Recuperating Collective Stories: Writing Chinese American Memoirs

Ava Chin, author of Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming, joins Russell M. Jeung, Rober L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence 2026 and author of At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors, for a discussion on the important work of recuperating collective histories, exploring the relationship of self and community, and comparing East Coast to West Coast Chinese American experiences. Alvin Khiêm Bùi, Brooklyn College, will frame the discussion.

• Ava Chin is the author of Mott Street, winner of the CALA Best Book Award in Nonfiction and a PEN/Open Book Finalist, and Eating Wildly, winner of the M.F.K. Fisher Book Award for excellence in food writing. Mott Street, an ALA Notable Book and one of People magazine’s top books by Asian American authors, was a Best Book of the year by TIME, the SF Chronicle, Library Journal, Kirkus and Elle. Chin is the recipient of grants from the NYPL’s Cullman Center, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, NYFA, Asian American Writers’ Workshop and MacDowell. She is Professor of Creative Nonfiction at CUNY, head of the Grad Center’s American Studies Certificate Program, and a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University. The Huff Post named her one of “9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading.”
• Russell M. Jeung, the 2025-6 Robert L. Hess Scholar in Residence, is Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAIP Hate. Over the last 25 years his research has shaped the fields of Asian American Studies and Sociology of Religion. He is author of Family Sacrifices: The Worldviews and Ethics of Chinese Americans; Moving Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies; At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors; Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity and Religion Among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation (with Carolyn Chen): and Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches. He co-produced the documentary, The Oak Park Story (2010), about a landmark housing lawsuit involving Cambodian and Latino tenants. In March 2020, Professor Jeung co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that was awarded the 2021 Webby Award for “Social Movement of the Year.” He was named as one of the TIME 100 Most Influential Persons in 2021.
• Alvin Khiêm Bùi is Assistant Professor of History specializing in Asian and Asian diasporic histories. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Washington, Seattle in modern Southeast Asian and East Asian history. His research is on ethnic Chinese in and from southern Vietnam. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles, in History and Asian American Studies, after which he lived and worked in Vietnam in education and venture capital. He has published on Saigonese motorbike YouTubers and their diasporic Vietnamese audiences.