From the Far East to the Mid-Hudson
Da
Chen grew up in abject poverty in the tiny village of Yellow
Stone, China, in the shadows of the Southern Shaolin Temple. He achieved
the top test score in his province and won a place in the university of
his choice, Beijing Language Institute. In the mid-'80s, at age 23, he
came to the U. S. with only $30 and a flute. He has since written two
acclaimed memoirs, Colors of the Mountain and Sounds of the
River. This year he published a young adult kung fu novel, Wandering
Warrior, to which Warner Brothers bought the film rights. This Asian
Horatio Alger now lives in Ulster County, NY, with his wife and children
and participates actively in the U.S. literary scene.
Susan
Choi was born in Indiana to a Korean immigrant father and
a Russian Jewish mother, and after a brief stint in Japan with her parents,
she moved with her mother to Houston where she lived until she departed
for Yale University at about the same time Chen came to the U.S. Her first
novel, The Foreign Student, was published in 1998 to high praise.
Her second novel, American Woman, tackles an unusual subject -
the Patty Hearst story - and is also winning raves from the likes of Joan
Didion and Jhumpa Lahiri. The story focuses less on the Hearst character
(here Pauline) than on the Wendy Yoshimura character (Jenny) and is Choi's
personal effort to get inside characters that fascinated her. To our delight,
much of it is set in the mid-Hudson area.
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale Foundation; the Taft Foundation; and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.