Scott Kurashige with Karam Dana and Linh Thủy Nguyễn — 'American Peril'

Third Place Books welcomes scholar, writer, and community activist Scott Kurashige to our Ravenna store for a conversation about his new book . Connecting domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record, American Peril exposes the history of anti-Asian violence while also tracing the rise of Asian American community protest and activism. University of Washington professors Karam Dana and Linh Thủy Nguyễn join in conversation.

This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured books!

This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.

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This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige.
From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the U.S. military's slaughter of Asian civilians, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, it traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 M**der of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity.

Scott Kurashige is an award-winning scholar, writer, and community activist whose work explores race, politics, and social movements in U.S. history. He currently serves as President of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation and is the author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles and coauthor, with Grace Lee Boggs, of The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century. Kurashige has devoted 36 years to the study of anti-Asian racism and violence, and he has spoken at over 150 universities, museums, and community organizations nationwide. His work and commentary have featured in The New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Democracy Now!, CNN, and more.

Karam Dana is the Alyson McGregor Distinguished Professor of Excellence and Transformative Research at the University of Washington Bothell and author of To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States (Columbia University Press). He studies Palestinian society and politics, locally and transnationally, with a particular focus on agency of Palestinian diaspora in the US. He also studies race and ethnicity with a particular focus on Arab and Muslim American political behavior and racialization.

Linh Thủy Nguyễn is associate professor in American Ethnic Studies and adjunct associate professor in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Her first book Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production, Temple University Press 2024, received Honorable Mention for the 2024 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize for groundbreaking monographs in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies from the National Women’s Studies Association. Displacing Kinship explores the interpersonal and structural relationships between history, memory, race, war, migration, and family in Vietnamese diasporic art and literature.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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