An Evening with Tsering Yangzom Lama and her new novel "We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies"

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For readers of 'Homegoing' and 'The Leavers', a compelling and profound debut novel about a Tibetan family's journey through exile. Breathtaking in its scope and powerful in its intimacy, 'We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies' is a gorgeously written meditation on colonization, displacement, and the lengths we'll go to remain connected to our families and ancestral lands. Told through the lives of four people over fifty years, this novel provides a nuanced, moving portrait of the little-known world of Tibetan exiles.

Celebration of Life - Sid Chow Tan

Thank you to everyone who attended the Celebration of Life of Sid Tan. Sid was renowned for his activism in highlighting awareness of the injustices of the Chinese Canadian head tax and as a community organizer for a number of non-government organizations. As a paper son and descendant of head-tax payers, Sid dedicated his life to redress. He was a community activist concerned with environmental and human rights and social justice issues and had produced and crewed hundreds of hours of community television programming, much of the national and international award-winning. He was active in ICTV, an Independent Community Television Co-operative in Vancouver.

The Celebration of Life can be viewed online here. Video created by Elwin Xie.

Launch / PRISM international: Issue 61.1 SPIRIT - featuring Wiley Ho

On Saturday, December 10 at 6pm, join Massy Arts Society, Massy Books and PRISM International for the launch of issue 61.1: SPIRIT. From childhood songs, the figures from dreams that speak in gibberish, and moments of déjà vu that feel like coming home, this issue asks writers what haunts them and what echoes are in their midst.

To celebrate the launch of this issue we have an impressive lineup of writers from this issue and past contributors including: Wiley Ho, Claire Matthews, Garret Saleen and Jane Shi.

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

Registration is free, open to all and required for entrance.
Pick up a copy of Issue 61.1 SPIRIT at the event.

Venue & Accessibility

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

Registration is free, open to all and required for entrance. The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please view our Accessibility page for parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation.

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

With Readers

Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada when she was nine. Identifying as Generation 1.5, Wiley inhabits the haunted space between places, cultures, and identities. Her stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and magazines. Wiley is currently at work on her first book, a memoir about growing up in a Taiwanese-Canadian “astronaut” family.

Claire Matthews is bi writer, editor, and educator who lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Her work is forthcoming in Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, and CV2. Her poetry was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize and shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2018 and 2019 Ralph Gustafson Prizes for Best Poem. In her spare time, she makes soap and drinks bourbon.

Garrett Saleen is a writer and visual artist from Southern California. His fiction has appeared in Santa Monica Review, Funicular, The Collagist, and other places. His collage art has been featured on the covers of literary journals and in galleries around the Pacific Northwest. His art can be found @jan_homm on Instagram. He lives in Seattle, where he has completed his first collection of short fiction.

Jane Shi is a queer Chinese settler living on the unceded, occupied, and stolen territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her debut chapbook is Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022). Her writing has appeared in Disability Visibility Blog, Briarpatch Magazine, The Puritan, and among others. She also organizes Masks4EastVan, a grassroots mutual aid project that distributes high-quality masks to neighbours in East Van and beyond. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated. 

Deeply Saddened by the Death of Y-Dang Troeung

ACWW is deeply saddened by the loss of the scholar and writer Y-Dang Troeung.   She was an Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. She researched and taught in the fields of transnational Asian literatures, critical refugee studies, global south studies, and critical disability studies. Y-Dang's most recent book, Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia on the afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia.  At UBC, she was a faculty affiliate of the Asian Canadian Studies and Migration Program (ACAM), an Associate Editor of the journal Canadian Literature, and a 2020 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Her recent publications can be found in Canadian Literature, Brick: A Literary Magazine, Amerasia Journal, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

My heart, my found sister, Y-Dang Troeung. I wish her love on her journey from this life. Literature brought us together, and her writing, much of which is on the cusp of publication, will sustain me all the days of my life. pic.twitter.com/Bqrd0akTmx

— Madeleine Thien (@madeleinethien) November 28, 2022

Celebration of Life: Sid Chow Tan on December 22, 2022

Please join us for "Celebration of Life: Sid Chow Tan."  

Location: Russian Hall - 600 Campbell Avenue Vancouver Thursday, December 22, 2022, at 1.00PM 

Meet Nancy Lam, author of The Loyal Daughter at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre on October 29, 2022

We are delighted to welcome Toronto author Nancy Lam to the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, where she will be signing copies of her debut novel The Loyal Daughter at Foo Hung Curios!

As a child and teenager, Nancy Lam lost herself in stories by Canadian writers, in university she majored in Canadian History to earn a Bachelor of Arts before acquiring her law degree. As an immigration lawyer she now helps prospective Canadians write and present their life stories to government officials. Her first novel, The Loyal Daughter, is based on her mother’s immigration story to Canada.

"Remarkably original, sensitive, and startlingly honest."
– Robert Rotenberg, Bestselling author of Downfall

The Loyal Daughter is a novel in stories, told from the perspective of mother, daughter, and granddaughter, spanning the 1940s to modern day. A young woman in a village in Communist China finds herself scrapping her way through the crowded streets of Hong Kong. She immigrates to an isolated Northern Ontario city and finally settles in Toronto. When she finds herself stuck in a small apartment above a clothing store, with four kids, her mother, two siblings, and a husband who is never home, the promise of a new beginning fades. Filled with heart-breaking sacrifices, secrets and joy that shape her identity, The Loyal Daughter stands testament to a woman’s true resilience.

"Based on her family’s story, Nancy Lam’s debut novel spans multiple generations of women in China, Hong Kong, and Canada. As each struggles with poverty, love, and identity, The Loyal Daughter poses the universal question: What Is loyalty — helping one’s family or being true to one’s own self?"
– Jan Wong, author, Red China Blues

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Presented in partnership with the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, with support from At Bay Press.

Please direct any questions and feedback to info@chinatownfoundation.org 

Saturday, October 29, 2 to 3 PM

Foo Hung Curios, located inside the Chinatown Storytelling Centre (168 East Pender St)