KU News Release

Chinese-American author to speak on immigration debate at KU’s Hall Center

LAWRENCE — Author William Poy Lee will give a lecture titled “Placing a Human Face on the Immigration Debate” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, April 13, at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas.

Lee, author of “The Eighth Promise: An American Son’s Tribute to His Toisanese Mother,” will read selections from his book and examine how his mother’s immigration experience would have been affected by current immigration and public policy proposals, such as English as an official language. Lee, who was born in the United States, will also provide his perspective on assimilation and Americanization.

“Although I did not write ‘The Eighth Promise’ as an ‘immigration’ tome, it presciently describes in very human terms the process of assimilation for my mother and father as immigrants and then for me as a native son,” Lee said.

A lawyer since 1979, Lee received a bachelor’s in architecture from the University of California-Berkeley and his law degree from Hastings College of Law at the University of California-San Francisco. He now is a full-time writer. “The Eighth Promise,” published earlier this year, is his first book. For more information, visit Lee's Web site.

The lecture, sponsored by the Hall Center and the Office of the Chancellor at KU, is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Hall Center at (785) 864-4798.

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