Mrs. Mei Ng was born in Hong Kong; and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in Anthropology in 1972. It was during these years in California that she was first exposed to the beginnings of the environmental movement. California provided a perfect learning environment for the future Director of Friends of the Earth, Hong Kong (FOE-HK). In 1970, the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, spoke of sweeping environmental reforms in his state of the union address. That same year saw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA that is still in existence today. 20 million people took to the streets in America, that April 22nd, to protest the poisoning of its air, water and food supply. Words like recycle, don't pollute and save the planet started to make their way into the mainstream. And a movement was born. But it has taken longer for this movement to reach other places like China and Hong Kong.
China has a population of 1.3 billion people. The steps they take have a large impact on not only themselves, but on the global community. They, like the rest of the world, have many environmental problems but also have the solutions within their grasp. With the help of Mrs. Mei Ng and organizations like Friends of the Earth, Hong Kong it is easier to see and chart the course that needs to be taken to move the planet and her people back to a healthier and more sustainable future.
Mei Ng was born and raised in Queen’s Village, New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 1988 with a degree in women’s studies. She was also a student at Brooklyn College’s graduate program in fiction writing. Temporarily, she worked as counselor for the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. Ng is the third and youngest child of Chinese immigrant parents.
Mei Ng, whose writing has been likened to that of Amy Tan and Gish Jen, will read from her Asian American coming-of-age novel, Eating Chinese Food Naked, Wednesday, March 6, at 4 pm in the library's Stimson Room. Lynn Karpen of the New York Times has described the book as a "funny and affecting first novel [that] is so thoroughly involved with love and food that the two often seem inextricably intertwined.e" Ng's appearance is part of the MHC English department's spring series of readings by contemporary writers and Asian American Awareness Month programming. A book signing will follow her reading.
