Global Chinatowns: Histories of Resistance & Community

AAWW Radio: New Asian American Writers & Literature

Welcome to our Love Letter to Chinatown Episode! We’re happy to feature Mei Lum, Diane Wong, and Huiying B. Chan, the curators of Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns, hosted at the Pao Arts Center in Boston. The exhibit tells the stories of displacement, migration, resilience and grassroots organizing in Chinatowns around the world through photography, found objects, oral histories, and poetry.

Writer and organizer Huiying B. Chan travelled to Chinatowns in eight different countries, as well as their ancestors’ village, documenting global stories of migration and resilience across the diaspora. That same year, artist and scholar Diane Wong and Mei Lum, the fifth generation owner of Wing on Wo and the director of the Chinatown community arts org the WOW Project, went on a West Coast Solidarity tour to connect with tenants, organizers, workers, and artists in Chinatowns in San Francisco, LA, Vancouver, and Seattle.

We talk about how the formation of Chinatowns across the world, how the pandemic is affecting Chinatowns, and make important connections between gentrification in immigrant communities across the US.

Visit the exhibit virtually here: hhttps://bcnc.net/events/homeward-bound-exhibition