The Lotus and the Storm featuring Lan Cao and Andrew Lam
VIEW EVENT DETAILSASNC and Mechanics’ Institute are pleased to host Lan Cao who will discuss her latest work, The Lotus and the Storm. Alternating between the voice of Mai, a Vietnamese-American woman and law librarian in the D.C. area, and her father, Minh, a former commander of the airborne brigade in the South Vietnamese army, the novel transports us to one family’s past in Saigon during the war while at the same time showing us how the drama of what began in Vietnam nearly 40 years previous continues to play out in U.S. Vietnamese refugee communities. Cao will be in conversation with author Andrew Lam, winner of the 2006 PEN Open Book Award for Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.
Speakers:
Lan Cao is a Vietnamese novelist and a professor at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Monkey Bridge, was the first work of fiction published by a major publishing house about the Vietnam War written by a Vietnamese-American and has become a modern classic.
Andrew Lam is web editor of New America Media. He received critical acclaim for his essay collection titled Perfume Dreams, which chronicles the problem of identity as a Vietnamese living in the U.S. He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered and blogs regularly on Huffington Post.The Lotus and the Storm will be available for purchase and signing.
The Lotus and the Storm will be available for purchase and signing.
Co-sponsor: Mechanics’ Institute
Program Agenda:
5:30 – 6:00 pm: Registration
6:00 – 7:00 pm: Discussion/Audience Q&A
7:00 – 7:30 pm: Book Signing