Being young can be difficult terrain. Awkward human growing pains sometimes coincide with migration and racial difference and family drama.

Fortunately, travelers and writers have left maps (in the form of Young Adult literature) at the formative threshold between childhood and grown-upness to help along the path. This becomes even more vital when Asian American stories are often left out of formal curricula, leaving young readers to construct their racial and social identities on their own.

Writers and readers of YA lit are invited to join Evelina Galang (author of Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery) and Marina Budhos (author of Tell Us We’re Home) for a reading and conversation about the role of Young Adult writing in our communities.

Erica Chutuape, adjunct assistant professor of Asian American Studies at CUNY’s Hunter College, will moderate the conversation.

M. Evelina Galang is the author of Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery, One Tribe, and Her Wild American Self. She edited the anthology Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images and is currently at work on Lola’s House: Women Living with War, stories of surviving Filipina WWII “comfort women” and a new novel, Beautiful Sorrow, Beautiful Sky. Evelina teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami, is core faculty for VONA/Voices: Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, and has been named one of the 100 most influential Filipinas in the United States by Filipina Women’s Network.

Marina Budhos has published the novels Tell Us We’re Home, Ask Me No Questions, The Professor of Light, House of Waiting and the nonfiction Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers and Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science, co-authored with her husband, historian and author Marc Aronson. Her short stories, articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Ms., Travel & Leisure, Time Out, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Budhos has given talks at universities in the U.S. and abroad, has been a Fulbright Scholar to India, and was awarded a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers and a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Council. Budhos is currently an associate professor of English and Asian Studies at William Paterson University.

Dr. Erica D. Chutuape received her Ph.D. in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include the critical examination of race, ethnicity, and culture, particularly as they relate to Asians in the U.S. Her dissertation focused on Filipino American high school students’ construction of identity through the (re)creation and negotiation of racial discourse.

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