Craft in a Time of Crisis

Why write now? In a time of polycrisis—from war, genocide, clash of empires, and attacks on migrants to the erosion of basic human rights and American intellectual freedom—what role can writing and writers play? Join award-winning author and organizer Jeff Chang on the occasion of the release of his new biography of Bruce Lee as avatar of Asian America, Water Mirror Echo, in a discussion with Pulitzer finalist Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings), acclaimed poet Terisa Siagatonu (We The Gathered Heat), and renowned scholar Colleen Lye (After Marx), on how craft becomes witness, and how poetry, biography, and leftist scholarship can shape resistance and renewal. This urgent conversation asks how Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and thinkers are reimagining culture, politics, and solidarity in a changing world.

Reception with book sales and signing at 7:15 after the panel discussion!

Sponsored by the Asian American Research Center , UC Berkeley

Co-sponsored by the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program, the Department of English, and the Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley.

Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and a cultural organizer. His book,, was named one of the best U.S. nonfiction books of the last quarter century. He has also written the award-winning books,, and. He has been a Lucas Artist Fellow and has received the American Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the USA Ford Fellowship in Literature. He is the host of the Signal award-winning podcast on artists and ideas, Edge of Reason, and of Notes From the Edge, produced by KALW Public Media. His new book, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, is out on September 23, 2025.

Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House and Profile Books (UK). Minor Feelings was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned her recognition on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 list. She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her prose and poetry have been published in the New York Times, New Republic, the Guardian, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is a Professor of English at UC Berkeley.

Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley, is Chair of the Asian American Research Center and author of the award-winning America's Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945 (Princeton 2005). Most recently, Professor Lye is the coeditor of After Marx: Literature, Theory and Value in the Twenty-First Century (with Christopher Nealon, Cambridge 2022). She is a member of the editorial boards of Representations, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and Postmodern Culture. She is currently writing a book about the rise of Asian American political identity and the late New Left in the global sixties.

Terisa Siagatonu (See-ang-gah-toe-new) is an award-winning touring poet, speaker, educator, and community organizer born and rooted in the Bay Area. Her voice in the poetry world as a queer Sāmoan woman has granted her opportunities to perform in places such as the UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris, the Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia, and the 2019 SF Women’s March. A 2022 Emerson Collective Fellow, her work has been published in Poetry Magazine and The Academy of American Poets and has been featured on Button Poetry, CNN, NBCNews, NPR, KQED, Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, The Guardian, and more. Terisa is the co-editor of the anthology We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance and Spoken Word. Her debut children’s book, The Vastness of Us, will be published by Penguin.

This event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible.For other accommodations or information, please contact [email protected] or (510) 642-0813.

Host or Publisher Asian American Research Center