University in 1969, and also taught the same course at UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Department in the 1970s.

Him Mark Lai’s most well known work is “Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on , 1910-1940”, written in conjunction with Judy Yung and Genny Lim. These three formed the History of Chinese Detained on Island Project to translate the Chinese poetry found on the walls of the and collect oral histories of detainees on Angel Island, based on the specific restrictions of the . Their resulting manuscript was independently published in 1980, and published by University of Washington Press in 1991. Lai joked to a newspaper reporter that “that book is the only one that makes him any money.”

In 1991 Him Mark Lai and Albert Cheng created the In Search of Roots Program through a partnership with the Chinese Historical Society of America, Chinese Culture Foundation, and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office from Guangdong Province, China. This year-long program trains a dozen Chinese American youths how to research their family history through National Archives and Records Administration documents and oral history during the Spring. Each Summer, the students visit their ancestral villages in the Pearl River Delta region of China. Upon their return, the students create a visual display of their genealogy and display it at the Chinese Cultural Center during .

In 2003, the Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley announced their “Him Mark Lai Collection,” over 200 linear feet of Lai’s private research material, which he donated to the library for use by other scholars.

In 2007, Him Mark Lai was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer, yet he continues his research and writing.

Organizations

*Min Qing, , President
*Chinese Historical Society of America
*Chinese Culture Center
*In Search of Roots Program

Publications

*A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus
*Island
*A History Reclaimed: An Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Language Materils on the Chinese of America
*Chinese America: History & Perspectives, Editor
*From Overseas Chinese to Chinese American: History of Development of Chinese American Society during the Twentieth Century
*Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions
*Chinese America: History & Perspectives, Editor

Education

*Nom Kue School, San Francisco Chinatown
*Commodore Stockton Elementary School
*Francisco Junior High School
*Galileo High School
*1945 Class Valedictorian City College of San Francisco
*1947 BS in Mechanical Engineering UC Berkeley

Filmography

*The Chinatown Files
*Him Mark Lai: The People’s Historian

Helen Zia

Helen Zia is an journalist and scholar who has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements for decades.

She was born in New Jersey to first generation immigrants from Shanghai. She entered Princeton University in the early 1970s and was a member of its first graduating class of women. As a student, Zia was among the founders of the Asian American Students Association. She was also a vocal anti-war activist, voicing her Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and a firm believer in feminism.

She entered medical school in 1974, but quit in 1976. She moved to Detroit, Michigan. She went to work as a construction laborer, an autoworker and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life’s work as a journalist and writer.

She is the author of ''Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People'', a finalist for the prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. President of the United States Bill Clinton quoted from ''Asian American Dreams'' at two separate speeches in the White House Rose Garden.

She is also co-author, with Wen Ho Lee, of ''My Country Versus Me'', which reveals what happened to the scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy for the People's Republic of China in the “worst case since the .”

Zia is former Executive Editor of ''Ms. Magazine''. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, books and anthologies. She was named one of the most influential Asian Americans of the decade by ''''.

Zia has received numerous journalism awards for her ground-breaking stories; her investigation of date rape at the University of Michigan led to campus demonstrations and an overhaul of its policies, while her research on women who join and organizations provoked new thinking on the relationship between race and gender violence in hate crimes.

Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from civil rights and peace to women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. In 1997, she testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the racial impact of the news media. She traveled to Beijing in 1995 to the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women as part of a journalists of color delegation. She has appeared in numerous news programs and films; her work on the 1980s Asian American landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is documented in the Academy Award nominated film, “''Who Killed Vincent Chin?''” and she was profiled in Bill Moyers' PBS documentary, “''Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.''”

Zia received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Law School of the City University of New York for bringing important matters of law and civil rights into public view.

Zia remained during much of her early career. She came out nationally on a live C-SPAN broadcast in the early 90s. She currently resides in the with her partner, Lia Shigemura. The pair were married in San Francisco in 2004. , and again in 2008

Ha Jin

Jīn Xuěfēi is a contemporary Chinese-American writer using the pen name Ha Jin . He was born in Liaoning, China. “Ha” comes from his favorite city, Harbin. In 1984, he came to America and began to write about China only in English. His works attract a lot of attention to Chinese culture and history.

Early life

In China

Ha Jin was born in Liaoning, China. His father was a military officer, and Jin joined the People's Liberation Army in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution. In 1981 he graduated from Heilongjiang University with a Bachelor's degree in English studies, and three years later obtained his in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University.
Ha Jin grew up in the chaos of early communist China Though he decided to write only in English for English speaking audiences, all his works are about China. Many of his novels are set in the Army where he stayed for 6 years. His favorite novel, Waiting, is, for example, a story of a doctor who is in an army hospital. Most of his stories are set during the Great Cultural Revolution.

In America

Ha Jin was on scholarship at Brandeis University when the 1989 happened. The Chinese government's forcible put-down hastened his decision to . He remained in the United States after his in 1992, publishing his first book of poems, ''Between Silences'', in 1990.

Poetry

Ha Jin has three poetries, Between Silences , Facing Shadows , and Wreckage . All his poetries read like short novels.

Career

He sets many of his stories and novels in China, in the fictional Muji City. He has won the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, '''' . He has received three Pushcart Prizes for fiction and a Kenyon Review Prize. Many of his short stories have appeared in ''The Best American Short Stories'' anthologies. His collection ''Under The Red Flag'' won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, while ''Ocean of Words'' has been awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award. The novel ''War Trash'' , set during the Korean War, won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ha Jin currently teaches at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He formerly taught at Emory University in Atlanta, .

Ha Jin is a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the ''American Academy in Berlin'', Germany, for Fall 2008.

Awards and Honors

? ''Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences ;
? ''PEN/Faulkner Award ;
? ''Townsend Prize for Fiction ;
? ''Asian American Literary Award ;
? ''Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellowship ;
? ''PEN/Faulkner Award ;
? ''Guggenheim Fellowship ;
? ''National Book Award ;
? ''PEN/Hemingway Award ;
? ''Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction

Bibliography

* ''Between Silences''
* ''Facing Shadows''
* ''Ocean of Words''
* ''Under the Red Flag''
* ''In the Pond''
* ''''
* ''The Bridegroom''
* ''Wreckage''
* ''The Crazed''
* ''War Trash''
* ''A Free Life''

Gordon H. Chang

, author
Gordon H. Chang is a professor of American history at Stanford University in the United States. His academic interests lie in the connection between race & ethnicity in America and American foreign relations.

Chang is author of ''Friends and Enemies: The United States, China and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972'' , Morning ''Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Wartime Writing, 1942-1945'' , ''Asian Americans and Politics: An Exploration'' , and ''Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present'' .

Gordon G. Chang

Gordon G. Chang is a lawyer and author, best known for his book, ''The Coming Collapse of China'' in which he argued that the hidden non-performing loans of the "" Chinese State banks would likely bring down the financial system and the communist government with it. In ''Nuclear Showdown : North Korea Takes On the World'' Chang suggests that Japan is the most likely target for North Korean aggression . Chang suggests that could be forestalled if there was concerted multi-national diplomacy, with some "limits to patience" backed up by threat of an all-out Korean war.

Chang graduated from Cornell University in 1973, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society.

He appeared as a special guest on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on July 17, 2006.

He should not be confused with professor Gordon H. Chang.

Gish Jen

Gish Jen is a contemporary writer.

Literary output

Several of her short stories have been reprinted in ''The Best American Short Stories''. Her piece "Birthmates", was selected as one of ''The Best American Short Stories of The Century'' by John Updike. Her works include three novels, ''Typical American'', ''Mona in the Promised Land'', and ''The Love Wife''. She has also written a collection of short fiction, prompted by her marriage to an Irish-American.

Her first novel, ''Typical American'', attempts to redefine Americanness as a preoccupation with identity. "As soon as you ask yourself the question, "What does it mean to be Irish-American, Iranian-American, Greek-American, you are American," she has said.

Her second novel, ''Mona in the Promised Land'' concerns the invention of ethnicity. ''The Love Wife'', her most recent novel, portrays an Asian American family with interracial parents and both biological and adopted children as "the new American family." She asks the question "What is a family?" as a way of asking, "What is a nation?"

Jen steps outside of the “ethnic writer” role in the sense that she does not focus primarily on ethnicity, but instead challenges the reader to ask him/herself what it means to be an American. In the past, the only Asian American writers to receive acclaim by a majority white readership were authors who portrayed Asians as that readership expected . When other Asian American authors, such as Louis Chu , presented a more nuanced and complicated picture of Asian American life, their works were not read by a larger public. In contrast, Gish Jen, alongside other contemporary Asian American authors, has received acclaim from both Asian American communities and a more mainstream, often white readership.
Jen's work suggests an antithesis of this perception of Chinese Americans. While many of her protagonists are Chinese or of Chinese decent, her goal is not to educate readers about the foreign world of Chinese American culture, but instead to ask her audience to consider the changing face of American identity. While ethnicity is addressed in her work, it is by no means her primary topic of concern.

Jen's characters are complex individuals who undergo transformations not based on essential formulas of ethnic identity. They live lives that seek to go beyond societal boundaries, be it through conventional notions of family or what it means to be an “Asian American.” Breaking down the duality built into “Asian American” suggests that one cannot quantify each “half” as if identity were a chemical composition. Jen's writing is “post-ethnic” in that it goes beyond cultural constructions, moving in a direction that seeks to re-define what it means to be American.

Critical studies

#"Interethnic Relationships in Chang-rae Lee's ''Native Speaker'' and Gish Jen's ''Birthmates''." By: Brada-Williams, Noelle. pp. 18-25 IN: Goldblatt, Roy ; Nyman, Jopi ; Stotesbury, John A. ; Singh, Amritjit ; ''Close Encounters of an Other Kind: New Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and American Studies''. Joensuu, Finland: Faculty of Humanities, University of Joensuu; 2005. xv, 278 pp.
#"A Quartet of Voices in Recent American Literature." By: Burns, Gerald T.; ''Philippine American Studies Journal'', 1991; 3: 1-8.
#"Material Bodies and Performative Identities: Mona, Neil, and the Promised Land." By: Byers, Michele; ''Philip Roth Studies'', 2006 Fall; 2 : 102-20.
#"Disjuncture at Home: Mapping the Domestic Cartographies of Transnationalism in Gish Jen's ''The Love Wife''." By: Chen, Shu-ching; ''Tamkang Review: A Quarterly of Literary and Cultural Studies'', 2006 Winter; 37 : 1-32.
#"Literary Reading and Intercultural Learning-Understanding Ethnic American Fiction in the EFL-Classroom." By: Donnerstag, Jürgen; ''Amerikastudien/American Studies'', 1992; 37 : 595-611.
#"From Story to Novel and Back Again: Gish Jen's Developing Art of Short Fiction." By: Feddersen, R. C.. pp. 349-58 IN: Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr. ; ''Creative and Critical Approaches to the Short Story''. Lewiston, NY: Mellen; 1997. v, 488 pp.
#"Gish Jen." By: Feddersen, R. C.. pp. 196-208 IN: Fallon, Erin ; Feddersen, R. C. ; Kurtzleben, James ; Lee, Maurice A. ; Rochette-Crawley, Susan ; Rohrberger, Mary ; ''A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English''. Westport, CT: Greenwood, for Society for the Study of the Short Story; 2001. xxxiv, 432 pp.
#"Reinventing a Chinese American Women's Tradition in Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Feng, Pin-chia; ''EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies'', 2002 Dec; 32 : 675-704.
#"'Who's Jewish?':Some Asian-American Writers and the Jewish-American Literary Canon." By: Freedman, Jonathan; ''Michigan Quarterly Review'', 2003 Winter; 42 : 230-54.
#"Immigrant Dreams and Civic Promises: Testing Identity in Early Jewish American Literature and Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''" By: Furman, Andrew; ''MELUS'', 2000 Spring; 25 : 209-26.
#"The Redefinition of the 'Typical Chinese' in Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Huang, Betsy; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism'', 1997 Summer; 4 : 61-77.
#"'Cheap, On Sale, American Dream': Contemporary Asian American Women Writers' Responses to American Success Mythologies." By: Kafka, Phillipa. pp. 105-28 IN: Blazek, William ; Glenday, Michael K. ; ''American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Literature''. Liverpool, England: Liverpool UP; 2005. x, 305 pp.
#"Imagined Cities of China." By: Lee, A. Robert; ''Wasafiri: Journal of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures and Film'', 1995 Autumn; 22: 25-30.
#"Imagined Cities of China: Timothy Mo's London, Sky Lee's Vancouver, Fae Mynenne Ng's San Francisco and Gish Gen's New York." By: Lee, A. Robert; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism'', 1996 Fall; 4 : 103-19.
#"About Gish Jen." By: Lee, Don; ''Ploughshares'', 2000 Fall; 26 : 217-22.
#"Failed Performances of the Nation in Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Lee, Rachel. pp. 63-79 IN: Franklin, Cynthia ; Hsu, Ruth ; Kosanke, Suzanne ; ''Navigating Islands and Continents: Conversations and Contestations in and around the Pacific''. Honolulu, HI: College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, University of Hawaii; 2000. xxx, 275 pp.
#"Gish Jen." By: Lee, Rachel. pp. 215-32 IN: Cheung, King-Kok ; ''Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers''. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000. 402 pp.
#''The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation'' By: Lee, Rachel C.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP; 1999. xi, 205 pp.
#''The Americas of Asian-American Literature: Nationalism, Gender, and Sexuality in 'America Is in the Heart', Jen's 'Typical American', and 'Dogeaters''' By: Lee, Rachel C.; Dissertation Abstracts International, 1996 Feb; 56 : 3126A-27A. U of California, Los Angeles, 1995.
#"When the West Is One: Undoing and Re-Doing the Hegemony of U. S. Culture in Diasporic Writing by Chinese American Women." By: Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. pp. 129-38 IN: Atherton, John ; Bruyère, Claire ; ''Lire en Amérique''. Paris, France: Institut d'Etudes Anglophones, Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot; 1992. 172 pp.
#"Mona on the Phone: The Performative Body and Racial Identity in ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Lin, Erika T.; ''MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States'', 2003 Summer; 28 : 47-57.
#"Cultural Cross-Dressing in ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Ling, Amy. pp. 227-36 IN: Davis, Rocío G. ; Ludwig, S?mi ; ''Asian American Literature in the International Context: Readings on Fiction, Poetry, and Performance''. Hamburg, Germany: Lit; 2002. 265 pp.
#"Rice Talk: Discoursing Asian American Literature." By: Lopez, Ferdinand M.; ''Unitas: A Quarterly for the Arts and Sciences'', 2003 Mar; 76 : 76-97.
#"American Exceptionalism and Multiculturalism: Myths and Realities." By: Madsen, Deborah L.. pp. 177-87 IN: Maeder, Beverly ; Representing Realities: Essays on American Literature, Art and Culture. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr; 2003. 228 pp.
#"Artefact, Commodity, Fetish: The Aesthetic Turn in Chinese American Literary Study." By: Madsen, Deborah L.. pp. 185-97 IN: Wang, Jennie ; ''Querying the Genealogy: Comparative and Transnational Studies in Chinese American Literature''. Shanghai, China: Shanghai yi wen chu ban she; 2006. 557 pp.
#"''MELUS'' Interview: Gish Jen." By: Matsukawa, Yuko; ''MELUS'', 1993-1994 Winter; 18 : 111-20.
#"Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Partridge, Jeffrey F. L.. pp. 215-32 IN: Parini, Jay ; ''American Writers: Classics, Volume II''. New York, NY: Scribner's; 2004. xiv, 336 pp.
#''Crossroads and Mirrors in New World Literature, 1814-1997: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Charles Chesnutt, and Gish Jen'' By: Poehlmann, Bess Lyons; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2004 June; 64 : 4455. Brandeis U, 2004.
#"Affirmations: Speaking the Self into Being." By: Samarth, Manini; ''Parnassus: Poetry in Review'', 1992; 17 : 88-101.
#"Writing about the Things That Are Dangerous: A Conversation with Gish Jen." By: Satz, Martha; ''Southwest Review'', 1993 Winter; 78 : 132-40.
#"The Symbolic Triune of Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Schaefer, Judith; ''Notes on Contemporary Literature'', 2003 Sept; 33 : 10-12.
#"Gish Jen ." By: Simal, Bego?a. pp. 142-54 IN: Madsen, Deborah L. ; ''Asian American Writers''. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2005. xxiv, 460 pp.
#"Gish Jen: 'The Book That Hormones Wrote.'" By: Smith, Wendy; ''Publishers Weekly'', June 7, 1999; 246 : 59-58.
#"Success Chinese American Style: Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: TuSmith, Bonnie; ''Proteus: A Journal of Ideas'', 1994 Fall; 11 : 21-26.
#"'An Identity Switch': A Critique of Multiculturalism in Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Wang, Chih-ming. pp. 139-54 IN: Brada-Williams, Noelle ; Chow, Karen ; ''Crossing Oceans: Reconfiguring American Literary Studies in the Pacific Rim''. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP; 2004. xiv, 200 pp.
#"'An Onstage Costume Change': Modernity and Immigrant Experience in Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Wang, Chih-ming; ''NTU Studies in Language and Literature'', 2002 Dec; 11: 71-96.
#"Writing on the Slash: Experience, Identification, and Subjectivity in Gish Jen's Novels." By: Wang, Chih-ming; ''Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities'', 2001 Oct; 13: 103-17.
#"But What in the World Is an Asian American? Culture, Class and Invented Traditions in Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia; ''EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies'', 2002 Dec; 32 : 641-74.
#"Academic Dissidentifications." By: Wu, Yung-Hsing; ''Profession'', 2004; 107-17.
#"Becoming Americans: Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Xiaojing, Zhou. pp. 151-63 IN: Payant, Katherine B. ; Rose, Toby ; ''The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving Out a Niche.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood; 1999. xxvii, 190 pp.

Georgia Lee

Georgia Lee is an independent film director. Her work includes the 2006 film ''Red Doors''.

Personal life

Lee graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biochemistry. Actress Kathy Shao-Lin Lee is her younger sister. She was an apprentice on principal photography to Martin Scorsese on Gangs of New York.

Career

After graduation, Lee worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Film

Lee apprenticed on ''Gangs of New York'' after director Martin Scorsese saw Lee's first short film, ''The Big Dish: Tiananmen '89''. Lee's next short film was ''Educated '', which was shown in over 30 festivals around the world.

Lee wrote and directed the feature film, ''Red Doors''. It won the Best Narrative Feature Award in the NY, NY Competition at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. It has also won the Special Jury Award for Ensemble Acting at CineVegas, and the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Award for Screenwriting at Outfest.

Lee has served as juror for both the Sundance Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival.

Career

After graduation, Lee worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Frank Chin

Frank Chin is an author and playwright.

Life and Career

Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in . He attended college at the University of California, Berkeley. He received an American Book Award in 1989 for a collection of short stories, and another in 2000 for Lifetime Achievement. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers in Asian American theatre. He first gained notoriety as a playwright in the 1970s. His play, the "Chickencoop Chinaman" was the first by an Asian American to be produced on a major New York stage. Stereotypes of Asian Americans, and traditional Chinese folklore are common themes in much of his work. Frank Chin has accused other Asian American writers, particularly Maxine Hong Kingston, for furthering such stereotypes and misrepresenting the traditional stories.

In addition to his work as an author and playwright, Frank Chin has also worked extensively with Japanese American resisters of the draft in WWII. His novel, ''Born in the U.S.A.'', is dedicated to this subject. In the mid-1960s, he taught Robbie Krieger, a member of The Doors how to play the Flamenco guitar.

Bibliography

Plays

*''The Chickencoop Chinaman'' the first play by an Asian American to be produced as a mainstream New York theater production.
*''The Year of the Dragon '' ISBN 0-295-95833-2

Books

*''Yardbird Reader Volume 3''
*''Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Asian American Writers'' ISBN 0-385-01243-8
*''The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co'' ISBN 0-918273-44-7
*''Donald Duk'' ISBN 0-918273-83-8
*''The Big AIIIEEEEE!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature'' ISBN 0-452-01076-4
*''Gunga Din Highway'' ISBN 1-56689-037-3
*''Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays'' ISBN 0-8248-1959-4
*''Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947'' ISBN 0-7425-1852-3

Works in Anthologies

* Food for All His Dead, in ''The Young American Writers'' ISBN 0932360041
* Goong Hoi Fat Choi, in ''19 Necromancers from Now''
* The Year of the Dragon, in ''Modern American Scenes for Student Actors'' ISBN 0553145582
* The Only Real Day, in ''The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology, Selections from the American Book Awards 1980-1990'' ISBN 0393308324
* Yes, Young Daddy, in ''Coming of Age in America'' ISBN 1565841468

Movies

''The Year of the Dragon'' was an adaptation of Chin's play of the same name. Starring George Takei, the film was televised in 1975 as part of the PBS Great Performances series.

Documentaries

''What's Wrong with Frank Chin'' is a 2005 about Chin's life.

Frank Chin was interviewed in the documentary ''The Slanted Screen'' , directed by Jeff Adachi, about the representation of Asian and Asian American men in Hollywood.

Critical studies

Books

#''Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow: Ralph Ellison, Frank Chin, and the Literary Politics of Identity'' By: Kim, Daniel Y.. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP; 2005. xxviii, 286 pp.
#''Frank Chin'' By: Goshert, John Charles. Boise: Boise State U; 2002. 54 pp.

Articles/Chapters

#Chinese American Writers of the Real and the Fake: Authenticity and the Twin Traditions of Life Writing By: Madsen, Deborah L.; ''Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Americaines,'' 2006; 36 : 257-71.
#Frank Chin By: Goshert, John Charles. IN: Madsen, ''Asian American Writers.'' Detroit: Gale; 2005. pp. 44-57
#''Other Possible Identities: Three Essays on Minor American Literatures'' By: Goshert, John Charles; Dissertation, Purdue U, 2001.
#'China' in the American Diaspora By: Suoqiao, Qian. IN: Shell, ''American Babel: Literatures of the United States from Abnaki to Zuni.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP; 2002. pp. 404-30
# Thinking at the Limits of Asian American Literature By: Goshert, John; ''Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies,'' 2000 Spring-Summer; 4 : 39 paragraphs.
#Frank Chin By: Huang, Guiyou. IN: Nelson, ''Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood; 2000. pp. 48-55
#Frank Chin By: Lawrence, Keith. IN: Cracroft, ''Twentieth-Century American Western Writers.'' Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale; 1999. pp. 42-50
#''Race, Writing, and Manhood: Ambivalent Identifications and American Literary Identity in Frank Chin and Ralph Ellison'' By: Kim, Daniel Young-Hoon; Dissertation, U of California, Berkeley, 1997.
#''Self, Nations, and the Diaspora: Re-Reading Lin Yutang, Bai Xianyong, and Frank Chin'' By: Shen, Shuang; Dissertation,City U of New York, 1998.
#'''', Frank Chin, and the Chinese Heroic Tradition By: Chu, Patricia P.; ''Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory,'' 1997 Autumn; 53 : 117-39.
#''A Politics of Representation: Articulating Identities in Contemporary Asian-American Literature'' By: Chu, Janet Hyunju; Dissertation, State U of New York, Stony Brook, 1996.
#The Problematics of 'Cultural Translation': A Chinese Diasporic View of ''The Woman Warrior'' By: Liu, Toming Jun; ''Journal of American Studies of Turkey,'' 1996 Fall; 4: 15-30.
#Dublin to Chinatown: James Joyce and Frank Chin By: Davis, Robert Murray; ''Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies,'' 1996; 1: 117-22.
#The Dialogic Richness of '''' By: Wang, Qun; ''Paintbrush: A Journal of Poetry and Translation,'' 1995 Autumn; 22: 76-84.
#''The Power of Myth: A Study of Chinese Elements in the Plays of , , , and Chin'' By: Bai, Niu; Dissertation, Boston U, 1995.
#Death in the West: A Multicultural Adventure By: Davis, Robert Murray; ''Redneck Review of Literature,'' 1994 Spring-Fall; 26-27: 7-9.
#Daddy, I Don't Know What You're Talking About By: Cho, Fiona; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism,'' 1993 Fall; 1 : 57-61.
#Uncanny Doubles: Nationalism and Repression in Frank Chin's 'Railroad Standard Time' By: Chiu, Jeannie; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism,'' 1993 Fall; 1 : 93-107.
#Frank Chin: Iconoclastic Icon By: Davis, Robert Murray; ''Redneck Review of Literature,'' 1992 Fall; 23: 75-78.
#The Production of Chinese American Tradition: Displacing American Orientalist Discourse By: Li, David Leiwei. IN: Lim and Ling, ''Reading the Literatures of Asian America.'' Philadelphia: Temple UP; 1992. pp. 319-32
#The Formation of Frank Chin and Formations of Chinese American Literature By: Li, David Leiwei. IN: Hune, Kim, Fugita, and Ling, ''Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives.'' Pullman: Washington State UP; 1991. pp. 211-23
#Frank Chin: The Chinatown Cowboy and His Backtalk By: Kim, Elaine H.; ''Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought,'' 1978; 20: 78-91.
#The Chinese-American Literary Scene: A Galaxy of Poets and a Lone Playwright By: Wand, David Hsin-Fu; ''Proceedings of the Comparative Literature Symposium,'' 1978; 9: 121-46.
#Two Angry Ethnic Writers By: Simon, Myron; ''MELUS'', 1976; 3 : 20-24.

Fae Myenne Ng

The daughter of seamstress and a laborer, Fae Myenne Ng was born in San Francisco. She attended the University of California-Berkeley, and receiced her M.F.A. at Columbia University.

'''' , her first novel, is a story about a Chinese American family. Her short stories have appeared in the American Voice, Calys, City Lights Review, Crescent Review, Harper's, and in a number of anthologies. She was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently lives in New York City.

Sources

Eric Liu

Eric Liu is an writer living in Seattle, Washington.

Life and career

He was born in , New York to Chinese parents who immigrated from Taiwan. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School and is a former lecturer at University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs. Liu served as a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and later as the president's deputy domestic policy adviser. He was also an executive at RealNetworks.

Liu is co-founder of The True Patriot Network, a political action tank framed upon the ideas he and Nick Hanauer presented in their 2007 book, ''The True Patriot''. The authors define true patriotism as country above self and explain how patriotism is lived every day in service to others, stewardship of resources, shared sacrifice, and other progressive values.

He wrote the 'Teachings' column for magazine from 2002-2005. He is the author of ''Guiding Lights: The People Who Lead Us Toward Our Purpose in Life'' , about transformative mentors, leaders and teachers, and ''The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker'' , about race, identity and acculturation.

''Guiding Lights'' is the Official Book of National Mentoring Month and has led to the creation of a broad civic campaign to highlight mentorship in all walks of life.

In ''The Accidental Asian'', Liu explores identity, in particular, the meaning of his own American and Asian American identity. "I define my identity, then, in the simplest way possible: according to those with whom I identify. And I identify with whoever moves me".

Liu created a magazine called ''The Next Progressive'' and has often been cited as a spokesman for Generation X.

Critical studies

#David Leiwei Li, "On Ascriptive and Acquisitional Americanness: The Accidental Asian and the Illogic of Assimilation." ''Contemporary Literature,'' 2004 Spring; 45 : 106-34.

Emily Wu

Emily Wu , born 1958, Beijing, is a Chinese-American writer whose short stories have appeared in magazines and newspapers, and in an anthology of poetry and prose. She went to the US in 1981 and has a BA in English from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, and an MBA from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

In 2006 she published a highly-acclaimed memoir, '''', telling her story of growing up in China in a "black" family during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The book is a counterpart to the memoir written by her father, the translator and writer Wu Ningkun, who was denounced as an ultra-rightist during the late '50s. Emily Wu is also a featured subject, together with
Shi Tianjian and Yan Yunxiang, in Chris Billing's 2005 documentary ''''. From 1968 onwards more than 17 million high school students and young adults were sent "up to the mountain, down to the village" to "learn from the peasants". In the documentary three of those youngsters revisit the remote villages to which they were sent thirty years ago.

David Wong Louie

David Wong Louie is an writer of novels and .

Literary career

He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa in 1981 and a B.A. from Vassar College in 1977. He teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His works include ''Pangs of Love'', a collection of short stories, and the novel ''The Barbarians are Coming''. He co-edited ''A Contemporary Asian American Anthology'' with Marilyn Chin.

Awards

''Pangs of Love'' received the 1991 First Fiction Award from the Los Angeles Times and the Ploughshares First Fiction Book Award. It was also named a Notable Book by the New York Times and a Favorite. ''The Barbarians are Coming'' won the . He has also won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award.

In 2001, he was awarded a . He has also had a fellowship with the National Foundation for the Arts.

Critical studies

from March 2008:
#Caucasian Partners and Generational Conflicts-David Wong Louie's ''Pangs of Love'' By: Wen-ching Ho, ''EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies'', 2004 June; 34 : 231-64.
#'The Most Outrageous Masquerade': Queering Asian-American Masculinity By: Crystal Parikh, ''MFS: Modern Fiction Studies'', 2002 Winter; 48 : 858-98.
#Toward a More Worldly World Series: Reading Game Three of the 1998 American League Championship and David Wong Louie's 'Warming Trends' By: Jeff Partridge, ''American Studies International'', 2000 June; 38 : 115-25.
#David Wong Louie By: Stacey Yukari Hirose. IN: Cheung, ''Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers''. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000. pp. 189-214
#Saddle ; ''Zyzzyva'', 1999 Winter; 15 : 116-21.
#Chinese/Asian American Men in the 1990s: Displacement, Impersonation, Paternity, and Extinction in David Wong Louie's ''Pangs of Love'' By: Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. IN: Okihiro, Alquizola, Rony and Wong, ''Privileging Positions: The Sites of Asian American Studies''. Pullman: Washington State UP; 1995. pp. 181-91
#Cynthia Kadohata and David Wong Louie: The Pangs of a Floating World By: Sheila Sarkar; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism'', 1994 Winter; 2 : 79-97.
#Affirmations: Speaking the Self into Being By: Manini Samarth; ''Parnassus: Poetry in Review'', 1992; 17 : 88-101.

Dan Kwong

Dan Kwong is an performance artist, writer, teacher and visual artist. He has been presenting his since 1989, often drawing upon his own life experiences to explore personal, historical and social issues. He is of mixed Asian American heritage . His works intertwine storytelling, multimedia, dynamic physical movement, poetry, martial arts and music. Kwong is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is an Artist with the performing arts organization, Great Leap, and a Resident Artist at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, California.

Performance works

Solo Performance

* ''Secrets of the Samurai Centerfielder''
* ''Tales From the Fractured Tao''
* ''Monkhood in 3 Easy Lessons''
* ''Correspondence of a Dangerous Enemy Alien''
* ''The Dodo Vaccine''
* ''The Night the Moon Landed on 39th Street''
* ''It's Great 2B American''

These works explore subjects such as cultural confusion and discovery in a mixed heritage family; allergic reactions to “Model Minority Syndrome”; dysfunctional family “Asian American-style”; Asian male identity; Japanese American internment during WWII; the impact of HIV/AIDS on Asian Americans. Kwong has performed in venues across the United States and in England, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and Canada.

Plays

Kwong's first play, ''Be Like Water'', was developed with , and received its world premiere at East West Players in Los Angeles, in September 2008, as part of the EWP mainstage season.

Published works

Kwong's essays and performances have been published in The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Getting Your Solo Act Together, High Performance Magazine, and various anthologies including On A Bed of Rice - A Feast of Asian American Erotica; Yellow Light - The Flowering of Asian American Art and Living in America - A Pop Culture Reader. His visual artwork is included in Let’s Get It On - The Politics of Black Performance published by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
His first book, "FROM INNER WORLDS TO OUTER SPACE - The Multimedia Performances of Dan Kwong," was published by University of Michigan Press in 2004.

Teaching and curating

As a teacher Kwong has led numerous workshops in autobiographical writing and performing throughout the U.S. and in Hong Kong, London, Indonesia, Thailand and Canada. He is founder and curator of “Treasure In The House,” L.A.’s first and visual art festival, presented at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California since 1991.

Fellowships

Kwong is recipient of numerous fellowships, from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Art Matters Inc., Brody Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace, N.Y., , California Community Foundation and has been nominated twice for the Alpert Award in the Arts.

Cathy Bao Bean

Cathy Bao Bean, a writer and educator, is the author of ''The Chopsticks-Fork Principle: A Memoir and Manual'' . She lives in Blairstown, New Jersey, with her husband, artist Bennett Bean.

''The Chopsticks-Fork Principle'', a humorous but poignant memoir, recounts Bao Bean's experiences as a Chinese immigrant growing up in the United States. Bao Bean uses the story of her own immigrant experience to explain how to reconcile the expectations of families and society at large. She also explains how to raise a child in a respectful context while also choosing the “path less traveled.”

Bao Bean was born Bao Kwei-yee in Kweilin, China, on August 27, 1942, to Sandys and Dora Bao. Her father, Sandys Bao, represented the Republic of China at the International Sugar Council of the United Nations; he also served as Vice President of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation. Cathy Bao Bean has two sisters, Bette Bao Lord and Jean Bao.

When Bao Bean's father was sent to New York for a temporary assignment in 1946, he insisted on his family accompanying him. Her mother, however, thought that only the eldest, eight-year-old Bette, would benefit from the trip. When four-year-old Cathy heard of the plans, she packed her doll suitcase and parked in front of the door until her mother relented. The baby of the family, Jean, was left behind in the care of relatives to spare her the ordeal of travel.
When Mao’s “bamboo curtain” fell in 1949, the four Baos remained in the United States and the youngest finally joined them in 1962. .

Bao Bean's first taste of the American educational system was at Public School #8 in Brooklyn, New York. When Bao Bean started school she could speak no English. By 1949, when the Bao family moved to Elmwood Park, New Jersey, Bao Bean started "to think in English and forget in Chinese", as she notes in ''The Chopsticks-Fork Principle''. The family finally settled in Teaneck, New Jersey, where she attended Teaneck High School.

Bao Bean received her B.A. in 1964 from Jackson College of Tufts University and her M.A. from Claremont Graduate College, Claremont, California in 1969. She was also awarded a Kent Fellowship, from the Danforth Foundation, 1965-67 and 1971-72.

Bao Bean taught philosophy at Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, New Jersey and at East Stroudsburg University, Pennsylvania in the 1980s and early 1990s. From 1968 to 1971, she taught at .

More recently, she has led diversity workshops and spoken on a wide range of issues at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Following the publication of ''The Chopsticks-Fork Principle'', Bao Bean was featured on ''The Point with Mindy Todd'', NPR Cape Cod; ''The Smoki Bacon Show'', Boston; ''Under the Radar with Ron Saxon'' NPR NJ & PA; ''Many Voices, Many Visions'', 13WHAM-TV Rochester. She was also interviewed on CNN, WYPL radio, as well as on NBC, ABC and Fox television affiliates.

Bao Bean is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Claremont Graduate University School of the Arts and Humanities; the Board of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities; and a member of ''The Star-Ledger'' Scholarship Committee. She is also an active member of the Society for Values in Higher Education and a founding member of the Ridge and Valley Conservancy.

Bao Bean is the business manager and accountant for artist Bennett Bean. In addition, she teaches aerobics as a service to the Frelinghuysen Township Recreation Committee, New Jersey.

Bao Bean and her husband Bennett Bean have a son, William Bao Bean.

Selected works

* ''The Chopsticks-Fork Principle: A Memoir and Manual'', We Press, 2002.
* ''Journal of College and Character'', Volume VI, Number 8, November 2005

Sources

*
*
*

Quotes

*"No father - especially an immigrant from China - says to his daughter, "Please, marry an artist."
*"None of it has been painless. All of it has been fun, except the cooking."

C. Y. Lee (author)

C.Y. Lee is a Chinese American author perhaps best known for his best selling 1957 novel ''The Flower Drum Song'', which inspired the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, II musical ''Flower Drum Song''.

Biography

Born in 1917 in Hunan province, China, Lee belonged to a family of distinguished scholars. He earned a bachelor's degree from Xi'nan University, then, in 1943, emigrated to the United States, where he earned an MFA in playwriting from Yale University in 1947. He was a contributor to Radio Free Asia. Lee was a journalist working for two Chinatown, San Francisco, California newspapers, ''Chinese World'' and ''Young China'' when he penned his landmark tale of generational and cross-cultural conflict in the early 1950s. He lived in San Francisco's Chinatown to turn his short story into a novel. It was he who suggested going to Forbidden City to watch Asians sing and dance, with Jack Soo quitting his job as emcee to perform in the Broadway production.

Flower Drum Song

Lee's bestselling 1957 novel ''The Flower Drum Song'' was adapted as a Rodgers and Hammerstein that opened in 1958. The original production was the first Broadway show to feature Asian American players. The 1961 film jump-started the careers of the first generation of Asian American actors, including Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, and Jack Soo. On October 2, 2001, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles premiered David Henry Hwang's adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's ''Flower Drum Song'' to glowing reviews, in the first production that literally was an all-Asian cast of actors and voices. Its initial run was extended, and after several months, the production moved to Broadway.

Some observers felt that Lee's novel perpetuated stereotypes of Asians. The novel was a New York Times bestseller, but quickly went out of print. The first ethnic studies programs in the late 1960s did not accept Lee's playful vision of mixing Chinese and American traditions. For many years the book was rejected by young Asian Americans as being "too white face" or "Uncle Tom". Lee was a Chinese immigrant and wrote of the society as he saw it at that time, perhaps an example of the very generation gap portrayed in the musical. While mainstream America had fueled Lee's initial success, the new Asian American movement's consciousness-raising had all but buried Lee's evocation of the Chinese experience in America. Largely in conjunction with the 2002 Broadway revival of the musical, the novel was made available again as a reprint.

Lee, still living, was interviewed on the 2006 DVD release of the movie, and worked with Hwang in the rewriting of the musical.

Works by C. Y. Lee

* ''The Flower Drum Song'' . Lee's novel about generational conflict within an Asian American family over an arranged marriage in San Francisco's Chinatown
** adapted into a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1958.
* ''Lover's Point''
* ''The Sawbwa and His Secretary''
* ''Madame Goldenflower''
* ''Cripple Mah and the New Order''
* ''The Vrigin Market''
* ''The Land of the Golden Mountain''
* ''The Days of the Tong Wars''
* ''China Saga''
* ''The Second Son of Heaven''
* ''Gate of Rage''

Sources

* ''The Chronology of American Literature'', edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright ? 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Bette Bao Lord

Bette Bao Lord is a Chinese American writer and civic activist.

Biography

She was born in Shanghai, China .
Bao Lord has written eloquently about her painful childhood experiences as a Chinese immigrant in the post-World War II United States in her autobiographical children's book ''In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson''. In this book she describes her struggle to learn English and to become accepted by her classmates.

Today, Bao Lord is a distinguished novelist and writer, and serves as chair of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House.

President Clinton has hailed Ms. Bao Lord as "someone who writes so powerfully about the past and is working so effectively to shape the future." Her First novel, ''Spring Moon'' , set in pre-revolutionary China, was an international bestseller and American Book Award nominee for best first novel. ''The Middle Heart'' , Bao Lord's most recent novel, spans 70 years of modern Chinese history, ending in 1989 with the student-led demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.

Bao Lord received an MA from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and graduated with her BA from Tufts University. She married Winston Lord, later an Ambassador to China, in 1962 and they have a grown son and daughter.

Ms. Bao Lord is a recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.

Selected works

* ''Eighth moon; the true story of a young girl’s life in Communist China, by Sansan as told to Bette Lord'', New York, Harper & Row, 1964.
* ''Spring Moon : a novel of China'', Boston, Massachusetts : G.K. Hall, 1982.
* ''In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson'', New York : Harper & Row, 1984.
* ''Legacies : a Chinese Mosaic'', New York : Alfred A. Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1990.
* ''The Middle Heart'', New York : Alfred A. Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1996.

Ben Fong-Torres

Benjamin Fong-Torres is an journalist, author, and best known for his association with ''Rolling Stone'' magazine and the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' .

Due to the , Fong-Torres' father, Ricardo Fong-Torres , changed his surname to Torres and posed as a citizen in order to emigrate to the United States. His family later adopted the hyphenated surname, ''Fong-Torres''. He is the brother of Shirley Fong-Torres.

He was portrayed in the film ''Almost Famous'' by actor Terry Chen. The fictional version of Fong-Torres was character 's at ''Rolling Stone''.

In real life, Fong-Torres was a writer and senior editor of ''Rolling Stone'' from almost the magazine's inception. He conducted interviews for ''Rolling Stone'' of entertainment figures including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, comedian Steve Martin and Linda Ronstadt's first cover story in 1975. A Fong-Torres interview with Ray Charles was awarded the Deems Taylor Award for Magazine Writing in 1974.

Fong-Torres was also a rock DJ for San Francisco radio station KSAN-FM in the 1970s. On television, he is the Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of the Chinese New Year Parade broadcast on KTVU in San Francisco. In recent years, he has published ''Hickory Wind'', a biography of Gram Parsons; ''The Rice Room'', a memoir; ''The Hits Just Keep on Coming'', a history of Top 40 radio, and two compilations of past articles, ''Not Fade Away'' and ''Becoming Almost Famous'' . His book with The Doors was published by Hyperion in November 2006. Since July 2005, he has written the bi-weekly column "Radio Waves" in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Datebook. He is also a contributing editor to '''' magazine, and the music editor for TONEAudio, a web-based audio publication. He is now the host of "Backstage" which is aired from 7-9 am and 7-9 pm on San Francisco's KFRC-FM.

Ben Fee

Ben Fee was a Chinese American writer and labor organizer who rose to prominence in the Chinatowns of San Francisco and in the mid-twentieth century. He was president of the Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association and leader of the Chinese section of the United States Communist Party.

Labor organizer

The son of an American-born Chinese interpreter Fee moved to the United States at the age of 13. In 1934 he was employed by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union to organize Chinese garment workers in San Francisco. However his subsequent membership of and advocacy for the Communist Party alienated the Chinatown establishment and the union, which terminated his employment in 1938.

Further Reading

* "Ben's Way" by Don Wong in ''Chinese Americans Past & Present" by Don Wong and Irene Dea Collier, 1977.

Anchee Min

Anchee Min is a , photographer, musician, and author who lives in San Francisco and . Min's memoir, ''Red Azalea'', and her subsequent novels are either or reflect a particular time in Chinese history with an emphasis on strong female characters, most notably Jiang Qing, the wife of Chairman Mao, and , the last ruling empress of China.

Born in Shanghai, Min was sent to a labor camp at seventeen where she was discovered by talent scouts. She worked as an actress at the Shanghai Film Studio and went to the United States in 1984 with the help of actress Joan Chen. She is married to author Lloyd Lofthouse.

Memoir

''Red Azalea''

Fiction

*''''
*''Becoming Madame Mao''
*''''
*''Empress Orchid''
*''''

Amy Tan

Amy Tan is an writer of descent whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her most popular fiction work, ''The Joy Luck Club'', became a commercially .

Tan has written several other books, including ''The Kitchen God's Wife'', ''The Hundred Secret Senses'', and ''The Bonesetter's Daughter'', and a collection of non-fiction essays entitled ''The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings''. Her most recent book, ''Saving Fish From Drowning'', explores the tribulations experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jungles of Burma. In addition, Tan has written two children's books: ''The Moon Lady'' and '''' , which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot on encouraging children to write.

Tan received her bachelors and master's degrees in English and linguistics from San José State University.

Currently, she is the literary editor for ''West'', Los Angeles Times' Sunday magazine, and did an uncredited rewrite on The Replacement Killers at the request of Mira Sorvino. She is a resident of Sausalito, California.

She is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band consisting of published writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Stephen King among others.

Criticism

Though her works have been widely praised by critics, some, like The Joy Luck Club, have been criticized by noted Asian American author Frank Chin for perpetuating racist stereotypes.

Awards

* Finalist National Book Award
* Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award
* Finalist Los Angeles Time Fiction Prize
* Bay Area Book Reviewers Award
* Commonwealth Gold Award
* American Library Associations's Notable Books
* American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults
* Selected for the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read
* New York Times Notable Book
* Booklist Editors Choice
* Finalist for the Orange Prize
* Nominated for the Orange Prize
* Nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Award
* Audie Award: Best Non-fiction, Abridged
* Emmy Award
* Parents Choice, Best Television Program for Children
* Shortlisted BAFTA Film award, best screenplay adaptation
* Shortlisted WGA Award, best screenplay adaptation

Quotes

* "I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable."
* "I'm sitting in the $4.95 bookstore bleachers along with , and ," she said. "I acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference that separates us. I am a contemporary author and they are not. And since I'm not dead yet, I can talk back."

Amy Chua

Amy L. Chua is the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She joined the Yale faculty in 2001 after teaching at Duke Law School. Prior to starting her teaching career, she was a corporate law associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She specializes in the study of international business transactions, law and development, ethnic conflict, and globalization and the law.

Chua has also written two books, ''Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall'' - which examines seven major empires and posits that their success depended on their tolerance of minorities - and the New York Times bestseller, '''' , which explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of "market dominant minorities" and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority. ''World on Fire'' examines how globalization and democratization since 1989 have affected the relationship between market dominant minorities and the wider population.

Early life

Amy Chua's parents were academics and members of the entrepreneurial and economically successful Chinese minority in the Philippines before emigrating to the United States. Amy's father, Leon O. Chua, is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley and is known as the father of nonlinear circuit theory and cellular neural networks. Amy was born in 1962 in Champaign, Illinois and lived in West Lafayette, Indiana. When she was eight years old, her family moved to Berkeley, California. She graduated first in her class of 384 students as valedictorian at El Cerrito High School in El Cerrito, California.

Higher education

Chua graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1984. She obtained her J.D. cum laude in 1987 from Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Personal life

Chua lives in New Haven, Connecticut and is married to Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld. She has two daughters, Sophia and Louisa, and three younger sisters.

Alice Wu

Alice Wu is an film director and screenwriter.

Alice Wu was born and raised in San Jose, California, then moved to Los Altos, California where she graduated from . In 1990, she received her in Computer Science from Stanford University. Two years later, she completed her Master's degree in Computer Science at Stanford.

Before becoming a filmmaker, Wu worked as a for Microsoft in Seattle. She then left the corporate world to pursue a filmmaking career full time.

She was quoted in the ''Hollywood Reporter'' saying that her mom dissuaded from a career in filmmaking. Her mom would say, "If you prove a theorem in math, no one can say you're wrong. If you write a book, they can choose not to read it".

Wu followed her parents' advice and pursued a career in computer science, but she never gave up on her dream and, while at Microsoft, signed up for a screenwriting class where she penned a feature script, ''Saving Face''. Encouraged by her screenwriting teacher --and to the disapproval of her family, colleagues and friends--she left Microsoft in the late '90s to try to get ''Face'' made. She gave herself a five-year window to do that.
Wu barely made it: The five-year deadline hit as she was starting production on "Face."

Wu's most noted work is her 2004 film, ''Saving Face''. It was inspired by her own experiences coming out as a lesbian in the Chinese American community. She is now working on a film based on Rachel DeWoskin's memoir ''Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China''.

In 2001, the script for ''Saving Face'' won the CAPE screenwriting award.

Wu is represented by CAA and attorney Todd Rubenstein.

Ah Jook Ku

Ah Jook Ku was an journalist, reporter, writer, media advocate and public relations practitioner. Ku holds the distinction of being the first Asian American reporter for the Associated Press, as well as the first Asian American female reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Her nickname was "Jookie."

Early life

Ah Jook Ku was born on April 24 1910 in Kailua, Hawaii.

Ku attended Mid-Pacific Institute on a scholarship. Ku served as a high school reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin while at Mid-Pacific. She went on to earn a degree in education from the University of Hawaii in 1933. Following her degree at Hawaii, Ku graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1935, also on a scholarship. Ku was only the third woman of decent to graduate from the School of Journalism. Additionally, she became only the second Hawaiian "exchange student" to graduate from the journalism school.

Ku was often involved with various university journalism clubs while in college. She often appeared on campus radio broadcasts and before community groups as an advocate for Hawaii.

Despite her academic achievements, Ku's parents believed that girls did not deserve an education. She often recounted a story about how her father once considered selling her for a single bag of rice. Ku commented on her father's atitude towards education, "the head of the family wasn't eager about educating women."

Career

Ah Jook Ku returned to Honolulu following her graduation form the University of Missouri. She began work at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, where she had previously worked as a high school correspondent. Ku was hired by the Associated Press in 1943 during World War II, becoming the AP's first Asian American reporter. She remained as a reporter for the AP wire service until 1946.

Ku left Hawaii for China in 1948 aboard the Pacific maiden voyage of the S.S. President Cleveland. She took a job at the of the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek as an English language editor. She was based in Nanking, China, for just 18 months at the position before the 1949 forced her to return to Hawaii.

Ku began working in the growing field of public relations once she returned to Hawaii from China. She worked at a number of organizations including the Hawaiian branch of the Salvation Army, the Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce and the Hawaii Employers Council. She ultimately worked as an information specialist for the before her retirement in 1975.

Advocacy

Ah Jook Ku became executive director of the Honolulu Community Media Council in 1975, the same year that she retired from the Department of Education. The council had been founded as a nonprofit volunteer group in 1970. The group was created in response to a ban on reporters from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser from press conferences by then Frank Fasi. Its purpose was to promote accurate and ethical journalism within Hawaii, support rights and seek public access to government information. Ku remained involved with the Council as executive director for 25 years. Ku was especially active in the 1980s, fighting on behalf of Hawaii's sunshine law. She retired from the Council in 2002.

Ku was an original founding member of a group called "Save Our Star-Bulletin" in the late 1990s. The group was formed in response by an attempt by Liberty Newspapers, the former owner of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, to shut down the newspaper in 1999. The "Save Out Star-Bulletin" sued Liberty Newspapers in U.S. federal court and successfully blocked the closure of the Star-Bulletin.

Awards

Ah Jook Ku was awarded the Fletcher Knebel Award for outstanding contributions to journalism by the Honolulu Community Media Council in 2002.

Books

*''The Chinese in Hawaii''

Death

Ah Jook Ku died on Monday, August 6 2007 at Leahi Hospital in Honolulu. She was 97 years old. She was survived by one sister, Yuk Jun Joseph, and several nieces and nephews. Her funeral was held on August 21 2007.

Adeline Yen Mah

Adeline Yen Mah is a Chinese-American author and physician. She was born in 1937; the exact date of her birth date is unknown, though according to her biography she was later given her father's birthday, 30 November. She grew up in Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong with an older sister, Lydia ; three older brothers, Gregory , Edgar and James and a younger half brother, Franklin and half sister, Susan . She has stated in her book '''' that she has not used the real names of her siblings and their spouses in order to protect their identities; however, she used the real names of her father, stepmother, aunt and husband. Currently she divides her time between southern California and London. She is married to Professor Robert Mah and has two children.

Biography

Adeline was born in Tianjin, China. Two weeks after her birth, her mother died due to medical complications from the delivery, and Mah was subsequently labeled "bad luck" by the rest of her family. One year later, her father, Joseph Yen, married a woman, Jeanne Virginie Prosperi, whom she refers to as Niáng . The woman doted upon Adeline's father and her own two children, while mistreating the rest of the family, particularly Adeline. This childhood conflict, involving emotional abuse and Mah's attempts to gain her father's affection, are detailed in her second novel, ''Chinese Cinderella.'' Throughout her childhood, she was supported by her paternal grandfather and paternal aunt.

At fourteen, as her autobiographies state, Mah won a play-writing competition, and convinced her father to let her study in England. She completed a medical degree, and established a medical practice in California. In her free time, however, she continued to write about the tragedies that had overshadowed her life. Her memoir, ''Falling Leaves'', relates her full life story. It begins by relating her emotionally deprived childhood under her stepmother's cruelty, and goes on to recount how, after her father died, her stepmother prevented his children from reading his will until her own death two years later.

''Falling Leaves'' sold over one million copies worldwide, prompting Mah to quit medicine and devote her time to writing. Her second novel, ''Chinese Cinderella'', was an abridged version for children of her autobiography, and sold equally well. She has since written '''', a book which looks at events under the and dynasties through Chinese proverbs and their origins in Sima Qian's history ''Shiji''; and ''Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society'', her first fiction book, based on events in World War II.

Bibliography

* ''''
* ''Chinese Cinderella: The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter''
* ''Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Traditions, and Spiritual Wisdom''
* '': A Memoir of China's Past through its Proverbs''
* ''Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society''

Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li is a Chinese American Writer.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China and moved to the United States in 1996. She received an MFA from Iowa Writers' Workshop and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,and elsewhere. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award and was awarded a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. She was recently selected as one of Granta's 21 Best of Young American Novelists. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches in the MFA program at Mills College.

Wu Ningkun

Wu Ningkun , born in 1920, Yangzhou, , is Professor Emeritus of English at the in Beijing, where he has taught since 1956. During the 1980's, he held Visiting Fellowships at Cambridge University, Northwestern University and University of California. In 1990, he was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Manchester College, Indiana. In 1992, he was Mansfield Visiting Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Montana. He has frequently lectured at Cambridge, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard and other universities. His publications include the memoir, written in collaboration with his wife, Li Yikai ; scholarly essays in English and Chinese; and translations from English into Chinese and vice versa, among them a translation of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was a member of the , but resigned in 2006.

Short biography

Wu Ningkun was born in September 1920, Yangzhou. In 1939, at the end of his sophomore year at the National Southwestern Associated University, Kunming, he volunteered for the Chinese National Revolutionary Army as interpreter for the . After the Second World War, in 1946, he took up his study of English literature again at Manchester College, Indiana, and the University of Chicago. In 1951, while working at a dissertation about T. S. Eliot, he was invited to return to China, and accept an academic position at Yenching University, Beijing, replacing an American professor who was forced to depart due to the Korean war. He decided to interrupt his doctoral studies and accept the invitation: ''The lure of a meaningful life in a brave new world outweighed the attraction of a doctorate and an academic future in an alien land''. In his memoir he recounts an anecdote about , one of the fellow graduate students who had come to see him off for his journey:

''"Why aren't you coming home to serve the new China, T. D.?" He answered with a knowing smile, "I don't want to have my brains washed by others." As I didn't know how brains could be washed, I did not at the time find the idea very daunting.''

Not long after his return, however, Wu got his first taste of what "brain washing" could mean in the form of enforced "thought reform" sessions.

In 1952, after one year at Yenching University, Wu was transferred to Nankai University, Tianjin, where he met his wife, Li Yikai. The couple married in 1954. During the 1955 Campaign to Uproot Hidden Counterrevolutionaries Wu was suspected of having been a Nationalist spy, or of still being an American spy, and he was denounced as the number-one "hidden counterrevolutionary" at Nankai University. In 1957, during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, he was one of the intellectuals who - despite initial misgivings - spoke up for freedom of speech. This led to his formal denouncement as an "ultra-rightist" during the of September 1957, and in the Spring of 1958 he was sent to a state prison farm in Heilongjiang for "corrective education through hard labor". In 1961, during the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward, he was released from prison.

During the Cultural Revolution Wu and his family were again persecuted, as were so many other intellectuals and their families.

In 1980 he was rehabilitated, and he resumed his former teaching post at the Institute of International Relations. In the early '90s he emigrated to the United States.