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Riding With The Wind – Book talk with Monona Yin
May 5, 2018 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
On Saturday, May 5, 2018, CHSA presents a book talk with Monona Yin, editor and publisher of her mother’s memoir Riding With The Wind: Three Generations of My Family in China. Yin will share stories from the book and describe the creative process with her mother, which followed a serious health crisis two years ago.
Robin Wu will serve as moderator for the event. Q&A will follow. Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing.
Seating is limited – Admission includes entry to CHSA’s exhibit Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion and galleries.
In Riding With the Wind, Fay Hoh Yin paints an indelible portrait of three generations of her family in China as the imperial era ends and war with Japan begins. Her parents are among the first young people to escape the centuries-old traditions of foot binding and arranged marriage, then use their newfound freedom to study in the West. They return home in the early 1920s to become pioneering educators and proponents of physical fitness and sports. In lyrical prose, the author recalls scenes from her improbably happy childhood amid bombs and atrocities.
Yin later comes to the U.S. herself, marries a fellow foreign student, and starts a family. Tragically, she loses her husband at age thirty-seven, but forges a unique partnership with her widowed mother-in-law that far outlasts either of their marriages. Yin’s stories of daring, hardship, and perseverance are deeply personal, yet illuminate the changing roles of women in 20th century China and the United States.
FAY HOH YIN was born in Beijing in 1932 and grew up during the Sino-Japanese and Chinese Civil Wars. She and her family fled thousands of miles to escape the chaos, finally settling in Taiwan in 1949. She later came to the U.S. and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin. She retired in 1991 after working for twenty-six years as a virologist for the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. She still resides there. Unfortunately, due to illness, the author is not able to attend.
MONONA YIN is Director of Impact and Learning at Borealis Philanthropy. From 2004-17, she directed capacity building at the Four Freedoms Fund, a national donor collaborative that has invested over $100 million in the immigrant rights movement. As an activist, Monona is a co-founder and former staff director of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities in New York City. She graduated from Yale and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
Robin Wu, VP of Education & Community Engagement at the San Francisco Zoological Society, leads the Education Department staff in managing adult and youth education and volunteer programs and exhibit interpretation. In addition to implementing educational initiatives, she develops new partnerships and strengthens existing relationships with community partners. The daughter of immigrants from Shanghai, Robin was born and raised in New York. She holds a BA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA with a concentration in arts management. Robin previously worked at ZeroDivide, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, State Bar of California, Chinese for Affirmative Action and Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco. Robin and her husband are the parents of a daughter and son in their twenties.
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