Event Title: Uprooting and Seeding: Intergenerational Experiences of Living as Asians and Asian-Americans 

Join us for a discussion of Minari and Asian American representation!

Dear AAAFSC Members, Allies, and Students:

Please join us on May 3 from 4-5pm, for our final AAAFSC event of the semester; while we will be closing out the semester, we’ll also be celebrating the beginning of AAPI heritage month.

At this event, we’ll be discussing representations of Asian Americans in popular culture, with a particular focus on the recent, award-winning film, Minari. Minari is currently streaming on a variety of platforms. However, if you are unable to watch the film before the event, please consider joining us anyway. 

We are hoping to close out this semester by creating a space for an open, free-flowing discussion. We want this meeting to be a space that will allow us to reflect on our ethnic heritage and racial identity as a way to reclaim our strength and resilience and to resist systems of oppression and hate. We also hope to share with each other the complexities of Asian American lives and our day-to-day experiences.

While allies are warmly welcomed to this event, we ask that if you choose to attend, you are mindful of taking a step back and making space for our Asian and Asian American members to discuss and share their experiences first. 

We hope to see you there!

Many thanks,

The AAAFSC board: Tamara Bhalla (chair), Aditya Desai (member at large), Soonhee Lee (member at large), Shuyan Sun, (member at large),Christopher Tong (member at large), Fan Yang (secretary)

p.s. There is no required reading or even viewing for the event, but here are a few articles that might be helpful to situating our discussion:

‘Minari’ wins best foreign-language film, but not without controversy. The New York Times, Feb 28, 2021 by Maya Salam and Robert Ito

‘Minari’ is about immigrants who speak Korean. That doesn’t make it ‘foreign.’ Viet Thanh Nguyen, Dec 24, 2020

My “Minari”: On Asian American Immigrant Cinema, LA Review of Books, February 10, 2021 by Hanna Amaris Roh

ONLINE MEETING INFO:

Join us for a discussion of Minari and Asian American representation! Hosted by Tamara Bhalla https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m388f28dae1487b4b8ce67632b9cffbae Monday, May 3, 2021 4:00 pm | 1 hour | (UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Meeting number: 120 311 5132 Password: MpK6jZMgq22 Join by video system Dial 1203115132@umbc.webex.com You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number. Join by phone +1-202-860-2110 United States Toll (Washington D.C.) Access code: 120 311 5132