Where:
Porter Square Books
25 White St
Cambridge, MA 02140
Admission:
FREE
Categories:
Art
Event website:
https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/kwan-kew-lai-eb-bartels-girl-who-taught-herself-fly
Porter Square Books is glad to welcome Kwan Kew Lai, author of The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly, for a conversation with E. B. Bartels.
Kwan Kew Lai met her first Punjabi woman doctor while lying in a hospital bed with a severe kidney infection at the age of fourteen. Watching the woman walk away down the hall, Kwan Kew was convinced she could, and would, carve out her own destiny.
In the British Straits Settlement of Penang Island, she was born into an impoverished Chinese family of two boys and ten girls on the cusp of the Japanese occupation during World War Two. She did not wish to repeat the life of her uneducated mother, burdened with an endless brood, nor tolerate the fact that her father considered girls useless since they could not carry on their family name.
The newly independent country of Malaya developed a national policy favoring one racial group, the Bumiputras, vastly diminishing her chance of receiving a university scholarship. Her fortuitous introduction to a free library and her determination to continue her education, led to the opportunity of a lifetime: a scholarship from Wellesley College.
When her father saw her off at the Penang International Airport as the first child to attend college, she proved herself to him, but more importantly she started the journey of a lifetime fulfilling dreams that originated as a young girl playing in the mud with the chickens.
In The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly, the author weaves in her family's story of joy, sorrow, loss, love, and endless struggles with poverty and hunger. This poignant memoir, with universal and timeless themes, will leave you in awe.
Friday, Dec 06, 2024 goes until 12/08
Shubert Theatre
Sunday, Dec 01, 2024 11:00a
Canal Street between Causeway St and Valenti Way