Mon 5/6 @ 6PM
Author Amy Tan is best known for her 1989 debut novel The Joy Luck Club, which draws on her own background as the daughter of Chinese immigrants growing up in the San Francisco Bay area. It revolves around four Chinese immigrant mothers and their daughters, using mahjong game as a framework for their stories.
She’s written half a dozen subsequent novels, as well as a couple of children’s books, some nonfiction works including her new book The Backyard Bird Chronicles, which she wrote and illustrated. It looks at her own how she confronted the Trumpification of the world, and the constant media flood of stories about racism, hate and division, driven by an exponential growth of lies. Her response was to immerse herself in the birds that came to her own yard. The book shares what she discovered about birds and about herself.
Tan is coming to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to talk about the background of the book and share how she began this project, as well as some of the drawings she made. She’ll engage with Dr. Caitlin Colleary, CMNH’s Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology for a conversation “about writing and birding, identity and diversity, observation and conservation, and the restorative power of art and nature.” The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A.
Doors open at 5pm; at 5:20 the museum’s librarian and archivist Joe Tait will give a short talk on CMNH’s bound, first-edition set of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. Tan’s presentation will take place in Murch Auditorium starting at 6pm.
The event is free but registration is highly encouraged. You can also order a signed copy of The Backyard Bird Chronicles, courtesy of Loganberry Books, to be picked up at the event. Go here.
cmnh/a-special-evening-with-amy-tan
Cleveland, OH 44106