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2010 Works in Progress |
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Uncle Toisan |
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The 2010 Works in Progress series continues with this Los Angeles premier by storyteller Charlie Chin. Q & A will follow.
“Uncle Toisan, a Chatauqua-style storytelling presentation, features a Chinese American immigrant’s unique life in the United States. Highlighting the Chinese Exclusion Act, Angel Island, World War II, and the civil rights movement, ‘Uncle Toisan’ is a powerful, affecting, and educational experience for all audiences.
“Uncle Toisan enters the country as a 17 year-old ‘paper son’ (immigrants who purchased legal immigration status as a ‘paper son’ of an American citizen), then perseveres through a two-month detention at the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island on the eve of its closing in 1939. Often called the Guardian of the Western Gate, the U.S Immigration Station at Angel Island existed from 1910 to 1940 as a detention center for immigrants—largely Chinese, but also Japanese, Russian, and many others.
“Uncle Toisan is then drafted in 1942 to serve in Europe during World War II, returning from the battlefield to face discrimination at home as a laborer in the restaurants and laundries of San Francisco Chinatown. He witnesses and experiences the tremendous changes in Chinatown stemming from the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the final lifting of Exclusion, the growth of Asian American political empowerment, and the changing demographics of California due to post Vietnam War rounds of immigration.
“The premise of the story is Uncle Toisan playing the Chinese two-stringed fiddle called the erhu on the street in Chinatown to make a few extra dollars to supplement his retirement in a small apartment he shares with his nephew’s family who recently immigrated from the People’s Republic of China. It is the early 1990s and Uncle Toisan is in his late 70s. A group of students from a UC Berkeley Asian American Studies Class on a walking tour led by CHSA guides stops to talk to him, inspiring him to share his story.” — From the Bulletin of the Chinese Historical Society of America:
Charlie Chin is a musician, author, historian, and classically-trained storyteller who has been performing, writing, and teaching for more than 30 years. Chin's concerts, solo theatre, and presentations contain songs, stories, and monologues that use humor, wit, and insight to celebrate the Chinese American experience from the Gold Rush of California to the arriving immigrants of today. In 1989, the Smithsonian Institute presented him with the "Community Folklore Scholar Certificate" in recognition of his work in Asian American Studies. He is a frequent consultant on Asian American communities for the Smithsonian Office of Folk Life and Folkways and is a member of the American Folklore Society.
Works in Progress is a program of the Cultural Services Division of the Torrance Community Services Department. Presented in association with APC Gallery, Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Chinese American Museum, Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, El Camino College Community Education, Organization of Chinese Americans/Greater Los Angeles, Palos Verdes Arts Center, South Bay Chinese American Chamber of Commerce, Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce, Torrance CitiCABLE, Torrance Historical Society & Museum, Torrance Memorial Medical Center, Torrance Public Library, Torrance Symphony Association, UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, University Art Gallery CSU Dominguez Hills, Visual Artists Guild, Visual Communications |
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