The campus community is invited to a book signing by author Alan Dutka on Wednesday, Dec. 3, at noon in the Barnes and Noble university bookstore.
Dutka will promote his new book, AsiaTown Cleveland: From Tong Wars to Dim Sum, which chronicles the struggles and triumphs of one of the city’s most vibrant communities.
For years, Cleveland’s Chinese residents struggled to find a secure place in the city, according to Dutka. Immigrants came with dreams of building a better life, but without English proficiency, prospects dimmed, and they often earned poor pay for long hours of strenuous work. In 1925, Cleveland police responded to an especially brutal outbreak of the tong war violence ravaging the community by arresting every Chinese person in the city, creating an international scandal.
In spite of the anti-Asian sentiment of the time, the community persevered and paved the way for its current entrepreneurial success. Today, Clevelanders and tourists travel to the growing AsiaTown neighborhood to enjoy authentic Asian dinners, shop at Asian-owned stores and enjoy Asian-themed karaoke nights in newly built malls and century-old former residential homes.