Playwright • Educator • Acoustic Punk Raconteur

NEWS & EVENTS

Thrilled to be featured in The New York Times’ “Sunday Routine” on June 12, 2022.

Read the full article here.

January 2023 News & Events:
OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN

As we bid farewell to The Year of the Tiger (my year) and welcome in The Year of the Rabbit, I want to share my immense gratitude. I am honored that my memoir made such a strong connection with so many of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to read the book, attend in-person and virtual events and share many moving, personal reflections. It all contributed to making the past lunar year a most meaningful and memorable one. May we carry on in such an endearing and enduring community.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

(Now, as they say on NPR, “the news is next.”)

 

•  •  •

 Our Laundry, Our Town Spotify playlist 

Long Lost Audio Found…

 

 

At long last, this playlist of popular songs mentioned in my memoir, Our Laundry, Our Town, along with two original tracks, is complete! I have been searching for one of those original audio tracks for years. That track, which bookends the playlist, features my late mother, Toy Lain Chin Eng, singing a verse from “People’s Lives Are Like Dreams.” This was a Cantonese lullaby that The Empress Mother (as mom is named in the book) used to sing around the laundry and the house.

This audio track was used in the 1994 production of my punk-rap musical, The Goong Hay Kid, at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Loisaida, NYC. The long lost audio was found when Tim Cramer, the sound designer from that production, attended a recent Author Event for the book. When I told Tim of my search, he scoured his home and he found the DAT in his… laundry room. Thanks, Tim!

The second original track (#23) is “Rock Me, Goong Hay”––that punk-rap musical’s title song. This version was recorded live at the 21 Pell St Community Center in Manhattan’s Chinatown last summer. I’m rapping, the audience is clapping along and Skyler Chin (my second cousin, and composer of the powerful musical, Illegal), is on guitar. Thanks to Devin Chin (Sky’s bro), for all of his technical wizardry in placing these tracks on Spotify.  
 

To access the playlist-in-progress, please click here.
Or cut & paste: 
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KQHqy3SGstXcHExyeMuxc?si=25954ddfedd04d4b

To complete this flashback,
here’s a ’90s promo photo of yours truly as The Goong Hay Kid.

•  •  •

New Amsterdam branch of NYPL
9 Murray Street (btw Broadway & Church St) Manhattan  

 

The Lower Manhattan Book Club of the NYPL New Amsterdam branch has chosen my memoir, Our Laundry, Our Town, for their Lunar New Year book selection!
On Tuesday, January 24, from 5pm–6:15pm, I will be reading from and discussing the book to celebrate The Year of the Rabbit. Hope you can hop over and join us. The event is Free. Books will be available for purchase and signing. RSVPs are encouraged but not mandatory. To RSVP and for more info.
 

•  •  •
 

 

 

Our Laundry, Our Town was recently featured on the CUNY-TV show, Book It With CA.  The thoughtful and entertaining interview was conducted by Ernabel Demillo, who is also the host of CUNY-TV’s Emmy Award-winning Asian American Life. (Ernabel also interviewed me for their 10th Anniversary program that aired last fall.)  

Please click here to see this 10-minute interview.  (Thank you Ernabel and all at Book It With CA for your great work!)
 

•  •  •

 

Starting in the Spring ’23 semester, Our Laundry Our Town will be taught in Asian American studies courses at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College and Borough of Manhattan Community College campuses.

If you, or anyone you know, would also like to teach this book, please contact me or Fordham University Press, thanks!

•  •  •

 

 

Finally, my play THREE TREES, has been acquired for the New York Public Library Collection and is available at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts as well as the Chatham Square (Chinatown) branches!  This is the first of my Portrait Plays series of historical dramas about artists. Three Trees explores the haunting relationship between renowned sculptor, Alberto Giacometti, and his primary 1950s muse/model, Japanese philosopher & professor Isaku Yanaihara.
Our Laundry, Our Town is also available in the NYPL collection. 

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Happy Year of the Rabbit!
 

To Order the Books: 

   Our Laundry, Our Town   (Fordham University Press)       

Three Trees    (No Passport Press) 

•  •  •

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN
October/ November 2022  Events

Plus OCT 14 NYC Interdisciplinary Event & Panel Discussion: 25 Years After the Hong Kong Handover:
– NYC Chinese American Artists Respond, in Images, Words and Music 

UPCOMING EVENTS

Wednesday. OCT 12 ,  from 6:30- 7:30pm
NYPL In-Person & Virtual Conversation & Reading
Chatham Square branch, 33 East Broadway, Chinatown, NYC

Info & RSVP for In-Person Event
Virtual Event Registration  (Please click on “Register Now”) 

Friday, OCT 14 from 7-9pm  

Church Street School for Music & Art, 41 White Street, Tribeca, NYC

Tuesday. OCT 25 from 3:30 – 4:30pm 

“Hometown Author Talk”
Flushing Main Street branch, 41-17 Main St, Flushing, NY 

No registration required.  More Info

Saturday, NOV 12 @ 7pm 

 Inquiring Minds Bookstore

65 Partition Street, Saugerties, New York (845) 246-5775 

For nearly a century, two generations of the Jewish immigrant Reher family ran a bakery from the storefront of 101 Broadway in Kingston, New York, and lived upstairs.  Kingston residents of the surrounding Rondout neighborhood, mostly working class and immigrant, came to Reher’s for bread, canned goods, and gossip. Today, the site is reborn as a museum and cultural center that preserves and honors the legacy of Reher’s Bakery and amplifies immigrant stories of the Hudson Valley, past and present. The Reher Center’s mission is to foster belonging by engaging all people through culture, community, work, and bread. 

Monday, NOV 14  @ 5:30pm

 “Local Author Showcase” Meet and Greet 

 Rough Draft Books 

82 John Street | Kingston, NY  845-802-0027

Saturday, NOV 19 @ 8pm

Reading and performance with Judith Sloan & Friends
People’s Voice Cafe (in Judson Memorial Church),  239 Thompson St., Greenwich Village, NYC

Ticket Info: People’s Voice Cafe

Saturday, DEC 3 @ 2pm  
To be Re-Scheduled for May Asian Heritage Month Celebration 

NYPL Immigrant Heritage Festival / Asian Heritage Month
Hudson Park NYPL, 66 Leroy Street, West Village, NYC 
Performing a revised version of my acoustic punk raconteur work,
Here  Comes Johnny Yen Again (or How I Kicked Punk).
More info soon!

ASIAN AMERICAN LIFE (CUNY-TV) 

To order the books:

Update: OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN
September/Fall 2022 Events

CUNY-TV Asian American Life Interview
NPR/WNYC Brian Lehrer Show Interview audio

Three Trees staged reading, Monterey, CA 9/18/22 

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN News

May 20, 2022 Two-Part Book Launch
Media & Press Coverage • May-June Events

“If you wept while reading the memoir Crying in H Mart, ached at the injustice in Minor Feelings, and laughed during graphic novel Messy Roots, then Our Laundry, Our Town is the sweet spot between these three.”

NY1 Live at Ten interview with Cheryl Wills, May 9, 2022
Interview Video

UPCOMING EVENTS

MAY 19 – POETRY IN NEW YORK
Book Club Bar, 197 East 3rd St., East Village – 8pm

Doing a 20-minute spoken word set, including some a cappella acoustic punk raconteur  “Johnny Yen” songs” and memoir excerpts, on an amazing bill with Mel Chanté and host/curator Galinsky.

MAY 25, AARP Houston Virtual Talk
4pm-5pm (Central Time)
Asian-American Family Secrets: Hidden in Plain Sight

Virtual reading and talk with genealogist and

community advocate Amy Chin.
Event Registration 

MAY 26 – Virtual Reading & Talk 7-8pm
KEW & WILLOW BOOKS

Fantastic Female-owned Independent Bookstore in Queens!!!

Virtual Reading & Book Talk with AMY CHIN,
Genealogist and Think!Chinatown Board President

Event Registration

MAY 31 – WNYC/NPR Interview – app 12:30pm
 ALL OF IT with ALISON STEWART  

  
NPR/WNYC radio wnyc.org

JUNE 2, Virtual Reading & Talk, 4-5pm

Queens Public Library Literary Thursdays
Our Laundry, Our Town With Author Alvin Eng
Presented by Cambria Heights branch
EVENT REGISTRATION

Wed. JUNE 8, Book Signing, Meet & Greet, 5-7pm

Yu & Me Books, 44 Mulberry St., Chinatown, Manhattan
Only Asian American female-owned indie bookstore in NYC!

Sat., JUNE 25, NYPL Author Talk, 2-3PM

Hudson Park Branch 
66 Leroy Street, West Village, NYC 
NYPL event link
Eventbrite Registation Link

To Order the Book:
Fordham University Press 
Bookshop (please select a favorite indie bookstore!)

• 

PLEASE SAVE THE DATE
Friday, MAY 20, 2022

Two-Part BOOK LAUNCH!
Virtual & In-Person/NYC

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN 
My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond
A memoir by Alvin Eng

Part I (May 20)
Virtual Book Launch

Reading & Talk 5:30pm–7pm (ET)
AAARI/CUNY’s online Friday Lecture Series

Event Registration link

Part II (May 20)
In-Person Book Launch / 7pm – 9pm (ET)
CITY LORE Gallery,  56 East 1^st Street, 

East Village, NYC

“Alvin Eng’s masterful, sweeping memoir about growing up with his five siblings in a dysfunctional family in the back of  the Foo J. Chin Chinese Hand Laundry in Flushing, Queens is laced with his marvelous humor, family anecdotes and metaphors that bring a century of the Chinese American Experience to life. I was deeply touched, especially by the spirits parallels between the folks in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and the laundry­­ and the beautiful idea that his parents didn’t really see each other either––like the characters in the play. Just a beautiful book.”
STEVE ZEITLIN author Poetry of Everyday Life, Founding Director of City Lore 
Hope you can join us online or in-person to celebrate the publication!
More details soon!  

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN
My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond
Publication date: May 17, 2022

Available for Pre-Order now:
Fordham University Press 
Bookshop (please select a favorite indie bookstore!

Our Laundry, Our Town

THREE TREES

A Dramatic Portrait of Alberto Giacometti and Isaku Yanaihara

Published by No Passport Press

Excited to share that my play, THREE TREES, has been published as a print-on-demand book by Caridad Svich’s No Passport Press. The book includes an amazing Foreword from Hana Sharif and a beautiful cover design by Zonia Tsang.

Thank you, Caridad, for creating this outstanding platform for playwrights and for your invaluable support of them. The book is available for $8 from Lulu and Amazon.  A brief description of the play follows, along with links to order the book.

THREE TREES explores the haunting relationship between Parisian sculptor Alberto Giacometti and his primary muse/model of the 1950s, Japanese philosopher, Isaku Yanaihara. It is the first of my Portrait Plays series of historical dramas about artists.

To order the book:

Lulu

Amazon

2021 CHINATOWN ARTS WEEK 
Performances & Reading

Sat. Oct 16 at app. 3:45pm and 5:10pm
Here Comes Johnny Yen Again (or How I Kicked Punk) 
10-minute excerpts from solo acoustic punk raconteur work 
Outside 21 Pell Street, NYC

Sat. OCT 23, btw. 5:30 – 7pm 
Reading of “It’s Only a Paper Son” from Our Laundry, Our Town, 
a memoir to be published by Fordham University Press in May 2022. 
Inside 21 Pell Street, NYC
Both events are Free

 

HISTORY, NOT NOSTALGIA,
CROSSROADS, 2021: For JAMES BALDWIN

Essay, Spoken Word Video and Playlist for
National Sawdust’s Fire This Time Project

Excited to share HISTORY, NOT NOSTALGIA: CROSSROADS 2021, for JAMES BALDWIN, an essay, spoken word video, and Baldwin-inspired playlist––all created at the invitation of the Brooklyn-based music/arts venue, National Sawdust, for their website. The five-minute video was shot on location at City Hall Park, NYC. The current Public Art Fund installation of sculptures by Melvin Edwards seemed the ideal visual counterpoint to contemplate the impact of the great James Baldwin’s words on this unique moment in American and world history.
Click for National Sawdust page 
Click for Video only

This project was created in conjunction with National Sawdust’s salon project, Fire This Time, hosted by poet Lynne Procope. You can also checkout these amazing salon sessions on their website.

“CHI CAN’T BREATHE”

a spoken word offering for George Floyd

––posted on the eve of sentencing of his murderer,

the former Minneapolis cop.

From the 04.17.21 “Playwrights Keeping Vigil” virtual reading produced by the Reset Theatre Coalition: Braata Productions, Conch Shell Productions and Kumu Kahua Theatre.

Video link: https://youtu.be/V67gY9MyHLk

The reading was a book launch for their anthology, “We’re Not Neutral: Reset Series 2020 Collected Short Plays.” Shout out to Antonyio Artis and Tanya E. Taylor, performer and director of the first version of this piece. That clip is also on my YouTube channel.
Book link: https://www.amazon.com/Were-Not-Neutral…/dp/B092P9NWWG

24 Hour Plays Benefit:  Asian Americans Advancing Justice Publishing News 24 Hour Plays Benefit: Asian Americans Advancing Justice As anti-Asian hate crimes continue to grow in frequency and vitriol citywide and nationwide, I am proud to have written “A Seat at the Table,” for The 24 Hour Plays‘ benefit for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC. After a 24–hour writing, rehearsal period (May 17-18, 2021), here’s a link to Pun Bandhu’s fantastic performance of this 6-minute monologue. Please consider making a donation to the The 24 Hour Plays‘ campaign to support AAJC’s mission to advance the civil and human rights for Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all by donating today: https://www.giveinmay.org/story/24aajc    Also check out all of the work of the many wonderful AAPI theatre artists in this project. Thank you to all at 24 Hour Plays, and especially the guest curators, Victor Malanga Maog and Sung Rno.  #StopAsianHate https://youtu.be/6TYPJjCzJa0 Publishing News! Thrilled to announce that No Passport Press will be publishing the first two of my Portrait Plays cycle of historical dramas about artists, THREE TREES and 33 & 1/3 CORNELIA STREET.  2021 publication dates to be announced soon!   THREE TREES, the first Portrait Play, explores the haunting relationship between Alberto Giacometti, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and his primary 1950s muse/model, Japanese philosopher & professor Isaku Yanaihara. The second Portrait Play, 33 & 1/3 CORNELIA STREET dramatizes the fateful events that forever bonded the legacies of Bohemian Greenwich Village legends, Joe Gould, proto-Beat poet and controversial oral history figure, and Joseph Mitchell, renowned writer for The New Yorker Magazine, through the powerful vortex of revered painter Alice Neel‘s groundbreaking portrait of Gould. Finally, I have also activated my Instagram account. If you’d also like to be in touch there, my “handle” is alvin.eng8

2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship: Nonfiction Literature!

_{CHI CAN’T BREATHE (Reset! Video) 
Now available on YouTube channel}

 

CHI CAN’T BREATHE (Reset! Video) 
Now available on YouTube channe

HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN news:

SPECIAL GUEST PERFORMANCE
Friday, 9/25, from 8-9pm EST
Tell Me a Story, Annie: A City Lore Virtual Salon
With Annie Lanzillotto & Alvin Eng
 
GUEST SPEAKER- CENTER FOR ETHNIC STUDIES

BMCC / City University of New York 
Tue., October 6 – Asian American Literature course

Hope everyone is staying safe and resilient during this time like no other. Just wanted to share some news regarding my new acoustic punk raconteur solo work-in-progress, HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk). Of course, the re-scheduled Dixon Place Workshop Residency performance has been cancelled.

But this Friday, September 25, from 8-9pm (EST), I am excited to be performing part of the show as a Special Guest in a City Lore Virtual Salon hosted by Annie Lanzillotto. The salon will include performances from Annie and myself, followed by a discussion on Asian American/Immigrant disenfranchisement––from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the spike of anti-Asian violence and immoral ICE raids during the Pandemic.
Joining the conversation will be actor/activist Ariel Estrada from Racism is a Virus and City Lore board member and Think! Chinatown president, Amy Chin.

RSVP to the FREE event: tellmeastoryannie.eventbrite.com 
Click here for Facebook Event/Facebook Live page

Then on October 6, I am honored to discuss HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN as a Guest Speaker in my colleague, Dr. Linta Varghese’s, Asian American Literature course in BMCC/CUNY’s Center for Ethnic Studies.

If you cannot join us on Friday, the piece will eventually be archived on my YouTube channel. As it looks like we will be sharing work on the streaming screen and not the stage for the foreseeable future, hope you will also consider subscribing to my YouTube channel. 

...VOTE!!!

New Video:
The Last Emperor of Flushing at 70 Mulberry St.

Restore Chen Dance Center & the Arts to 70 Mulberry St.

Now you can tear a building down, but you can’t erase a memory…”
From “Open Letter (To a Landlord)” by Living Colour & Tracie Morris

HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN

…on Video from Dixon Place, NYC

Photo by Wrolf Courtney

Hope this finds everyone staying safe and engaged in all that moves you.

A quick update on the Dixon Place Workshop Residency of HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN––an acoustic punk rock raconteur work written and performed by Alvin Eng and directed by Wendy Wasdahl.

Tonight (April 18) would have been the third and final performance. Of course, this has been cancelled (but rescheduled for Saturday, October 24, 2020!). To have the show go on tonight, and keep running in a different way, we are excited to share on YouTube, a two-camera video from the March 7th performance at Dixon Place. The video will be available indefinitely.

Please click here for HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN…on Video!

This 25-minute video is from the second of three workshop performances. We were joined by Special Guests, Rick Ebihara and Perry Yung from the Slant Performance Group, for a “Tai Chi Music-Meditation Tribute to Lou Reed”…with Wendy also appearing!

The video was directed, filmed and edited by Wrolf Courtney with second camera by John Quincy Lee.  

As this is a work-in-progress, we welcome any feedback, comments or questions.

Finally, we greatly appreciate everyone who worked on this video and performance––as well as everyone who joined us onstage and off in February and March at Dixon Place. Hope to see you again on October 24!

Until we can reconvene, take good care,
Alvin & Wendy

DIXON PLACE Presents 2020 Workshop Residency

HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk)

Dixon Place Presents a Three-Performance Workshop Residency a new solo work Written and Performed by Alvin Eng

Direction and Dramaturgy by Wendy Wasdahl

A solo acoustic punk rock raconteur work, Alvin Eng’s ‘HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk)’ explores the impact of opium on the Chinese Diaspora as well as NYC’s punk/counterculture through the dual prisms of William S. Burroughs’ character, “Johnny Yen”––immortalized in Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s ”Lust For Life”––and Eng’s own Grandfather’s opium overdose on the streets of NYC’s Chinatown. 

(Card design by Ivy Arce, photo by Jim Goodin)

Link to Dixon Place listing: 

Acoustic Punk Rock Raconteur  Saturday Nights @ 7:30pm -Free Admisssion

February 8,  March 7,  April 18, 2020

The Lounge at Dixon Place, 161-A Chrystie Street, New York City

(btw. Rivington & Delancey Streets) / 212.219.0736 / dixonplace.org

Fall 2019 Events follow… (full new website soon!)

THREE TREES A Staged Reading and Workshop

OCTOBER 7, OTTERBEIN UNIVERSITY, Westerville, Ohio

Otterbein University Department of Theatre & Dance will present a staged reading and host workshops around THREE TREES, a play that explores the complex relationship between philosopher Isaku Yanaihara and sculptor Alberto Giacometti. THREE TREES is the first work of Alvin Eng’s Portrait Plays, a cycle of historical dramas that examines the parallels between portraiture, history and power as manifested in the convergence of different disciplines, eras and cultures. This play was presented Off-Broadway with the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in NYC, as well as in staged readings with Baltimore Center Stage and The Moving Parts Theatre in Paris. https://www.otterbein.edu/theatre-performances/

THE MOURNING AFTER: A Play Reading and Discussion

City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Tuesday, September 10, 7-8:30pm

On the Eve of the 18th Anniversary of 9/11, the BMCC Theatre Department presents The Mourning After, a one-act play written and directed by Professor Alvin Eng featuring Dominick Allen and Simone Zalusky. After the play reading, there will be a discussion and open mic: 9/11 themed poems and reflections of 2–3 minutes in length are welcomed!
The Mourning After was written on 9/11/03 aboard the A train as part of the “A Train Plays” 24-hour play festival. The play explores the then two-year aftermath of 9/11 through the prisms of class and perception as two strangers meet aboard a Queens-bound A-train. How far have we come as a country since then? Where do we need to go from here? RSVP to Facebook Event Page

Coming Soon:

THE LAST EMPEROR of FLUSHING: Our Laundry, Our Town, a memoir travelogue through Chinese America. The story begins growing up in a 1970s Chinese Hand Laundry in what was then one of the few immigrant Asian families in Flushing, Queens, to performing his one-man show, “The Last Emperor of Flushing,” in English in a former People’s Hall of the Cultural Revolution in his family’s ancestral Guangdong province.