KUCI Subversity: Remembering Him Mark Lai

Fresh from the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Austin, Texas that ended Saturday 10 April, 2010, we bring Subversity listeners portions of the tribute to Him Mark Lai, the "Dean" of Chinese American History, who died in May 2009. Bilingual in English and Chinese, Him Mark Lai forged a pathway to today's Chinese American -- and Asian American -- studies by researching and documenting life in Chinese America over the decades. The panel discussion at AAAS included colleagues and friends of Him Mark Lai as well as those mentored by him. Chairing the April 8, 2010 session was Prof. Madeline Hsu (University of Texas, Austin), who has edited a collection of Him Mark Lai's publications, many never widely distributed before. The new work, out later this month, is Chinese American Transnational Politics from University of Illinois Press. Speakers at the session, whom we air on the program, included Emeritus Prof. L. Ling-chi Wang (UC Berkeley), Poet and Amerasia Journal editor Prof. Russell Leong (UCLA), Prof. Jack Tchen (New York University). We dedicated this show to radical actor Corin Redgrave, who died a week ago, and whom we interviewed back in 1999 at the Toronto Film Festival, where he was appearing in a movie that screened there.