With humor and grace, the memoir of a first-generation Chinese American in New York City. Our Laundry, Our Town is a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban oracle bones of Alvin Eng’s upbringing in Flushing, Queens, in the 1970s. Back then, his family was one of the few immigrant Chinese families in a far-flung neighborhood in New York City. His parents had an arranged marriage and ran a Chinese hand laundry. From behind the counter of his parents’ laundry and within the confines of a household that was rooted in a different century and culture, he sought to reconcile this insular home life with the turbulent yet inspiring street life that was all around them––from the faux martial arts of TV’s Kung Fu to the burgeoning underworld of the punk rock scene. In the 1970s, NYC, like most of the world, was in the throes of regenerating itself in the wake of major social and cultural changes resulting from the counterculture and civil rights movements. And by the 1980s, Flushing had become NYC’s second Chinatown. But Eng remained one of the neighborhood’s few Chinese citizens who did not speak fluent Chinese. Finding his way in the downtown theater and performance world of Manhattan, he discovered the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s foundational Americana drama, Our Town. This discovery became the unlikely catalyst for a psyche-healing pilgrimage to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China—his ancestral home in southern China—that led to writing and performing his successful autobiographical monologue, The Last Emperor of Flushing. Learning to tell his own story on stages around the world was what proudly made him whole. As cities, classrooms, cultures, and communities the world over continue to re-examine the parameters of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Our Laundry, Our Town will reverberate with a broad readership.

In many contemporary and popular forms of religious practice, digital technology and the spiritual are inseparable. Ranging from streaming broadcasts of spiritual possessions to screenings of mass prayer conferences in stadiums, spirits and divinities now have new forms in which they can materialise. By offering the notion of 'digital spirits', this book critically attends to the intersections of digital media and spiritual beings. It also puts forward a new performative perspective on how they interact. Taking cues from the work of Stewart Hoover and Heidi Campbell, among others, the book begins with an outline of the current debates around religion, performance and digital media. It then moves on to examine how mediality and religion, where embodied practices are carried out alongside virtual practices, work together in contemporary Asia. These case studies focus on lived religious practices in combination with various forms of media, and so help demonstrate that digital technology in particular reveals the layered processes of spirituality in practice. Gods and divinities have always relied on media to manifest, and this book is a fascinating exploration of how digital media has continued that tradition and taken it in new directions. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, digital media and performance studies.

With humor and grace, the memoir of a first-generation Chinese American in New York City. Our Laundry, Our Town is a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban oracle bones of Alvin Eng's upbringing in Flushing, Queens, in the 1970s. Back then, his family was one of the few immigrant Chinese families in a far-flung neighborhood in New York City. His parents had an arranged marriage and ran a Chinese hand laundry. From behind the counter of his parents' laundry and within the confines of a household that was rooted in a different century and culture, he sought to reconcile this insular home life with the turbulent yet inspiring street life that was all around them--from the faux martial arts of TV's Kung Fu to the burgeoning underworld of the punk rock scene. In the 1970s, NYC, like most of the world, was in the throes of regenerating itself in the wake of major social and cultural changes resulting from the counterculture and civil rights movements. And by the 1980s, Flushing had become NYC's second Chinatown. But Eng remained one of the neighborhood's few Chinese citizens who did not speak fluent Chinese. Finding his way in the downtown theater and performance world of Manhattan, he discovered the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder's foundational Americana drama, Our Town. This discovery became the unlikely catalyst for a psyche-healing pilgrimage to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China-his ancestral home in southern China-that led to writing and performing his successful autobiographical monologue, The Last Emperor of Flushing. Learning to tell his own story on stages around the world was what proudly made him whole. As cities, classrooms, cultures, and communities the world over continue to re-examine the parameters of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Our Laundry, Our Town will reverberate with a broad readership.

In many contemporary and popular forms of religious practice, digital technology and the spiritual are inseparable. Ranging from streaming broadcasts of spiritual possessions to screenings of mass prayer conferences in stadiums, spirits and divinities now have new forms in which they can materialise. By offering the notion of 'digital spirits', this book critically attends to the intersections of digital media and spiritual beings. It also puts forward a new performative perspective on how they interact. Taking cues from the work of Stewart Hoover and Heidi Campbell, among others, the book begins with an outline of the current debates around religion, performance and digital media. It then moves on to examine how mediality and religion, where embodied practices are carried out alongside virtual practices, work together in contemporary Asia. These case studies focus on lived religious practices in combination with various forms of media, and so help demonstrate that digital technology in particular reveals the layered processes of spirituality in practice. Gods and divinities have always relied on media to manifest, and this book is a fascinating exploration of how digital media has continued that tradition and taken it in new directions. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, digital media and performance studies.

What does it mean to be queer and Asian American at the turn of the century? The writers, activists, essayists, and artists who contribute to this volume consider how Asian American racial identity and queer sexuality interconnect in mutually shaping and complicating ways. Their collective aim (in the words of the editors) is \u0022to articulate a new conception of Asian American racial identity, its heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity -- concepts that after all underpinned the Asian American moniker from its very inception.\u0022 Q & A approaches matters of identity from a variety of points of view and academic disciplines in order to explore the multiple crossings of race and ethnicity with sexuality and gender. Drawing together the work of visual artists, fiction writers, community organizers, scholars, and participants in roundtable discussions, the collection gathers an array of voices and experiences that represent the emerging communities of a queer Asian America. Collectively, these contributors contend that Asian American studies needs to be more attentive to issues of sexuality and that queer studies needs to be more attentive to other aspects of difference, especially race and ethnicity. Vigorously rejecting the notion that a symmetrical relationship between race and homosexuality would weaken lesbian/gay and queer movements, the editors refuse to \u0022believe that a desirably queer world is one in which we remain perpetual aliens -- queer houseguests -- in a queer nation.\u0022