Where did you come from? How did you get here? What did you leave behind? These are the questions Q.M. Zhang asks her father as she tries to write the story of his coming to America from China just after the 1949 revolution. Part memoir, part novel, and part historical documentary, Accomplice to Memory explores the silences and subterfuge of an immigrant parent, and the struggles of the second generation to understand the first.

"Accomplice to Memory is a stunning achievement, an exquisitely rendered map to the mysterious territory of history, memory and the imagination."
— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

Zhang will be in conversation with Bidisha Banerjee.

About Q. M. Zhang

Q.M. Zhang (Kimberly Chang) grew up in upstate New York, lived in China and Hong Kong, and currently makes her home in Western Massachusetts. She is a writer of hybrid non/fiction stories and forms, with a focus on “Chinese” and “American” identities, communities, and border crossings. Trained in the disciplines of anthropology and psychology, she has written ethnographies of diasporic communities on both sides of the Pacific. She is an alumni of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute and was a resident writer at the Vermont Studio Center. She currently teaches at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.

Read more about Q. M. Zhang on her official website.

About Bidisha Banerjee

Dr. Bidisha Banerjee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities at The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include South Asian diasporic fiction and film, visual culture and urban studies, particularly the Hong Kong cityscape. Her work has appeared in several international academic journals; she is currently working on a book project which looks at the way in which the narrated image in South Asian literature functions as a photographic metaphor to enhance the themes of the literary text.

《難得糊塗》新書發佈會

你從哪裡來？你如何來到這裡？你有什麼遺下？ 美國華裔作家Q.M. Zhang 從這些問題與父親展開尋根之路，片刻對話成為書寫後文革移民故事的一手材料。集合回憶錄、小說、歷史紀錄，《難得糊塗》揭示了移民父母的沈默和託詞，以及移民兩代人互相理解的挑戰。

「《難得糊塗》是一個令人驚嘆的成就，如一幅精美刻畫的地圖，由神秘的歷史領域穿梭至記憶和想像。」
— 露絲‧尾關，《時光的彼岸》

Zhang將會與Bidisha Banerjee進行對話。

講者簡介

Q.M. Zhang (Kimberly Chang) 在紐約州北部長大，曾在中國和香港生活，目前在西馬薩諸塞州居住。 她是混合寫實/虛構故事和形式的作家，關注「中國人」和「美國人」的身份，社群和離散經歷。 在人類學和心理學方面受過訓練，她撰寫了太平洋兩岸的離散社區民族志。 她是Juniper Summer Writing Institute的校友和Vermont Studio Center的駐地作家。 她現在在馬薩諸塞州阿默斯特的漢普郡學院教書。

按此前往Zhang的官方網站。

主持簡介

Dr. Bidisha Banerjee是香港教育大學文學與文化研究科助理教授和流行文化與人文學研究中心主任。 她的研究興趣包括南亞裔離散小說和電影，視覺文化和城市研究，特別是香港城市景觀。 其著作登上不少國際學術期刊上。 她目前籌備的新書計劃將探討南亞文學中的敘述形像構成攝影隱喻的方式，以增強文本的主題。