Asian American activist and author, Lora Jo Foo, will be doing a reading from her most recent book, Earth Passages: Journey through Childhood, on Friday, August 21 at 6:30 pm at the Loft Literary Center.

RSVP: Please RSVP by Friday, August 14, 2009 to Margie Andreason at margie@aapip.org
For more information, contact: Bo Thao, Email: bo@aapip.org / Phone: (612) 729-1994

Lora Jo Foo has a special connection to AAPIP. She led the Ford Foundation research that resulted in her first book, Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns, and Responsive Civil and Human Rights Advocacy. After the book was published, AAPIP worked with Lora to take this book across the country on a listening tour that resulted in the development of the National Gender and Equity Campaign.
AAPIP supports Lora’s work now because her newest book, Earth Passages: Journey through Childhood, is about her memories as a daughter, woman, and activist seeking change that aligns with what AAPIP is trying to highlight and change through its work now.

The event is optional. It's free and will have some light refreshments. We encourage you to let others you know about this event who may be interested.

ABOUT LORA JO FOO: A garment worker at age 11 and a union organizer for eight years in the garment and hotel industries, Lora Jo Foo became an attorney representing low wage workers in sweatshop industries. She litigated numerous groundbreaking cases on their behalf. She co-founded Sweatshop Watch and the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. In 2002, she published her first book, Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns and Responsive Human and Civil Rights Advocacy. A gifted photographer, Foo has photographed throughout the United States and world. She has exhibited her nature photographs in galleries and at fine art fairs in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives. She stopped litigating in 2000 and returned to her roots as an organizer. She also returned to school and received her Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2002. Most recently she was the organizing director of a major California union. In 2004 and 2008, she was the National Voting Rights Protection Coordinator for the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Earth Passages: Journeys through Childhood consists of 28 vignettes and 53 color nature photographs, and tells the story of the author growing up in the inner city ghetto of San Francisco’s Chinatown – in poverty, in a housing project, at the age of 11 sewing in a garment sweatshop. In the girl's rare escapes into the woods she discovers a magical world so unlike the ghetto in which she lives. The stories from childhood are paired with color nature photographs taken by the author as an adult. The stories are terse, pithy and powerful. They transform and imbue the very beautiful nature photographs with a much more complicated, almost bittersweet meaning.

Event Sponsors: Asian American/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (National Gender and Equity Campaign), AAPIP-MN Chapter, Full Thought Inc., Loft Literary Center
Co-Hosts: Margie Andreason, Brian Grandison, Kaohly Her, Angelique Kedem, Kathy Jefferson, Laura Lablanc, Megan Powers, David Nicholson, Bo Thao, Bill Thurston, and Lorri Todd