By M.S. Deshmukh | Special to AsianWeek
As the Lunar New Year approaches, East Bay festivities will begin early. The Year of the Ram will get a jump-start at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center this Saturday, when the ribbon is cut to open the first Asian American Multimedia and Books Expo.
The free, three-day fair is being sponsored by the Asian Branch Library of the Oakland Public Library system, San Francisco-based Asian book and multimedia merchant East Wind Books, and several local APA community organizations, including the association of Northern California Chinese Schools.
Asian Branch librarian, Marjorie Li, is billing the exposition as a way to bring together people from all over the Bay Area to “discover the universe of Asian American multimedia,” while also discovering “one of the best hidden secrets in Oakland — that we have an Asian Cultural Center.”
Multimedia is a term that encompasses music CDs, DVDs, VCDs, as well as manga, books, videos and even computer games. The video content ranges from tai chi exercises, language instruction and music appreciation to recent Asian language movies, and even MGM films released in Japanese with Japanese titles.
The Asian Branch Library boasts more such media than any of the other 15 Oakland libraries, a fact that Li attributes to the cultural contact maintained by the Asian Pacific American, immigrant and refugee populations who reside in large numbers in Oakland’s Chinatown, where the Asian Branch is located.
The Oakland Asian Cultural Center, which is actually attached to the Asian Branch Library at 388 9th St. in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza, is located in the heart of Oakland’s Chinatown, where Cambodian and Southeast Asian refugee communities mingle with long-standing Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean residents. Li, who arrived in Oakland in April of last year, following years as a distinguished university librarian in New Jersey and on various national library and APA association boards, feels strongly that multimedia can bring the APA community together.
Two of the eight computers in the Asian branch library are dedicated to video games. Li admitted, “I personally don’t like to see them only playing games, but it brings the teenagers in and then we can get them started on books.”
Among the younger crowd, she said, the manga particularly goes like hotcakes.
East Wind Books, with locations in San Francisco and Berkeley, is the largest retailer in the area of Asian-related multimedia and reading material. In the two exhibition halls of the Asian Cultural Center, a large sampling of their collection will be on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday, January 18 to 20.
Another sponsor, Friends of the Asian Library, will be encouraging attendees to consider buying materials from East Wind Books and donating them to the library after they have used them. Their efforts will be aimed at meeting the rising demand for audio-visual materials in eight Asian languages at the busiest branch of the Oakland Public Library. This is especially important at a time when library spending seems sure to be curtailed.
Also in attendance will be students from Chinese weekend schools around the Bay Area. Li is excited that these schools, many of which she characterized as “shoestring operations, run by parents, with no time to market,” will get a chance to show the community what they will be doing to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, another sponsor of the fair, will be on hand to remind the expo-goers of their upcoming street fair. Other sponsors, like the Wa Sung Community Service Club and the Chinese American Librarians Association, will also be present over the three days.
Li hopes for an inquisitive turn-out from around the Bay Area, bringing the community together before the Chinese New Year, in Oakland.
“It’s a place that the Bay Area APA community doesn’t come out to enough,” she said.
Come check out three days of Asian and APA books and media at the Asian American Multimedia and Books Expo, at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th St., Ste. 290, Pacific Renaissance Plaza, Jan. 18 – 20, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 510-238-3400 or go to www.oacc.cc.
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