Join AAUW and our ¡Adelante! Book of the Month Club on May 2nd at 7:30pm ET as we celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month by talking with 2013–14 AAUW American Fellow Patricia Park about her book Re Jane, a “breezy, engaging” first novel that “grapples with real issues of identity, race, and culture from global and historical perspectives.”
For Jane Re, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, the place she’s wanted to escape her whole life is Flushing, Queens. Sardonic yet vulnerable, Re toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and observes the traditional Korean principle of nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, and obligation). Desperate for a new life, she becomes the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn-based English professors and their adopted Chinese daughter. Inducted into the world of organic food co-ops and 19th-century novels, Re is the recipient of Beth Mazer’s feminist lectures and Ed Farley’s attention. But when a family death interrupts Re and Farley’s blossoming affair, she flies off to Seoul, leaving New York behind. While reconnecting with family and struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, Re begins to wonder if Farley is the man for her. She returns to Queens, where she must find a balance between two cultures and accept who she really is. Register now to join us as we discuss this contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre that is a bright, comic story of falling in love, finding strength, and living not just out of obligation to others, but for one’s self.
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