Family Matters: Writing Immigrant Stories

OPA Live! is an Instagram Live series that features Pittsburgh-based cultural producers in conversation with their peers in other locations nationally and internationally. For the second session of this season of OPA Live!, we welcome our host, photographer Karen Lue, and her guest, writer Cathy Linh Che.

Session Description

Karen Lue and Cathy Linh Che will discuss translating immigrant stories and familial relationships into creative work. Both Karen and Cathy’s work are informed by their identities as Asian Americans and their experiences growing up in immigrant families. They will explore themes such as intergenerational trauma, mental well-being, art as healing, and more.

About Karen Lue

Karen Lue is a Chinese American artist whose photographs explore aspects of identity in relation to concepts of grief, loss, isolation, and displacement. She also examines her identity through self-portraiture and the body as it is shaped by her race, ethnicity, chronic illness, and mental well-being. Karen was an inaugural Visual Arts Coalition for Equity Fellow in 2021. She has exhibited at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media, CDCP Project Space, and SPACE Gallery, and her work has been featured in SLANT’D Media and TABLE Magazine.

About Cathy Linh Che

Cathy Linh Che is the author of  Split (Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. She also cowrote the children’s book A Is for Asian American (Haymarket Books), which will be published in May 2023. She has received awards from MacDowell, The Anderson Center, and the Jerome Foundation, among others. She is currently a PhD student in English at Fordham University and serves as Executive Director at Kundiman.