LiterASIAN 2020: “Remembering to Celebrate Our Chinese Canadian Legacies”

LiterASIAN 2020 – “Quiet No More”

A Festival of Asian Canadian Writing

August 15 to August 30, 2020

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, LiterASIAN 2020 goes virtual!

This year’s theme is “Quiet No More“. LiterASIAN 2020 features an incredible line up of authors with a full schedule of events. The festival is located on the unceded Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil Waututh, and Squamish people.

Celebration: Chinese Canadian Legacies

Chinese Canadians have been among the earliest of settlers to this land we now call British Columbia. This book celebrates a community whose legacy can be found as physical traces in the landscape, and in the social and economic transformations that have occurred over the decades in the larger society. In 2014, the government of British Columbia commissioned the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop for one-year research and writing of this book as a legacy project of the Provincial Apology to the Chinese for the historical wrongs. It was a one-year project . With profiles of individuals such as Wallace and Madeleine Chung, Douglas Jung, Wong Foon, Faye Leung, Brandt Louie, the stories highlight the heroic efforts to overcome their experiences in a discriminatory past. In the midst of a rising wave of anti-Asian intolerance, the creators of this book offer a light of hope in retracing the path of the pioneers who overcame prejudice through patience and perseverance.

Featuring:

• Winnie Cheung, co-founder and Executive Director of the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre – Museum of Migration (PCHC – MoM) Society
• Marlene Enns, Chair of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award Committee and wife of the late Jim Wong-Chu
• David Wong, author of Escape to Gold Mountain

Winnie L. Cheung, a community-builder and writer, has worked as an educator in universities in both Hong Kong (birth home) and Vancouver (adopted home since 1986). Over the last three decades, Winnie has provided leadership to establish/sustain many projects that value diversity in conversations for better understanding and problem-solving. These included the Inter-Community Dialogues, Global Citizenship Project and Global Student Speakers Bureau at the University of British Columbia; the Dialogues Project at the City of Vancouver; and the Elders’ Circle of Reconciliation Canada. A published writer and art lover, she works hard to create public platforms for meaningful dialogues and story-telling to reveal and strengthen the common bonds in our diverse community, especially through the Laurier Institution, the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society and the PCHC-Museum of Migration Society.

Marlene Enns is a former ACWW board of director and spouse of Jim Wong-Chu. Marlene has served on the Chair of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award committee and was instrumental in the launch of Celebration: Chinese Canadian Legacies book project. She has been a sought after consultant of manuscripts from writers in the community.

David H.T. Wong was born and raised in Vancouver. He is an accomplished Architect whose family migrated to North America from China over a century ago. An advocate of the arts and culture, David has helped found a number of community organizations, including Ricepaper Magazine, Chief Dan George Centre for Indigenous Studies, Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC, Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, ExplorAsian: Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society, and Pacific Canada Heritage Centre-Museum of Migration (PCHC-MoM).

Register HERE.