Asia Society and Mechanics' Institute welcome acclaimed author Gish Jenas to talk about her new book Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self with pioneering Asian-American writer Maxine Hong Kingston. Tiger Writing is a lively blend of family history, cultural criticism, and meditations on Jen's life as the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, reflecting on Eastern and Western ideas of self and how they intersect. The novel, she writes, is fundamentally a Western form that values originality, authenticity and the truth of individual experience. By contrast, Eastern narrative emphasizes morality, cultural continuity, the everyday and the recurrent.

Gish Jen is author of the award-winning novels Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, and World and Town, and the short story collection Who's Irish? She has also written for publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and New Republic.

Maxine Hong Kingston is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Growing up she was active in antiwar activities in Berkeley, but left the mainland for Hawaii in the late 1960s, where she wrote The Woman Warrior, and China Men, which earned the National Book Award.

Date: April 16

Venue: Mechanics' Institute, 4th Floor, 57 Post Street, San Francisco

Website: asiasociety.org

(China Daily 04/12/2013 page23)