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Asian Awareness Week Events Will Run April 14-16

Posted April 3, 2003

HOLLAND -- A food fair, keynote address and dramatic presentation will all be featured during Asian Awareness Week at Hope College.

The activities will run Monday-Wednesday, April 14-16.

The public is invited. There is an admission charge for the food fair, but admission is free to the keynote address and dramatic presentation.

The Asian Food Fair will be held in the Phelps Hall dining hall on Monday, April 14, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. A variety of dishes will be featured. Admission for those not on the college's meal plan will be $5 per person.

Anne Choi of the history faculty at De Pauw University in Greencastle, Ind., will present the keynote address "La Choy, Chinese Food Swings American? Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the 1920s" on Tuesday, April 15, at 7 p.m. in the Maas Center conference room.

Choi is a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at De Pauw University, and in the fall will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she will teach on Asian American history and Asian American popular culture.

She completed doctoral studies at the University of Southern California in American history, focusing on the experience of Korean immigrants to the U.S. before 1945. A native of the Midwest, she completed her undergraduate degree at Indiana University, where she majored in history and East Asian studies. She holds an M.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts.

The Los Angeles-based performance group Great Leap will present the dramatic presentation "A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens" on Wednesday, April 16, at 7 p.m. in the Knickerbocker Theatre.

Great Leap is a community-based, non-profit performing arts organization dedicated to using the arts to cross cultural borders for positive social change. Founded in 1978 by artistic director Nobuko Miyamoto, Great Leap seeks to create, present and produce works that express the multicultural experience through performances and workshops.

"A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens" is a mix of contemporary stories that give expression to the Asian, Latino, African and Deaf American experience. The performance pieces use theatre, music and movement.

Great Leap's visit is being co-sponsored by the Black Student Union, Hispanic Student Organization and Hope's Asian Perspective Association student groups, and by the college's office of multicultural life.

Phelps Hall and the Maas Center are adjacent to one another on Columbia Avenue at 11th Street. The Knickerbocker Theatre is located in downtown Holland at 86 E. 8th St.

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