This webinar is part of USCET’s Asian American Authors Series and will take place on the Lantern Festival, a celebration marking the final day of the Lunar New Year festivities. Rooted in centuries-old traditions, the Lantern Festival symbolizes family reunions, hope, and light, making it a fitting occasion to reflect on themes of resilience, belonging, and cultural heritage.
We are thrilled to invite you to this special event on February 12, 2025, from 7:00 to 8:00 pm ET, featuring an engaging discussion with Fae Myenne Ng, bestselling and award-winning author of Bone and Steer Toward Rock. She will be in conversation with King-Kok Cheung, acclaimed literary critic and distinguished emeritus Professor of English and Asian American Studies at UCLA, to discuss her latest memoir, Orphan Bachelors.
Winner of the American Book Award, the California Book Awards Gold Medal for Nonfiction, and the William Saroyan International Prize for Non-Fiction, Orphan Bachelors is an extraordinary memoir of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950s and ’60s. Ng shares her family’s story of resilience in the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, including her father’s remarkable journey as a “paper son” in 1940.
Learn more and register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_udpLQxirSwmEix4MYwzVaw
Panelists
Fae Myenne Ng is a first-generation Chinese American author, born December 2, 1956, in San Francisco, and the author of the memoir Orphan Bachelors (2023). She attended the University of California-Berkeley and received her M.F.A. at Columbia University.
Ng is the author of bestseller and PEN/Faulkner Fiction finalist Bone and American Book Award winner Steer Toward Rock. Her work has been published in Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and anthologized in Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, Literature Across Cultures, The PEN Short Fiction Project, and The Pushcart Prize. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Guggenheim, the Lannan Foundation, the NEA, the Radcliffe Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She teaches creative writing and literature in UC Berkeley’s Department of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies.
King-Kok Cheung is UCLA Research Professor of English and UCLA Professor Emeritus of English and Asian American Studies, and Special Advisor of the US-China Education Trust (USCET). Born and raised in Hong Kong, she received her PhD in English from UC Berkeley; she was also the UCEAP Study Center Director in Beijing (2008-2010) and Shanghai (2015-2017) and Chair Professor at Renmin University of China (2018-21). She is author of Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa (Cornell UP,1993; Japanese edition, 2015; Chinese edition, 2022) and Asian American Literature without Borders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; Chinese edition, 2023); editor of important works on Asian American literature, including Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers (U of Hawaii Press, 2000), and Asian American literature: An Annotated Bibliography (MLA, 1988).
Professor Cheung has received an ACLS fellowship, a Mellon fellowship, a Fulbright lecturing and research award, and a resident fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford. She is the 2012-2013 Recipient of the UCLA Hoshide Teaching Award in Asian American Studies and recipient of the 2023 AAAS (Association of Asian American Studies)’s Lifetime Career Achievement Award.
