JULY 22ND – HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY BANYAN! AMPLIFYING ASIAN AM VOICES
3:00 – 5:00 p.m. Readings. Music. Kids’ activities. Light refreshments. Family friendly. Oak Park Public Library (Veterans Room). 834 Lake Street, Oak Park 60304. Free.
Banyan: Asian American Writers Collective is pleased to feature writers P.J. Temple and Lani T. Montreal.
Banyan showcase: Eduardo Eusebio, Isabel Garcia-Gonzales, Sunila Samuel, Nurul Hana Mohammed Rafee, Camilo Garcia-Gonzales, & Mia Manansala.
Music: Christian Eusebio, Feliz DeGuzman, Yasmeen Mohammed Rafee, and Dasha German.
FEATURED WRITERS
P.J. Temple and Essays of Night and Daylight
P.J. Temple is a clinical health psychologist who works in Chicago’s Lawndale community. She enjoys creating art related to social justice, spirituality, culture and other bizarre and beautiful intricacies of life. Patty is the author of Essays of Night and Daylight, a book of stories on race, immigration and American life through the lens of a woman of color. P.J.’s currently working on Where the Tiger Dwells, a memoir about her very Christian Indian parents who are giddily in the process of arranging her marriage while she becomes faint at the mere thought of telling them she’s having her secret American boyfriend’s baby.
P.J.’s speech writing style can be seen in her TEDx talk on changing the narrative of inequity. Through photography, P.J. seeks to capture pieces of life that widen perceptions of the many colors of humanity. She also integrates visual and written creation through storyboard art for short films. Visit Patty at www.pjtemple.com.
Lani T. Montreal and Fanboys
Lani T. Montreal is a Filipina educator, writer, performer, and community activist based in Chicago. Her writings have been published and produced in Canada, the U.S., the Philippines and in cyberspace. Among her plays are: Panther in the Sky, Gift of Tongue, Looking for Darna, Alien Citizen, Grandmother and I, and Sister OutLaw. She is the recipient of the 2015 3Arts Djerassi Residency Fellowship for Playwriting, 2008 3Arts Ragdale Residency Fellowship, the 2001 Samuel Ostrowsky Award for her memoir “Summer Rain,” and among the finalists for the 1995 JVO Philippine Award for Excellence in Journalism for her environmental expose “Poison in the River.” Lani holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Roosevelt University. She teaches writing at Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, and writes a blog called “Fil-in-the-gap”. (filinthegap.com.) She lives (and loves) in Albany Park, Chicago with her multi-species, multi-cultural family.
“FANBOYS travels the landscape of language, learning and love. Montreal has not only written about navigating teaching and creativity, but inserts poems of the body, poems of motherhood, of illness and life that stir the reader and howl survival. Each poem braces itself for the next in a brilliant unfolding of electric narratives which both spin and give footing. Montreal’s voice is one that is heartbreakingly necessary and vastly brave in these times.”
–Keli Stewart, Poet , Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Awardee