We’re thrilled to announce that we’re celebrating the second anniversary of visualizAsian.com with TWO shows during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! We launbched visualizAsian in May of 2009 with a conversation with former Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, and we’ve had almost two dozen calls since then.
This month we have a show with Albert Kim, one of the writers and producers of the hit action series “Nikita” on Tuesday May 10, and we’re closing out the month with a conversation with journalist and author Cheryl Tan on Tuesday, May 24! Click here to register for the call and you’ll receive the dial-in and webcast information.
Cheryl Tan has written for bigtime publications including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and earlier this year published “A Tiger in the Kitchen” (not to be confused with that other “Tiger” book…). Here’s her biography from her website:
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based writer who has written a memoir about discovering her Singaporean family by learning to cook with them. “A Tiger In The Kitchen” was published by Hyperion this past February.
She was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and the Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, Every Day With Rachael Ray, Family Circle, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, The (Portland) Oregonian, The (Topeka) Capital-Journal, The (Singapore) Straits Times and Elle.com. She is also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Food Channel.
In March/April 2010 and also in December 2010, she was an artist in residence at the Yaddo artists’ colony, where she completed her memoir.
Born and raised in Singapore, she crossed the ocean at age 18 to go to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Unsure of whether she would remain in the U.S. after college, she interned in places as disparate as possible. She hung out with Harley Davidson enthusiasts in Topeka, Kan., interviewed gypsies about their burial rituals in Portland, Ore., covered July 4 in Washington, D.C., and chronicled the life and times of the Boomerang Pleasure Club, a group of Italian-American men that were getting together to cook, play cards and gab about women for decades in their storefront “clubhouse” in Chicago.
An active member of the Asian American Journalists Association, she served on its national board for seven years, ending in 2010.
She started her full-time journalism career helping out on the cops beat in Baltimore — training that would prove to be essential in her future fashion reporting. Both, it turns out, are like war zones. The only difference is, people dress differently.
We’re firm believers that food is the main gateway to world cultures — and especially Asian cultures. Look at the evolution of sushi: Just two or three decades ago, most Americans would recoil at the thought of eating a piece of raw fish on a ball of rice. Now sushi bars have popped up on almost every hips corner, and even supermarkets sell (terrible) sushi.
Cuisine has helped open people to the rest of Asian culture. How many of us had never had Thai food, or Korean food, or Indian food, until we tried it and fell in love with it? How many of us know that most of what we consider “Chinese” food isn’t Chinese at all, but an American variant?
We’ll chat about Cheryl’s career, food of all kinds, and her search for her family identity in the cuisine of Singapore, where she grew up.
Join us for what promises to be a fascinating talk!
Click here to register for the call and you’ll receive the dial-in and webcast information.
(Cross-posted from visualizAsian.com)
