SANTA ANA – Pioneering Vietnamese American writers Monique Truong and Andrew Lam visit Southern California to celebrate the launch of their most recent books Bitter in the Mouth (Random House) and East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres (Heyday Books), respectively. The reading and discussion will take place on Tuesday September 21, 2010 from 6:30pm – 8:30pm at the VAALA Cultural Center located at1600 N. Broadway #101, Santa Ana, CA 92706. The event is free and open to the public.
Following their readings, the two authors will join UC Riverside Professor Mariam B. Lam and writer Ky-Phong Tran in a discussion exploring diaspora, theme, craft, and the writer’s life. A wine reception is to follow.
About Monique:
Monique Truong was born in Saigon and currently lives in New York City. Her first novel, The Book of Salt, was a New York Times Notable book. She is the recipient of the PEN American Robert Bingham Fellowship, the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton for 2007-08, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship.
About Bitter in the Mouth (from Publisher’s Weekly; starred review & pick of the week): “Linda Hammerick has a special yet burdensome gift–she experiences words as tastes. Woven into Linda’s story is the history of her home state, North Carolina–slaveholding days, the first airplane flight, and local Indian lore. But when a sudden tragedy brings Linda back home from New York City, she finds answers to a life that has been made up of half-finished sentences, as the secret of her origins and the clandestine histories of those around her are revealed one by one.”
About Andrew:
Andrew Lam was also born in Saigon. He is an editor and cofounder of New America Media, an association of over two thousand ethnic media outlets in America. His essays have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines across the country, and his short stories are anthologized widely. Followed by a film crew back to his homeland, Vietnam, he was featured in the documentary My Journey Home, which aired nationwide on PBS in 2004. His book Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora won a PEN American Beyond Margins award in 2006. He currently lives in San Francisco.
About East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres:
From cuisine and martial arts to sex and self-esteem, East Eats West shines new light on the bridges and crossroads where two hemispheres meld into one worldwide immigrant nation. Lively and engaging, East Eats West searches for meaning in nebulous territory charted by very few. Part memoir, part meditations, and part cultural anthropology, East Eats West is about thriving in the West with one foot still in the East.
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