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April 9, 2018 @ 8:00 pm
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Gish Jen in conversation with M. Evelina Galang
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As East and West become more and more entwined, we also continue to baffle one another. What’s more important—self-sacrifice or self-definition? Do we ultimately answer to something larger than ourselves—a family, a religion, a troop? Or is our mantra “To thine own self be true”?
Gish Jen, drawing on a trove of personal accounts and cutting-edge research, shows how our worldviews are shaped by what cultural psychologists call “independent” and “interdependent” models of selfhood. Coloring what we perceive, remember, do, make, and tell, imbuing everything from our ideas about copying to our conceptions of human rights, these models help explain why the United States produced Apple while China created Alibaba—and what that might mean for our shared future. As engaging as it is fascinating, The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a book that profoundly transforms our understanding of ourselves and our time.
About the Author:
Gish Jen is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a previous book of nonfiction, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self. Her honors include the Lannan Literary Award for fiction, the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright Foundation. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and lives with her husband and children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
About M. EVELINA GALANG:
M. EVELINA GALANG has been named one of the 100 most influential Filipinas in the United States and at-large by the Filipina Women’s Network. She is the author of the story collection Her Wild American Self, novels One Tribe, and Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery, and the editor of Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. Among her numerous awards are the 2004 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Prize for the Novel and the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award for One Tribe. Galang directs the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami and is core faculty and board member of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA).