Program Description
Event Details
Please join us in the Kennedy Library Meeting Room for a 60-minute interactive virtual visit to the Tenement Museum. The tour will be led by a live Tenement Museum Educator and attendees will view the presentation on our big screen! Explore the story of the Wongs, a Chinese American family who lived in 103 Orchard Street in the 1970s. Look at how they made a home and how their experiences reflect the growth of Chinese communities and the garment industry in New York in the wake of changing immigration laws. Learn about the push and pull factors of Chinese immigration and the long history of laws that restricted Asian immigration, beginning with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Through exploration of a recreated apartment and garment shop, we will examine how the Wongs made a home in a growing Chinatown. Video interviews and family and neighborhood photographs will allow us to consider how different generations of the family navigate language, schooling, and media, and form their own senses of identity and belonging.
This event accompanies the traveling exhibit World on the Move: 250,000 Years of Human Migration.
World on the Move: 250,000 Years of Human Migration was developed by the American Anthropological Association, together with the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and Smithsonian Exhibits. It is administered by the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office.
More information about the traveling exhibition can be found at understandingmigration.org.