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Saturday, 8/16 at 8 AM PT: Dorothy Hom talks with host Cynthia Friedlob
Ninety-five-year-old author DOROTHY HOM spent half a lifetime working on her massive book of 800+ pages. Peacock Alley is called a novel, however, it’s based on the true story of her grandmother, who was instrumental in the founding of Chinatown in Los Angeles. From the book’s website:
“Peacock Alley is the compelling story of Liah, a courageous Chinese immigrant wife and mother and her struggle to establish an ethnic community within early 20th Century Los Angeles where the Chinese inhabitants would be safe from the wanton persecution of the ‘White Devils’ and where a traditional Chinese lifestyle could be preserved.”
Although a published poet, this is the author’s first novel. She grew up in Chinatown, and continues to live in Los Angeles, enjoying her books, her garden, her friends, and members of her family. Learn more and purchase her book at PeacockAlleyBook.com.
Related: Bower’s Museum in Santa Ana is currently hosting an exhibit entitled, “The Lure Of Chinatown: Painting California’s Chinese Communities.” It “provides a glimpse of the communities before they underwent significant changes following the devastating earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, and urban renewal in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Artists of the Depression era, some of whom were Chinese-American, created positive, stylized images of the quarter using watercolor, reflecting the national American Scene movement of the 1930s and early 1940s.” The show is up through August 31st. Peacock Alley is available in the museum’s gift shop.
The Chinese American Museum in downtown Los Angeles also has an ongoing exhibition entitled “Origins: The Birth and Rise of Chinese American Communities in Los Angeles,” as well as many other shows of interest. From the website: “Symbolically housed in the oldest and last surviving structure of Los Angeles’ original Chinatown, the 7,200 square foot Chinese American Museum (CAM) embodies both a cultural and physical link to the past and a promising point of entry for the city’s multicultural future.”
