A wedding in a Malaysian village leaves out one guest: a scorned vampire ghost bent on settling a secret score with the groom and anyone in her way.The onilne presentation starts at 7:00 pm.
Tonight two debut novelists read and discuss their newest memoirs: Elizabeth Miki Brina’s debut novel Speak, Okinawa beautifully combs a lifetime of memory, love, loss, the connections that bind us to one another, and is one of the most anticipated memoirs of 2021. A searing, deeply candid story about a young woman’s journey to understand her complicated parents and her own, fraught cultural heritage. Aftershocks is a deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award–winner Nadia Owusu about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through. Both novelists will discuss their works exploring their common themes of migrations, identity, and feeling out of place, in a live discussion and audience Q&A.The event begins at 7:00 pm and registration is required.
Elizabeth Miki Brina grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother’s distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers. Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment–a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American. Elizabeth Miki Brina is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Bread Loaf Scholarship and a New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. She currently lives and teaches in New Orleans.
While writing other people’s emotions, she may have neglected her own. Violet Evergarden, the child soldier turned Auto Memory Doll, writes letters that evoke the words her clients can’t. But when a terminally ill boy requests her services for his family, her own feelings about love and loss resurface. Now she must confront her past and the death of the Major.At this point it is scheduled to play at the AMC Loews Waterfront and the Cinemark theaters in North Hills and Robinson, and tickets are available online.
The ANSWER Coalition stands in solidarity with the Asian community in the midst of the horrific, racist and misogynist massacre that took place in Atlanta on March 16th. Six Asian women were among the eight shot to death at point blank range.It begins at 2:00 pm at the intersection of Forbes and Murray Avenues (map).
The alarming rise in hate crimes over the past year correlates to an increasingly hostile U.S. foreign policy towards China. The opportunistic scapegoating of China during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the intensity by which China is deemed the enemy and adversary of the United States, has driven a widespread Sinophobic sentiment nationally. The Asian American community suffers the brunt of the hatred fomented as a weapon of war. To date, there have been 3,800 self-reported hate crimes against Asian Americans.
The mainstream media’s failure to label the Atlanta shooting as a hate crime demonstrates the gross disregard and injustice that our communities are facing. Racism is a sick symptom of a system that profits from war and violence. And to put insult to injury, the cop handling the case was found to be promoting anti-China paraphernalia.
Join us on March 27th for a national day of action demanding an end to anti-Asian racist violence, an end to violence against women and and end to white supremacy now!
Dr. Cheng, a Chinese language instructor at UPitt and a NYS certified court interpreter, will introduce you to a translation tool that is required by most language service providers. This took is non-language specific so long as you are interested in translation. You are invited to see how this tool works.The event starts at 2:00 pm on Zoom.
ASA x CRC X SASA present a virtual healing space for students to come and discuss the prevalent and ongoing anti-Asian hate crime and violence in the United States. We will be having a round table discussion and will also provide a resource toolkit on how to support the Asian American community and be an ally.The event runs from 9:00 to 10:00 pm on Zoom (977 7619 2019) and is open to the student community.
Japanese video games have had a significant impact on the medium worldwide. Dr. Rachael Hutchinson considers how ‘Japan’ has been packaged for domestic and overseas consumers, and how Japanese designers have used the medium to express ideas about home and nation, nuclear energy, war and historical memory, social breakdown and bioethics. She explores how ideology and critique are conveyed through game narrative and character design as well as user interface, cabinet art, and peripherals. Ultimately, she argues that Japanese artists have expressed similar ideas in the video game medium as in older narrative forms such as literature and film.The online talk is free though seating is limited and registration is required.
photo by Jay Manning for Public Source.The massacre has been infuriating on many levels, but not at all surprising to anyone who has been genuinely listening to Asians in America. In fact, a year ago, when the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Pittsburgh, I wrote that it wasn’t paranoid to wonder if there would be another Vincent Chin. An American of Chinese ancestry, he was beaten brain dead in Detroit in 1982 by two white men furious about the growing Japanese dominance of the auto industry. His murder, for which his attackers were merely fined $3,000, galvanized the Asian American civil rights movement.More at PublicSource.org.
What is perhaps even more outrageous than the Atlanta attack itself is the tepid overall response from the federal government, local law enforcement, the mainstream news media and the general public – all who still refuse to acknowledge the violence for what it is. Asian Americans are having to continually justify why the killing spree was unambiguously a hate crime against working-class Asian women – enraging, exhausting emotional labor that only compounds the indignity and injustice they are facing in a time of exquisite crisis.
As a Han Chinese woman of Hong Kong ancestry, as a journalist with a decade of professional experience, as an international graduate student in America, and as a journalism and creative nonfiction instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, I have been numb with fury by the culture of complicit complacence toward anti-Asianism.
A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, Minari shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.It will continue at numerous local theaters, including (on certain days) the AMC Loews Waterfront, AMC Mt. Lebanon, Waterworks Cinemas, Cranberry Cinemas, and the Cinemark in Monroeville. Tickets are available online.
From acclaimed writer, producer and restaurateur Eddie Huang comes his directorial debut Boogie, the coming-of-age story of Alfred “Boogie” Chin, a basketball phenom living in Queens, New York, who dreams of one day playing in the NBA. While his parents pressure him to focus on earning a scholarship to an elite college, Boogie must find a way to navigate a new girlfriend, high school, on-court rivals and the burden of expectation.It plays locally at many theaters, including (on certain days) the AMC Loews Waterfront, AMC South Hills, Waterworks Cinema, and Cinemark Monroeville. Tickets are available online.
