October 25, 2013: Book Talk Thoughts: Next up, San Fran!

[Now that my year of book talks has kicked off in earnest, wanted to follow up a few of the talks I’ve had the opportunity to give so far, as well as look ahead to the next one and beyond. If you have thoughts, questions, or takes on these talks, such talks in general, or any related issues, I’d love to hear them! And if you were at any of these talks, please say hi and share your thoughts too!]

On the one reason I’m most especially excited for my next talk, my first on the left coast.

On Saturday November 2^nd at 2:30pm, I’ll be talking about my book in the San Francisco Public Library’s Chinatown Branch. The talk is exciting to me for a lot of reasons, including my first chance to talk about the project in the region/state where the majority of 19^th century Chinese immigrants first arrived, as well as a chance to hear and learn from the perspectives and experiences of a community that includes many contemporary Chinese Americans (across all different generations and stages of the immigrant experience) among numerous other groups. (If you live in or near the Bay Area, I hope you’ll consider coming ou and adding your voice to that conversation!) But I have to admit that I’m most excited about one very specific possibility for the talk.

To put it simply, I hope to be able to say, when I get to the focus on inspiring American voices, identities, and stories that comprises the third section of the talk, some version of this sentence: “As I stood earlier today in front of the Angel Island poems…” Can’t really imagine a better way to start a day that will feature a book talk than with a trip out to Angel Island, and I’m beyond excited to have the chance to do just that in just over a week. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Even more forward-looking weekend post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?