This event is in the past.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2025 | following 2:30pm performance
Culture Makers Conversation Series
in conjunction with The Placemaking Project
Join us for a special post-show conversation connecting to the local Asian, South Asian, and/or Pacific Islander American community.
Asian Americans have lived in Evanston for over 135 years yet no archive or documentation of their history or presence exists.
Join us for the performance, and stay afterwards to explore the untold stories of Asian, South Asian, and/or Pacific Islander American immigrants – and how productions like The Heart Sellers and playwright Lloyd Suh highlight their experiences.
Led by Melissa Raman Molitor (Director, Evanston ASPA) and Dr. Jenny Thompson (Historian, The Placemaking Project).
Lloyd Suh was inspired to write The Heart Sellers after imagining what might have happened if his mother, an immigrant from Korea, and his collaborator May Adrales’s mother, an immigrant from the Philippines, had met upon arriving to America in the 1970s.
A second-generation Korean-American playwright, Suh explores Asian-American identity, culture, and history in his works, including The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, American Hwangap, and more.
About the placemaking project
Asian Americans have lived in Evanston for over 135 years yet no archive or documentation of their history or presence exists. Today, over 10% of Evanston’s population identifies as Asian, South Asian, and/or Pacific Islander American (ASPA), but this community is seldom represented in present day stories or included in the collection of current data. This absence reinforces the perpetual “foreigner” myth which has often and historically been associated with ASPA identities, and contributes to the erasure of a community.
The Placemaking Project is an ongoing initiative to research local Asian American history, to gather stories from the local ASPA community, and to preserve and share this information today and into the future. From artifacts, biographies, and stories to accounts of immigration and refugee journeys and personal testimonies, this collection will be kept by Evanston ASPA and shared digitally on their website until it finds a permanent home. This project is about increasing the visibility and representation of Asian Americans in our community in an effort to shift society’s collective consciousness towards a more empathetic and antiracist view of people working towards equity and justice. Most importantly it is about creating a community where ASPA people see themselves reflected in history and stories, and experience Evanston as a place where they belong.
Learn more at https://www.evanstonaspa.org/placemaking-project
Event Details:
- Discussion begins following the 2:30 performance, approximately 4:00pm
- To attend the discussion only (without performance tickets) email kwaagner@northlight.org to arrange entry.
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