New Book Announcement: “When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League” by Susan Blumberg-Kason

When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League, Susan Blumberg-Kason (University of Illinois Press, September 2024)
When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League, Susan Blumberg-Kason (University of Illinois Press, September 2024)

Born in Hong Kong, Bernie Wong moved to the United States in the early 1960s to attend college. A decade later, she cofounded the Chinese American Service League (CASL) to help meet the needs of the city’s isolated Chinese immigrants. Susan Blumberg-Kason draws on extensive interviews to profile the community and social justice organization. Weaving Wong’s intimate account of her own life story through the CASL’s larger history, Blumberg-Kason follows the group from its origins to its emergence as a robust social network that connects Chinatown residents to everything from daycare to immigration services to culinary education. Blumberg-Kason also traces CASL activism on issues like fair housing and violence against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At once intimate and broad in scope, When Friends Come from Afar uses one woman’s life to illuminate a bedrock Chicago institution.

 

When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League
by Susan Blumberg-Kason
University of Illinois Press, September 2024