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A NEW MEMOIR EXAMINES IDENTITY, THEN AND NOW

Join us for a free evening with nationally renowned and locally beloved writer David Mura to celebrate his new memoir, Exit, Miss Saigon! With excerpt readings and a Q&A facilitated by Josephine Lee, start exploring the book’s reflections around “growing up white” and how identity, representation, and activism burst into his life during the Twin Cities’ Miss Saigon protests in 1992. Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event, thanks to Xia Books & Café.

While the event is free, please RSVP to let us know if you plan on attending!

GENERAL INFORMATION

DATE & LOCATION

Oct 7 from 7-8:15 pm CT

Mu Community Room (755 Prior Ave. N, Saint Paul, MN 55104). Free lot and street parking is available, and the building is accessible via ramps and elevators.

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK

From University of Minnesota Press: “David Mura was well into his 20s when he began to explore his Asian American identity. His Japanese American parents had been incarcerated in internment camps during World War II, and in response to their traumatic experience, they abandoned their Japanese roots to try to assimilate into white, middle-class America. As a result, Mura was raised to consider himself as a white person, and his journey toward understanding and accepting his Asianness was a fraught road—one that left many fractured relationships in its wake. In Exit, Miss Saigon, Mura writes with frank openness about his personal experiences and the irrevocable ways they are rooted in the internalized, systemic racism that permeates American culture.”

MEET THE AUTHOR

DAVID MURA (he/him) is a poet, writer of creative nonfiction and fiction, critic, and playwright. He is author of several books, including The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives (Minnesota, 2022) and A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing and the memoirs Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity. He is coeditor, with Carolyn Holbrook, of We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (Minnesota, 2021). He lives in Minneapolis.

MEET THE FACILITATOR

JOSEPHINE LEE (she/her) is a professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and the editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Her books include Race in American Musical Theater; The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, and Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage, and the edited collection Milestones in Asian American Theatre.

MORE TO KNOW