The book tells the story of three generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, who, in the 1950s, as young rebels of Chinese ancestry, threw themselves into the revolutionary war that brought down a U.S.-backed dictatorship and opened the door to the first socialist revolution in the Americas. The three generals explain the historic place of Chinese immigration to Cuba, as well as more than five decades of revolutionary struggle and internationalism from Cuba to Angola, Nicaragua, and Venezuela today.

Clara Chu, a professor at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies and a member of the Department of Asian American Studies, and Mary-Alice Waters, the book’s editor, will be among the panelists. Also on the panel will be Eugene Moy, vice president of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. Nobuko Miyamoto, founder and artistic director of the group Great Leap, will speak and perform. Russell Leong, editor of Amerasia Journal, will be the program facilitator.

The panel discussion will begin at 7:00 p.m. (see ad on p. 3). It will be preceded by a reception, starting at 6:30 p.m., sponsored by the Amerasia Journal. The Asians in the Americas Working Group, which works “to develop a new way of understanding Asian migration to Canada, the United States, and Latin America,” will hold an organizing meeting just prior to the event at 5:30 p.m.

The panel discussion is being publicized at UCLA and other area campuses, as well as in the Chinese and other Asian-American communities, and throughout the city.
 

The opening day will feature keynote speaker Vijay Prashad, an author and professor of South Asian history and director of International Studies at Trinity College in Connecticut.

Workshops will be held November 4. Topics range from “Immigration, Race & Rights” to “Vietnamese Americans in New Orleans East Return Home,” “The New Immigrant Rights Movement,” and “Environmental Justice.”

One workshop will present the book Our History Is Still Being Written. Mary-Alice Waters, the book’s editor, will speak, along with Northwestern students Amy Gao and Jason Eng. Gao is an executive board member of the Model United Nations and Eng chairs the Asian American Pacific Coalition at Northwestern. A student from the University of Illinois at Chicago will also speak. Michelle Tsao, president of the Chinese Students Association at Northwestern, will chair the workshop.

About 140 students, teachers, and others attended the annual Asian Pacific Conference at Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minnesota, October 19-21. They discussed the history of oppression of Asian Americans and how to fight anti-Asian discrimination today. Students came from Minnesota and Iowa. The keynote speech was by Erika Lee, professor of history at the University of Minnesota and author of At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943.

Tom Fiske from St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
7-city tour in Cuba promotes book by three Chinese-Cuban generals
Hundreds attend events across island
Cuban media cover widely 7-city book tour  
 
 
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