Shawn Wong

Shawn Wong is the author of two prize-winning novels, Homebase and American Knees, and editor/co-editor of six Asian American and American multicultural literary anthologies including the pioneering anthology Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers.

His second novel, American Knees was made into a film titled “Americanese” and won several film festival awards. Wong was featured in the Bill Moyers’ PBS documentary, “Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.”

He is currently Professor of English and the Byron and Alice Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington.

How to teach an entire city, a university, or a company how to talk about race in only 50 years

Abstract
The title of the keynote speech is, of course, a joke, but it is a response to the world of DEI consultants, powerpoint presentations, and mandatory diversity training workshops, that never seems to make anyone comfortable when talking about race and identity. Author and University of Washington professor Shawn Wong was given an assignment by the opinion page editors of The Seattle Times to write an op-ed essay for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and their only request was to make it “original.” How would you approach an assignment like that? What questions needed to be answered? Who would be the audience?

Co-sponsored by the Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division of the Academy of Management