Snakes Can’t Run: A Mystery A Reading With Author Ed Lin

Free and open to the public. Please RSVP to A/P/A Institute by Tuesday, October 19, 2010.

It’s a hot summer in New York’s Chinatown, post-Vietnam in 1976, and Robert Chow, the Chinese American detective son of an illegal immigrant, takes on a new breed of ruthless human smugglers – snakeheads – when two bodies of smuggled Chinese are found dead under the Brooklyn Bridge overpass. But as Robert comes closer to finding some answers, he discovers a dark secret in his own family’s past.

Join us for a special evening with author Ed Lin as he reads from his mystery novel Snakes Can’t Run. After the reading, Ed Lin will be in dialogue with Peter Kwong, Professor of Asian American Studies at Hunter College for a conversation on New York City, Chinatown, and the histories of snakeheads and human trafficking in New York’s Chinatown.

Ed Lin, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the author of Snakes Can’t Run, This Is a Bust and Waylaid. He is the first author to win two Members’ Choice Awards in the Asian American Literary Awards. Lin lives in New York with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung.

Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian American Studies at Hunter College, is co-author of Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community, and Chinese Americans: An Immigrant Experience. His other books include Forbidden Workers: Chinese Illegal Immigrants and American Labor, The New Chinatown, andChinatown, New York: Labor and Politics 1930-1950.