Voices of the Old and the New: Corky Lee and Julia Alvarez

 

NEW RELEASES

Corky Lee's Asian America

Fifty Years of Photographic Justice

by Corky Lee

Publication April 9, 2024; Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press, NG

Photos celebrating the history and cultural impact of the Asian American social justice movement, from a beloved photographer who sought to change the world, one photograph at a time.

Corky Lee

American activist, community organizer, photographer, journalist, and the self-proclaimed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate. He called himself an "ABC from NYC ... wielding a camera to slay injustices against APAs." Wikipedia

I heard a lot about Corky Lee and his photographs showing Asian American activism in the U.S.

Introduction to the book

John J. Lee, Chee Wang Ng & Mae Ngai

This is the story of a man who endeavored to change the world, one photograph at a time. Who dared to create a record of an upheaval—of thoughts and beliefs that held a people down, of an ignorant nation that prevented the growth of ideas new and better. The truth and a bit of justice. This is the story of our brother and friend, whom the world came to know as Corky Lee.

With each photograph he took, Corky aimed to break the stereotype of Asian Americans as docile, passive, and above all, foreign to the United States. He insisted that Asian Americans are Americans, that they were, and are, part of this country, of its history and the ongoing project of its making. As he wrote after 9/11, “Do not let anyone tell you to go back to the country of your ancestors. You belong here. Immigrants built America. It was created for you and me.”

The Cemetery of Untold Stories

A Novel

by Julia Alvarez

Published April 2, 2024; Algonquin Press, NG

Genre: magical realism, historical fiction

The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried?  Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.

The plot: Alma Cruz, the writer in The Cemetery of Untold Stories, inherits a plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland; she creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. 

Among them: Bienvenida, the abandoned second wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, consigned to oblivion by history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
 
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives. 
The characters defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves.

 

Julia Alvarez

left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. Her books and poetry have garnered wide recognition. In the Time of the Butterflies was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

What are you reading/watching this week? Are any of them new releases? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday