UCLA's Amerasia Journal announces a special April 2007 issue on the writings of Prof. L. Ling-chi Wang and L. Ling-chi Wang: Quintessential Scholar-Activist First Collection of Writings Book Signing and Award Ceremony at Upcoming AAAS Conference on Friday, April 6, 2007 in New York.
During the past 40 years, Prof. Wang's impact as a Chinese American scholar, activist, institution builder at UC Berkeley, policy advocate, and public speaker has been unparalleled within Asian American Studies and in the nation. The special issue is edited by Prof. Don Nakanishi, the Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and Amerasia's long-time editor, Prof. Russell Leong. The issue was conceived both as a tribute to the recently retired U.C. Berkeley teacher and administrator, and also as a way to introduce Prof. Wang's writings to students, scholars, and local and global social activists in the U.S. and in Asia. Prof. Wang will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of Asian American Studies at its upcoming annual conference in New York on Friday, April 6, 2007 at 12:45 p.m. in the Exhibit Area (Ballroom A) of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and will be available to sign his book at that time. This international edition is the first collection of Prof. Wang's selected works in English, and contains a introduction in English and in Chinese written by Nakanishi and Leong. The individual essays are organized under the following five sections: I. China, the U.S., and Chinese Americans, II. Model Minority, High-tech Coolies, and Foreign Spies? III. Paradoxes of Asian Americans in Higher Education IV. Philosophy and Politics of Community Activism v. Dual Domination and Asian Americans. Rooted intellectually in thinkers as diverse as the old Testament prophets, Soren Kierkegaard, W.E.B. DuBois, Saul Alinksy, Mao Tse-tung, Sun Tzu, Antonio Gramsci, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Prof. Wang's vision is also grounded in Asian American communities and grassroots organizing.
Since the 1960s, Prof. Wang has been a scholar/activist at the forefront of Asian American politics and education, including bilingual education, admissions quotas, the 1996 presidential campaign finance scandal, Wen Ho Lee debacle, and U.S./China relations. As Prof. Wang states about his formal and informal education: "All the events at the University of Chicago, the black uprising, and what I was reading about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and the black protest movement had been more or less abstract, but coming to San Francisco, everything became real. I realized the kind of analysis used to explain the black experience can be applied to the Chinese American experience." Prof. Wang's family has been part of the Chinese diaspora from the 19th century onwards. His father was born in Kobe, Japan, and his mother spent early childhood in the Philippines and Fujian. Wang himself was born on the island of Gulangyu, off the coast of Xiamen, China. He attended Princeton Seminary, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. This 200-page issue includes selected essays from the 1960s through 2006, together with an in-depth interview by Prof. Sucheng Chan. Prof. Wang has also provided rare family photographs of the Wang family in China and in the U.S.