As luck would have it, the Georgia Literary Festival, which is held each year in a different locale, was in my hometown of Macon in 2006. It was a special opportunity to return after so many years to the site that was the locale where the events in Southern Fried Rice occurred.
I got to meet my first grade best friend, renew acquaintances with junior high classmates after over 50 years, and visit my old childhood haunts. (Rip Van Winkle had nothing on me, awakening after only about 20 years) It was intriguing and somewhat "eerie"to see what changes had occurred, physically as well as socially, and also to note what things were much the same as they were when I grew up there.
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I was in Atlanta in 2005 to give a paper at the Asian American Studies conference. Again, press releases allowed the local Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) to know of my visit and they invited me to speak at their dinner. The event was almost a total disaster because the event started about an hour late due to problems with the restaurant not realizing that 100 guests were coming. So, I wisely chopped my prepared talk to 15 mins in view of the late hour, but the Q & A surprisingly went for an hour. This informality played to my abilities honed from years of college teaching to 'work the audience.' Afterwards, I got 2 more invites to come back to Atlanta the next month, one to give a Keynote Address to a black tie dinner gala for Who's Who in Asian Americans in Georgia and to give a talk about Southern Fried Rice to the local chapter of National Association of Asian American Professionals. Both of these opportunities just fell into my lap, and I decided to accept the challenges, and they both went very well. I had never attended a book reading/signing when I was invited to the Chinese Historical Society Museum in San Francisco in 2005. It was rewarding because some many audience members reported sharing some similar experiences to mine. After this first event, I decided to stop "reading" verbatim because I could achieve more eye contact and interest with the audience by speaking off the cuff, aided usually by some visuals shown with Powerpoint. |
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