City's 2021 WeHo Reads Series Continues With The Asian American History Month Event ‘Creating Hollywood Chinese'

Press release from the City of West Hollywood:

May 8, 2021

The City of West Hollywood invites the community to celebrate literature and local authors with its WeHo Reads literary series. In safeguarding community health during the coronavirus pandemic, the Spring 2021 series will be presented virtually and streamed on the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/wehoarts.

The next event of the WeHo Reads 2021 season is Creating Hollywood Chinese, which will take place on Wednesday, May 12, 2021, at 6 p.m. The event will explore depictions of Chinese-Americans in Hollywood film and television and the history of discrimination faced by Asian Americans. It will feature a conversation between Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Arthur Dong, who is the recipient of two GLAAD Media Awards, the Paul Monette Award, and the OUT 100 Award from Out Magazine among other honors, and Charles Yu, the winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction for his book Interior Chinatown.

Dong’s most recent book Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films is a chronicle of images based on more than 2,000 pieces of movie memorabilia the author collected from the time of his childhood and through the ten-year research for his Academy Award-nominated documentary Hollywood Chinese. The book won the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award, and has been selected a Critic’s Choice by Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles Times and one of 13 Smart Must-Read Books on Race and Hate by The Advocate. His first published full-length book Forbidden City, USA: Chinatown Nightclubs, 1936-1970 included a foreword by best-selling author Lisa See and won the American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s IPPY Award, and the Art Deco Historic Preservation Award. Dong is currently developing Grandview Films: Cinematic Crossings (working title), with Joseph Sunn Jue, which is his third in a trilogy of books that focus on the visual history and little-known stories of Chinese American artists.

Dong’s films about Chinese Americans include Hollywood Chinese, Forbidden City, U.S.A. and three earlier short films, Sewing Woman, Lotus, and Living Music for Golden Mountains, which comprise A Toisan Trilogy. Dong’s other films investigate anti-gay prejudice and include Family Fundamentals, Licensed to Kill, and Coming Out Under Fire, which were later re-released in the collection Stories from the War on Homosexuality.

Charles Yu is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. His book, Interior Chinatown, won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, and earned the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in both fiction and nonfiction. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe was listed in Time magazine’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010, and The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010. In 2007, Yu was named a “5 under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation.

Interior Chinatown, a playful but heartfelt send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, is a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles Asian people are often forced to play. The novel uses the narrative structure of the screenplay format to tell the tale of Willis Wu, who is stuck playing “Background Oriental Male” and occasionally “Delivery Guy” in a fictional police procedural called Black and White. After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family, and what that means for him, in today’s America.

“WeHo Reads: Creating Hollywood Chinese” will be available to view on Wednesday, May 12, 2021 at 6 p.m. on the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/wehoarts). Members of the public can RSVP and be sent a direct link to view the event by visiting the WeHo Reads webpage at www.weho.org/wehoreads. Questions for the authors can be submitted via the event’s chat feature.

Past 2021 WeHo Reads events are available to view at www.youtube.com/wehoarts including events with authors and poets Rocio Carlos, Harry Giles, Miriam Gurba, Alyesha Wise-Hernandez, féi Hernandez, Gustavo Hernandez, Randa Jarrar, Alan Pelaez Lopez, Aurielle Marie, Casey Schreiner, Danez Smith, Brian Sonia-Wallace, and Terry Wolverton.

The final two City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Reads 2021 Spring Series events will be, as follows:

• Wednesday, May 19, 2021, 6 p.m. – Alternative Futures: The Importance of Seeing Yourself in Young Adult Literature

A reading and conversation between James Sie, author of All Kinds of Other and Skylar Kergil, author of Before I Had the Words. This event will include special musical guest Jiaqing Wilson-Yang, whose first novel Small Beauty won the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction.

• Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 6 p.m. – Legacy and Lineage and the Lost Generation

In celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month and as part of the City’s One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival, poets will read and discuss works by mentors they’ve never met alongside their own work. This event will feature Rajiv Mohabir, Dare Williams, and Jubi Arriola-Headley along with musical guest Jayson Joseph of Elephants With Guns.

All events are free to attend. For additional information about these events, visit www.weho.org/wehoreads.

WeHo Reads is the City of West Hollywood’s literary series, which has presented new and noteworthy authors of interest to the West Hollywood community since 2013. Past authors and presenters have included: André Aciman, Andrew Rannells, Arlene and Alan Alda, Armistead Maupin, Bianca Del Rio, Bryan Fuller, Carrie Brownstein, Charles Phoenix, Chris Kraus, David Ulin, Eileen Myles, Eloise Klein Healy, Emma Donoghue, Erwin Chemerinsky, Henry Rollins, Jacob Tobia, LeVar Burton, Lillian Faderman, Lorna Luft, Luis J. Rodriguez, Michael York, Michelle Visage, Natalie Goldberg, Natasha Deón, Nina Revoyr, Patrisse Cullors, Patt Morrison, Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, Ryan Gosling, Sarah Silverman, Seymour Stein, Stephen Chbosky, Tananarive Due, Tim Heidecker, and Eric Wareheim.

The WeHo Reads 2021 spring series is presented by the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division, and produced by Amanda Fletcher and Dare Williams.

For more information about WeHo Reads, please contact Mike Che, Arts Coordinator, City of West Hollywood at (323) 848-6377 or mche@weho.org. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, please call TTY (323) 848-6496.

The City of West Hollywood has declared a local emergency in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. When in public, all community members should maintain your space with social (physical) distancing of at least six feet. Public Health officials recommend that everyone, even those who are vaccinated, continue to follow health recommendations. All people, regardless of vaccination status, should cover your face when in crowded outdoor areas and must use face coverings in indoor public settings.

West Hollywood City Hall is currently closed to the public and has suspended all in-person transactions. Most public City buildings and facilities remain closed. City Hall remains accessible for business and essential services with transactions to be conducted by phone (323) 848-6400 and via the City’s website at www.weho.org.

For reporters and members of the media seeking additional information about the City of West Hollywood, please contact the City of West Hollywood’s Public Information Officer, Sheri A. Lunn, at (323) 848-6391 or slunn@weho.org.

This press release was produced by the City of West Hollywood. The views expressed here are the author’s own.