About Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond
With humor and grace, the memoir of a first-generation Chinese American in New York City.
Our Laundry, Our Town is a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban oracle bones of Alvin Eng's upbringing in Flushing, Queens, in the 1970s. Back then, his family was one of the few immigrant Chinese families in a far-flung neighborhood in New York City. His parents had an arranged marriage and ran a Chinese hand laundry. From behind the counter of his parents' laundry and within the confines of a household that was rooted in a different century and culture, he sought to reconcile this insular home life with the turbulent yet inspiring street life that was all around them--from the faux martial arts of TV's Kung Fu to the burgeoning underworld of the punk rock scene.
In the 1970s, NYC, like most of the world, was in the throes of regenerating itself in the wake of major social and cultural changes resulting from the counterculture and civil rights movements. And by the 1980s, Flushing had become NYC's second Chinatown. But Eng remained one of the neighborhood's few Chinese citizens who did not speak fluent Chinese. Finding his way in the downtown theater and performance world of Manhattan, he discovered the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder's foundational Americana drama, Our Town. This discovery became the unlikely catalyst for a psyche-healing pilgrimage to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China--his ancestral home in southern China--that led to writing and performing his successful autobiographical monologue, The Last Emperor of Flushing. Learning to tell his own story on stages around the world was what proudly made him whole.
As cities, classrooms, cultures, and communities the world over continue to re-examine the parameters of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Our Laundry, Our Town will reverberate with a broad readership.
ALVIN ENG is a native NYC playwright/memoirist, performer and educator. His memoir, OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond, was published by Fordham University Press (hardcover in May 2022, paperback in October 2023). The memoir was covered by The New York Times and NPR/WNYC among others. THREE TREES, the first of Eng’s Portrait Plays series of historical dramas about artists, was published by No Passport Press. This play dramatizes the haunting relationship between renowned 20th Century artist, Alberto Giacometti, and his primary 1950s muse/model, Japanese philosopher, Isaku Yanaihara. He is currently developing a solo acoustic punk raconteur performance piece, HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk). Through monologues and songs, this work explores the impact of opium and the Opium Wars on the Chinese Diaspora as well as NYC’s punk/counterculture through the dual prisms of William S. Burroughs’ character, “Johnny Yen”––immortalized in Iggy Pop & David Bowie’s ”Lust For Life”––and his own Grandfather’s opium overdose on the streets of NYC's Chinatown. Honors include: three-time recipient of NYSCA/NYFA Fellowships; two-time appointee to the Fulbright Specialist roster as a U.S. Studies/Theatre scholar; LMCC Creative Engagement and Creative Learning grants. Eng’s plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, throughout the U.S., as well as in Paris, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China. Follow Alvin at IG: alvin.eng8 Twitter: alvineng8 or www.alvineng.com