Weaving Stories: Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage

APIA Author Panel: Overcoming Loss of Identity and Trauma

Thursday, 5/14/2020
6:00 - 7:30
Virtual Library
Address

United States


Authors, Joy Ma, Katya Cengel, Sieu Sean Do will discuss their books, and the common thread which unites them, loss of identity and trauma through cultural violence. 

Author, Sieu Sean Do - A Cloak of Good Fortune: A Cambodian Boy's Journey From Paradise Through A Kingdom of Terror traces one Cambodian child's coming of age from the idyllic, peaceful years of childhood in rural Cambodia through his family's forced exile by the Khmer Rouge.

Sieu Sean Do is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide and the war between Cambodia and Vietnam, which raged in Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1978. Currently, he works for a government agency in California serving victims of consumer fraud. Since 2012, he has worked on a planned two-volume memoir in honor of those who died in the violence and the lives of those who survived in the country he loves. Sieu Sean holds a Master of Humanities from the New College of California. Connect with Sieu Sean Do: Website | Twitter | Facebook  Press- SF Examiner

Author, Katya Cengel - Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back, the story of four families confronting deportation forty years after the beginning of large-scale resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in America following the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. 

Katya Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post among others. She is the author of Foreword Indies 2019 Finalist “From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union” (Potomac, 2019) and “Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life” (Nebraska, 2012). She has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, the International Women’s Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists. Her series on the families of the Lost Boys of Sudan received a second place feature writing Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award and her 2017 article “My brother’s killer is now my friend” was named one of BBC’s “Best big reads of 2017”.

Connect with Katya Cengel: Website | Twitter | Facebook  | Instagram 

Author, Joy Ma - The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Internment. The book is the untold account of the internment of 3,000 Chinese-Indians after the Sino-Indian War in 1962 .

Joy Ma grew up and was educated in India until she left for graduate school at the New School for Social Research in the US. She enjoys travelling, meeting people and writing. Joy lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, her mother and Willie, the family dog. She was one of a handful of children born in the Deoli internment camp in Rajasthan. She is working on her mother’s biography. 

Co-author Dilip D’Souza (who will not be at the panel) was educated in Pilani, Providence, Delhi, Rishi Valley, Bombay, Cambridge, Austin and places in between. Once a computer scientist, he now writes for his suppers: about political and social issues, travel, sports and mathematics. His writing has won him several awards, including the Statesman Rural Reporting Award, the Outlook–Picador India Non- fiction Prize and the Newsweek–Daily Beast South Asia Commentary Prize. He has published seven books, most recently Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Number.

Connect with Joy Ma: Twitter

The meeting link will be sent the day of the event. 

Reservations required: https://bit.ly/APIAauthorpanel20


Weaving Stories: Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Interest
Connect with AANHPI heritage with programs and workshops, book recommendations and more.

Weaving Stories is the Library's celebration of the many diverse histories and cultures from Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities.

Engage with your favorite writers and discover your next read.


This program is sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.


Attending Programs

All programs are drop-in (no registration necessary) unless otherwise noted. All SFPL locations are wheelchair accessible. For accommodations (such as ASL), call (415) 557-4557 or contact accessibility@sfpl.org. Requesting at least 3 business days in advance will help ensure availability.

This program will be conducted in English unless otherwise noted.

Notice: This event may be filmed or photographed. By participating in this event, you consent to have your likeness used for the Library’s archival purposes and promotional materials. If you do not want to be photographed, please inform a staff person or the photographer. A sticker will be provided to help identify you so that we can avoid capturing your image.


Public Notice and Disclaimer

This program uses a third-party website link. By clicking on the third-party website link, you will leave SFPL's website and enter a website not operated by SFPL. This service may collect personally identifying information about you, such as name, username, email address, and password. This service will treat the information it collects about you pursuant to its own privacy policy. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of each third-party website or service that you visit or use, including those third parties with whom you interact through our Library services. For more information about these third-party links, please see the section of SFPL’s Privacy Policy describing Links to Other Sites.

The views and opinions expressed in programs presented by groups unaffiliated with SFPL do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SFPL or the City.