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Coming May 17, 2022…

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN

My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond

by ALVIN ENG

Powerful, funny at times, and consistently inspiring, Our Laundry, Our Town turns one artist’s journey into the story of AAPI communities and emergence of a movement over the past half-century. Alvin Eng’s engaging memoir looks back on the past to envision a better future.” 

—David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-winning playwright of M. Butterfly

Second-generation Asian American youth always feel like they’re the first to not belong. How liberating, then, to encounter Our Laundry, Our Town. The book tells a moving tale of the distances that separate you from your immigrant parents, as well as a Toisanese labor history set in a laundry, but there’s a surprising twist. The protagonist is a young punk who hates math, loves The Who, and finds himself navigating the late-twentieth-century multicultural bohemia of rock and hip hop, Asian American film and theater, and avant-garde queer performance. In this humorous, amiable, and deeply heartfelt memoir, Eng seems to have achieved the Asian American dream: honoring his mother and father before him while also creating a community where he can be his whole self and finally belong.” 

—KEN CHEN, Associate Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College; former Executive Director, Asian American Writers’ Workshop 

Alvin Eng’s fascinating, funny, aching, searching, loving memoir derives its power from that key element of New York City’s dynamism and magic:  that behind every apartment door and scrappy storefront, in every far-flung outer-borough neighborhood, lie vast worlds, sweeping histories, and epic tales of questing souls melding the old ways into something meaningful and new.” 

—LISA KRON, playwright, actor and Tony Award-winning bookwriter/lyricist of Fun Home

Playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator Alvin Eng grew up in Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood of that singular universe that was New York City in the 1970s – back then, his was one of the few immigrant Chinese families to live there. His parents had an arranged marriage and ran a Chinese Hand Laundry. In OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond (Fordham University Press| Empire State Editions, May 17, 2022, $27.95), fans of memoirs that speak to the immigrant experience – such as Beautiful Country and Sigh, Gone – will delight in Eng’s illuminating time capsule of the Chinese-American experience, from the Chinatowns of the U.S to China’s motherland. Eng explores issues of identity, race, and societal expectations with marvelous humor, introspection and tenderness. 

Says Eng, “In some ways, my parents’ arranged marriage was the ultimate tragic opera in that I never once saw them dance or engage in any amorous way that went one breath or gesture beyond the bare-bones necessities of running our laundry and our family. In another sense, theirs was an unmitigated immigrant success story in that they both ventured to the other side of the world, at a time when our race was legally blocked from becoming U.S. citizens for almost an entire century, and prospered. Against mountains of societal, institutional, and legal obstacles, they raised five children and maintained a successful Mom-and-Pop Chinese hand laundry business for three decades, as well as two homes.”

Eng reconciles the push and pull of an insular home life with the turbulent yet inspiring street life around him – from faux martial arts TV stars to punk rock and theater. In the 1970s, NYC, like most of the world, was in the throes of regenerating itself in the wake of major social and cultural changes resulting from the Counterculture and Civil Rights movements. These same systemic conflicts form the core of our current global reckoning on representation and identity. 

By the 1980s, Chinese culture began to flourish in Flushing. Yet, Eng remained an outsider of sorts because he was one of Flushing’s few Chinese citizens who could not speak fluent Chinese. As a theatre practitioner and professor in the 21st century, discovering the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s seminal Americana drama, Our Town, became the unlikely catalyst for a psyche-healing pilgrimage. 

At City University of Hong Kong, Alvin and his wife, director/dramaturg Wendy Wasdahl, led a Fulbright Specialist devised theatre residency on the Chinese influence on Our Town. From this residency, the US Consulate Guangzhou invited Alvin to perform his Our Town-inspired solo, The Last Emperor of Flushing, in his family’s ancestral Guangdong Province of southern China. Learning to proudly tell his own story on stage helped to make him whole.

ALVIN ENG is a native NYC playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator. His plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, throughout the U.S., as well as in Paris, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, China. Eng is the editor of the oral history/play anthology, Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage (Temple, 2000). His plays, lyrics, and memoir excerpts have also been published in numerous anthologies. His storytelling and commentary have been broadcast and streamed on National Public Radio, among others. www.alvineng.com

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN:
My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond
by Alvin Eng
Fordham University Press | Empire State Editions; Hardcover and e-book; May 17, 2022
(Memoir | Asian American Studies | Theater & Performing Arts; $27.95; ISBN#: 978-1531500368; 224 pages, with 25 b&w images)

Filed Under: News & Announcements Tagged With: 1970s memoir, AAPI, AAPI History Month, AAPI memoir, Alvin Eng, Chinese American memoir, Fordham University Press, New York City memoir, OTRPR, Our Laundry Our Town, Over the River Public Relations, Spring 2022 Memoir

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The New York Times recommends IN THE SHADOW OF GENIUS for the “discerning New Yorker”

The media can’t get enough of Barbara Mensch’s fascinating book,  IN THE SHADOW OF GENIUS: The Brooklyn Bridge and Its Creators (Fordham University Press/Empire State Editions, hardcover; $34.95). The New York Times recommended her book as one of 9 coffee table books to give to the discerning New Yorker, and her book was also featured in the Washington Post, The Eye of Photography, and the Bowery Boys blog. In addition, Barbara has been interviewed by NPR stations across the country, and she has given talks at bookstores, museums and more. Check out the full roster of reviews, features, and speaking engagements below:

LITERARY SOIREE — review

SKYSCRAPER MUSEUM (New York City) — Talk & signing on 10/29/1L

ALLIANCE FOR DOWNTOWN — book mention

EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY — feature story

PHOTO DISTRICT NEWS  — Featured as “Photo of the Day” on 10/25/18

TRIBECA TRIBUNE — Feature ran on 10/24/18

WBAI-FM/Lenny Lopate At Large (New York) — Live interview on 11/26/18

BROOKLYN EAGLE — Feature ran on 11/13/18

THE NEW YORK TIMES — 9 Gift Books for the Discerning New Yorker

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY — Booksigning on 12/6/18

WNYC/All of It with Alison Stewart — Live in-studio interview on 12/7/18

PIER A — Exhibit of Barbara’s photos from the book at the pier

WFUV-FM/Cityscape — Radio interview aired on 1/23/19

WASHINGTON POST — Photo feature and interview on 12/5/18

NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM — Talk and signing on 3/5/19

BOWERY BOYS HISTORY Blog — Review ran on 1/30/19

CUNY-TV/One to One with Sheryl McCarthy — TV interview on 2/18/19

DOWNTOWN MAGAZINE — Photo feature

TKSEAPORT MUSEUM — Talk & signing on 4/11/19

ROEBLING MUSEUM — Talk & signing on 5/11/19

Filed Under: Books, Reviews & Features, Uncategorized Tagged With: architecture, Barbara Mensch, Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn history, Fordham University Press, New York history, Photography book, Roeblings

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Salvatore Basile’s book COOL hits Library Journal bestseller list at #7

COOL_Salvatore_Basile
Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything by Salvatore Basile A Library Journal bestselling book

We’ve been big “fans” of Salvatore Basile’s delightful social history on the birth of the air conditioner for some time now. Really! We rate it right up there with Devil in the White City, The Pencil by Henry Petroski, and Salt by Mark Kurlansky.

Well, it seems we’re not alone in our enthusiasm for this quirky book. Library Journal just released their 2015 bestseller list for engineering and technology titles, and COOL: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything is sitting pretty at #7. Congrats, Sal!

You can check out the entire list here: Library Journal 2015 Engineering & Technology Bestsellers

 

Filed Under: Books, Reviews & Features, Uncategorized Tagged With: air conditioning, bestseller, books, cool, engineering, Fordham University Press, Library Journal, nonfiction, Salvatore Basile, social history, technology

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