On Friday September 21st Cedar Crest College hosted visiting writer Staceyann Chin, author of The Other Side of Paradise, a memoir in which she details her childhood and her experiences as a lesbian of Chinese-Jamaican and Afro-Jamaican descent.
The event was hosted in partnership with the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and drew an audience of over 50 people that included Cedar Crest administration, faculty, students, staff and members of the local LGBT community.
Ms. Chin engaged in a dialogue about the importance of storytelling in shedding light on the relationship between local communities and histories in artistic development and self-understanding. She also gave a lively performance of humorous anecdotes from chapters in her memoir and spoke frankly about the pleasures and difficulties of her complex subject position.
This event will be followed up by two intergenerational group discussions of The Other Side of Paradise in September and October at Cedar Crest College and the Bradbury-Sullivan Center.