FRI.AUG.21: labor activist-author LORA JO FOO @ The Loft,MInneapolis

When: Friday, August 21, 2009 at 6:30 P.M.

Where: The Loft Literary Center, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55415

RSVP: Please RSVP by Friday, August 14, 2009 to Margie Andreason at margie@aapip.org

For more information, contact: Bo Thao, Email: bo@aapip.org / Phone: (612) 729-1994

About Lora Jo Foo

About the Book

"Thank you SO much for your wonderful book! It is brave and strong and beautiful."

– Alice Walker, Author, The Color Purple

"When I read Earth Passages, I was stunned by the honesty and beauty of it. There were many stories that brought tears to my eyes, and many that made me smile. By opening her life in such a clear way, and pairing the stories with her incredibly gorgeous photos, Lora Jo Foo paves the way for girls and women OF ALL BACKGROUNDS to open their own lives."

– Helen Zia, Author, Asian American Dreams

Earth Passages: Journeys through Childhood consists of 28 vignettes and 53 color nature photographs, and tells the story of the author growing up in the inner city ghetto of San Francisco’s Chinatown – in poverty, in a housing project, at the age of 11 sewing in a garment sweatshop. In the girl's rare escapes into the woods she discovers a magical world so unlike the ghetto in which she lives. The stories from childhood are paired with color nature photographs taken by the author as an adult. The stories are terse, pithy and powerful. They transform and imbue the very beautiful nature photographs with a much more complicated, almost bittersweet meaning.

A garment worker at age 11 and a union organizer for eight years in the garment and hotel industries, Lora Jo Foo became an attorney representing low wage workers in sweatshop industries. She litigated numerous groundbreaking cases on their behalf. She co-founded Sweatshop Watch and the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. In 2002, she published her first book, Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns and Responsive Human and Civil Rights Advocacy. A gifted photographer, Foo has photographed throughout the United States and world. She has exhibited her nature photographs in galleries and at fine art fairs in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives. She stopped litigating in 2000 and returned to her roots as an organizer. She also returned to school and received her Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2002. Most recently she was the organizing director of a major California union. In 2004 and 2008, she was the National Voting Rights Protection Coordinator for the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

Event Sponsors: Asian American/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (National Gender and Equity Campaign), AAPIP-MN Chapter, Full Thought Inc., Loft Literary Center Co-Hosts: Margie Andreason, Brian Grandison, Kaohly Her, Angelique Kedem, Kathy Jefferson, Laura Lablanc, Megan Powers, David Nicholson, Bo Thao, Bill Thurston, and Lorri Todd