From behind the counter of his parents’ laundry and a household rooted in a different century and culture to the turbulent, exciting streets of 1970s New York City, playwright Alvin Eng shares his riveting, tender story of finding voice, identity and community through the transformative power of Asian American arts, activism, punk rock and theater.

Playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator Alvin Eng grew up in Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood of that singular universe that was New York City in the 1970s – back then, his was one of the few immigrant Chinese families to live there. His parents had an arranged marriage and ran a Chinese Hand Laundry. In OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond, fans of memoirs that speak to the immigrant experience – such as Beautiful Country and Sigh, Gone – will delight in Eng’s illuminating time capsule of the Chinese-American experience, from the Chinatowns of the U.S to China’s motherland. Eng explores issues of identity, race, and societal expectations with marvelous humor, introspection and tenderness.

Says Eng, “In some ways, my parents’ arranged marriage was the ultimate tragic opera in that I never once saw them dance or engage in any amorous way that went one breath or gesture beyond the bare-bones necessities of running our laundry and our family. In another sense, theirs was an unmitigated immigrant success story in that they both ventured to the other side of the world, at a time when our race was legally blocked from becoming U.S. citizens for almost an entire century, and prospered. Against mountains of societal, institutional, and legal obstacles, they raised five children and maintained a successful Mom-and-Pop Chinese hand laundry business for three decades, as well as two homes.”

Eng reconciles the push and pull of an insular home life with the turbulent yet inspiring street life around him – from faux martial arts TV stars to punk rock and theater. 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. These same systemic conflicts form the core of our current global reckoning on representation and identity.

By the 1980s, Chinese culture began to flourish in Flushing. Yet, Eng remained an outsider of sorts because he was one of Flushing’s few Chinese citizens who could not speak fluent Chinese. As a theatre practitioner and professor in the 21st century, discovering the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s seminal Americana drama, Our Town, became the unlikely catalyst for a psyche-healing pilgrimage.

At City University of Hong Kong, Alvin and his wife, director/dramaturg Wendy Wasdahl, led a Fulbright Specialist devised theatre residency on the Chinese influence on Our Town. From this residency, the US Consulate Guangzhou invited Alvin to perform his Our Town-inspired solo, The Last Emperor of Flushing, in his family’s ancestral Guangdong Province of southern China. Learning to proudly tell his own story on stage helped to make him whole.

Excerpt

From Chapter 1: The Urban Oracle Bones of Our Laundry: Channelling China’s Last Emperor and Rock ‘n’ Roll’s First Opera

While I have been blessed to have always had a roof over my head and the honor of living with loved ones, when I was growing up, homelessness was a constant spiritual state. A child’s longing to belong is one of the most powerful forces and relentless muses on Earth. In every culture, belonging has many different nuances of meaning and resonance. What and who exactly constitutes that destination of longing changes with every age and, in childhood, with every grade. What never seems to change is the feeling that we never quite arrive, and when or if we do, it only lasts for a fleeting time and was never quite what we expected.

These memoir portraits are an attempt to decode and process the urban oracle bones from growing up as the youngest of five children in an immigrant Chinese family that ran a hand laundry. Our family was born of an arranged marriage, and our laundry was in the Flushing, Queens, neighborhood of that singular universe that was New York City in the 1970s. Like many children of immigrant or “other” family origins in late-twentieth-century America, I was constantly seeking American frames of reference with which to contextualize my own “outsider” experiences and sensibilities.

Although Flushing became New York City’s second China-town during the 1980s, a.k.a. “The People’s Republic of Floo-Shing,” in the 1960s and ’70s, we were one of only a fistful of Chinese families there. The Flushing of my childhood was still basking in the afterglow of the post–World War II suburban baby boom. That boom was celebrated at the 1964–65 World’s Fair, held in Flushing Meadows Park. That World’s Fair was the zenith of “The American Century,” when anything was supposed to be possible. In this euphoric mood, Flushing immigrants were the last wave who gave up everything. They had forsaken their customs, their language—many would have changed their appearance if they could—just to get a whiff of “The American Dream.”

The underside of growing up in the post–World War II euphoria of the World’s Fair, as well as in the shadows of the Cold War, was that China was looming as Uncle Sam’s Communist Public Enemy #2. Under this cloud, our laundry frequently became a target for salvos of verbal abuse like “Chinky Cho, Go Home!” As a child in this hostile milieu, I never envisioned even setting foot in China, let alone perform a memoir monologue, The Last Emperor of Flushing, there that I wrote in English based on my family. This monologue was inspired, in part, by Thornton Wilder’s Americana play Our Town. I also never would have imagined that this Americana work has some Chinese artistic influence and roots.

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About the Author

ALVIN ENG is a native NYC playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator. His plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, throughout the U.S., as well as in Paris, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, China. Eng is the editor of the oral history/play anthology, Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage (Temple, 2000). His plays, lyrics, and memoir excerpts have also been published in numerous anthologies. His storytelling and commentary have been broadcast and streamed on National Public Radio, among others. www.alvineng.com