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Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library.

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. This new, relevant, and thought-provoking content will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

This week’s installment of Weekend Recs is courtesy of Kallie Stahl, Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library. Annie will be back in a few weeks with new summer recommendations—Stay tuned! 

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month—Celebrating the “histories of Americans hailing from across the Asian continent and from the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.” This month was selected to commemorate AAPI heritage as the first Japanese immigrants migrated to the United States on May 7, 1842. The transcontinental railroad was also completed on May 10, 1869—the majority of the construction completed by thousands of Chinese immigrants.

As we celebrate the heritage of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, we must combat continued racism against the AAPI community. Falvey Library condemns anti-Asian racial discrimination and violence. We stand with the AAPI members of our Villanova community and all AAPI members in solidarity.

Image courtesy of Penguin Random House.

No list of this nature could ever be comprehensive, but we hope you explore some of the links below this weekend:

If you have 5 minutes…Read my article on AAPI resources available at Falvey Library.

If you have 22-30 minutes…Stream an episode of Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s show “Never Have I Ever.”

If you have 54 minutes and 11 seconds…Watch an episode of PBS’ documentary series on the history of Asian Americans.

If you have 57 minutes…Listen to an episode of the “Time To Say Goodbye” podcast. Andy B. Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor of History at Villanova University, started the podcast with journalists Jay Caspian Kang and Tammy Kim. (Note: Dr. Liu left the podcast in 2022).

Bonus: Explore some of Dr. Liu’s work:

• Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India (2020)
• Production, Circulation, and Accumulation: The Historiographies of Capitalism in China and South Asia (2019)
• Incense and Industry: Labour and Capital in the Tea Districts of Huizhou, China (2016)

If you have 2 hours and 19 minutes…Stream Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Oscar-winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

If you have 4 hours…Read Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (available at Falvey Library).

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library.

Image courtesy of the Villanova University Digital Library.

Looking for some vacation suggestions for the summer? Check out this book featuring outings in California. Published in 1921 by Peck-Judah Co. Travel Bureaus, you can browse the full publication here.

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library.

Please be aware there is a construction project ongoing at Falvey Library that will affect access to the loading dock and related entrances and paths. For safety, please do not enter the marked off areas.

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

This week’s installment of Weekend Recs is courtesy of Kallie Stahl, Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library. Annie will be back in a few weeks with new summer recommendations—Stay tuned! 

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) began striking on Tuesday, May 2, pausing many projects in the entertainment industry. After six weeks of negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) [members include motion picture studios, broadcast television networks, and streaming services], the WGA called for a work stoppage after both parties failed to reach an agreement. The most recent writers’ strike occurred in 2007/2008 and lasted 100 days.

The WGA released a statement stating that AMPTP’s refusal to “address the existential crisis writers are facing” ultimately led to the strike. Shrinking network television viewers, streaming platforms, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all significant factors that writers must now navigate. The AMPTP said it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”

Late-night shows and “Saturday Night Live” have gone dark, and many network and streaming shows have ceased production including: “Abbott Elementary,” “House of the Dragon,” “Stranger Things,” “Yellowjackets,” “Hacks,” and more. Networks and streaming services will continue to air stockpiled projects for viewers. Beyond the screen, the effects of the strike on the writers, the industry, and the economy are detrimental. The last strike cost the California economy at least $2 billion, and if the current strike mirrors the last, it could cost California $30 million per day.

Image courtesy of The Writers Guild of America.

Keep reading for more information on the WGA strike:

If you have 3 minutes…Read this Variety article on why the “Writers’ Strike Will Cost Studios More Than Settlement.”

If you have 5 minutes…Check out this New York Times article on “How the Last Writers’ Strike Changed Things Onscreen.”

If you have 5 minutes…Explore ways to support the writers’ strike.

If you have 8 minutes and 26 seconds…Watch this Wall Street Journal interview with showrunners of “Abbott Elementary” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

If you have 10 minutes…Examine current shows impacted by the writers’ strike.

If you have 15 minutes…Read the WGA’s contract proposals currently on the table.

Bonus: Read what the WGA’s contract proposals look like on a company-by-company basis.

Boycotting streaming services? Check out Falvey Library’s DVD collection. You can also explore reading recommendations from library staff here.

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library.

James Ijames portrait by Lowell Thomas.

Villanova University Theatre Professor James Ijames’ play “Fat Ham” has been nominated for five Tony Awards including:

• Best Play: “Fat Ham,” James Ijames
• Best Direction of a Play: Saheem Ali, “Fat Ham”
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Nikki Crawford, “Fat Ham”
• Best Costume Design of a Play: Dominique Fawn Hill, “Fat Ham“
• Best Lighting Design of a Play: Bradley King, “Fat Ham”

Ijames was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for “Fat Ham,” a play that “deftly transposes ‘Hamlet’ to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.” From the “Fat Ham” Broadway website: “Juicy is a queer, Southern college kid, already grappling with some serious questions of identity, when the ghost of his father shows up in their backyard, demanding that Juicy avenge his murder. But here’s the rub! Revenge doesn’t come easy to Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man in search of his own happiness and liberation. From an uproarious family cookout emerges a compelling examination of love and loss, pain and joy.”

Produced by The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, “Fat Ham” premiered as a video stream in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Performed for sold out shows at The Public Theater in New York, NY, last spring, the play is currently showing at The American Airlines Theatre on Broadway. For ticket information, visit the “Fat Ham” website. While the show ends its run in New York, NY, on June 25, 2023, “Fat Ham” will open The Wilma Theatre’s 2023-24 season. Directed by Amina Robinson, “Fat Ham” will run from Nov. 24, 2023, through Dec. 17, 2023.

An Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University, Ijames is a playwright, director, performer, and educator. He received a BA in Drama from Morehouse College and a MFA in Acting from Temple University. Explore Ijames’ work and accolades here, and view the additional resources below:

• “Fat Ham” Official Website
• James Ijames Official Website
• “James Ijames on Winning a Pulitzer and Making ‘Hamlet’ a Comedy” (The New York Times)
• “Q&A: South Philly’s Pulitzer-Winning Playwright James Ijames on His Big Broadway Debut” (Philadelphia Magazine)
• The Subtext: James Ijames, From Grandma’s Backyard to Broadway (American Theatre) *podcast
• “On Broadway, Playwright James Ijames and Director Saheem Ali Are Making a Meal of ‘Fat Ham‘” (Vogue)
• Chat in the Stacks: A Conversation with Temple Alum and Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright James Ijames (Temple University Libraries)
• James Ijames on “Fat Ham” (Folger Shakespeare Library) *podcast
• “Out of Friendship, a Play Was Born” (The New York Times)
• “Playwright James Ijames breaks down ‘Fat Ham‘ script, talks breaking the cycle of generational trauma” (Entertainment Weekly)
• A Pulitzer Prize winner’s modern take on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ (PBS)

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library. Tune in to the 76th Tony Awards on Sunday, June 11, at 8 p.m. The ceremony is scheduled to air on CBS after striking Writers Union agrees to an altered format. 

Hua Hsu. Photo: Devlin Claro.

Last week, Hua Hsu was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Stay True.

The narrative centers around Hsu and his friendship with University of California, Berkeley classmate, Ken. Two different identities, Ken, whose family had been in the United States for generations, represented everything that Hsu, a first-generation Taiwanese American, defined himself against—mainstream America. The two became friends, both agreeing that despite their differences, “American culture didn’t seem to have a place for either of them.”

Three years after their initial meeting, Ken is killed in carjacking in Vallejo, Calif., in July 1998, after a party in Berkeley. “Determined to hold on to all that was left of his best friend-his memories-Hsu turned to writing…A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.”

Hua Hsu is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific. A staff writer at The New Yorker, Hsu’s work has been published in Artforum, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Wire. A former fellow at the New American Foundation and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, Hsu is a professor of Literature at Bard College. He received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD from Harvard University.

For more information on Hsu, dig deeper and explore the links below:

• Stay True (2022)
• A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific (2016) *eBook 
• “What Conversation Can Do for Us” (The New Yorker)
• “My Dad and Kurt Cobain” (The New Yorker)
• Stay True: Hua Hsu with Ken Chen | Conversations from the Cullman Center
• Podcast with Hua Hsu, author of Stay True
• Hua Hsu and Lucy Sante on Growing Up and Staying True
• #PouredOver: Hua Hsu on Stay True
• How Writing Matters: Hua Hsu
• Time to Say Goodbye LIVE + Stay True
• “Hua Hsu and Ryan Lee Wong On Writing AAPI Coming of Age Stories” (The Amp)
• “‘New Yorker’ Writer Hua Hsu On Friendship, Grief, And Pop Culture” (NPR)
• “Hua Hsu on his new book Stay True” (NPR)
• Hsu’s Twitter and Instagram

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library.

Photo courtesy of Shawn Proctor, Communications and Marketing Program Manager.

To the Class of 2023—Enjoy your last week on campus!