The Legend of Auntie Po

Historians Sue Fawn Chung, Will Gow, and Archaeologist Stacey L. Camp join in discussion with author Shing Yin Khor. Set in an 1880s logging camp in the Sierras, Khor’s graphic novel weaves together stories of thirteen-year old Mei and her friends and family – including the mythical Auntie Po, camp life, and Chinese American community-building during the Chinese Exclusion Era.

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

4-5pm (PT)

Register by visiting https://bit.ly/auntiepo

Shing Yin Khor is the author-illustrator of The Legend of Auntie Po, the Eisner-winning and National Book Award finalist graphic novel about a young Chinese logging camp cook in the Sierra Nevada telling Paul Bunyan tales, and of The American Dream?, a graphic novel memoir about driving Route 66. They tell stories about nostalgic Americana, immigration, and new rituals. They live in Los Angeles with a small dog and a cargo van.

Sue Fawn Chung, Professor Emerita, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, received her master’s from Harvard and her doctorate from UC Berkeley.  She is the author of numerous articles on Chinese Americans and has published four books on the subject: The Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015; In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Caroline Bancroft History Honor Award, 2013. Paperback Edition, 2014. The Chinese in Nevada, Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press in their “Images of America” Series, 2011. Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors eds. Sue Fawn Chung and Priscilla Wegars, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 2005. She is currently working on a book manuscript on Chinese railroad labor contractors in the 19th century as a continuation of her work on the Stanford University Chinese Railroad Workers’ Project.

Stacey L. Camp is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the MSU Campus Archaeology Program at Michigan State University. She is an historical archaeologist who examines migrant and diasporic communities living in the 19th and 20th century Western United States. Her publications explore how different facets of people’s identities – race, class, gender, and citizenship – shape their perceptions of consumerism and material culture. She has conducted ethnography and archaeological research in the Midwestern and Western United States, China, and Ireland.

Will Gow is a California-based community historian, educator, and documentary filmmaker. A fourth-generation Chinese American and a proud graduate of the San Francisco Unified School District, he holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies with a designated emphasis in Film Studies from UC Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at Sacramento State, he taught Asian American Studies courses at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. His first documentary, More to the Chinese Side, co-directed with Sharon Heijin Lee, was nominated for the Golden Reel Award at the Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival in 2003. The documentary is a first-person examination of Dr. Gow’s biracial identity and his parents’ interracial marriage. Driven by an interest in his family history, he served as a volunteer historian and board member at the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC). At the CHSSC, he founded and directed the Chinatown Remembered Project. This project paired youth interns with community elders to document the history of Los Angeles Chinatown in the 1930s and 1940s through oral history and digital video. He is currently co-editing a book for the CHSSC about the five Chinatowns of mid-twentieth century Los Angeles.