“Forever Struggle: Activism, Identity, & Survival in Boston’s Chinatown, 1880-2018” by Michael Liu

Please join us in congratulating Michael Liu for the publication of his new book, Forever Struggle: Activism, Identity, & Survival in Boston’s Chinatown, 1880-2018!

We are organizing a conversation around themes within the book — activist histories, community organizing, and coalition building — for anyone interested in the question: what can be gleaned from Boston Chinatown’s history of resistance for housing activists across the city today?

Please RSVP at http://bit.ly/foreverstruggle for this book launch event with Michael Liu and discussant Carolyn Chou. It will take place on Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 7-8:30 PM over Zoom.

We are also happy to offer a 30% discount code MAS003 for those who would like to purchase the book through UMass Press: umasspress.com/9781625345462/forever-struggle/.

Author Bio:

Michael Liu was born in Chinatown, along with his three siblings, to working class parents. He is also a child of the 60’s. After graduating from Swarthmore and then getting a Masters Degree at Northeastern, he decided (to his parents’ chagrin) to serve meals and learn how to cook at the Golden Age Center in Chinatown. He joined the revolutionary political organization I Wor Kuen in New York. There he married his partner, May Louie, against her better judgment and conveniently on her lunch hour. 

When they returned to Boston in 1974, he and May joined life-long friends like Suzanne Lee, Terri Oshiro and Ramsay Liem in creating social justice groups such as the Asian American Resource Workshop, the Chinese Progressive Association, the Asian American Political Agenda Coalition, the Coalition to Protect Parcel C, and the Boston Rainbow Coalition. In the 1990’s, he was executive director of the Asian American Resource Workshop.  

During the purported “end of history” in 1990’s, he got his Ph.D. in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts of Boston to see his place in the era. His last and longest tenured job was as Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Asian American Studies. He co-authored an interpretive history of Asian American organizing, The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism. Now, as he looks at the mirror and knows that he’s on the downside of the mountain, he and May hope to support young activism.

Photograph of Michael Liu taken in 1983.