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“What I loved about the documentary is seeing the ways in which there was allyship happening before we would call it allyship.” - Ava Chin
Contributed by Michelle Maiuri, Director of Events
On August 23, Joy Lau, founder of StoryJoy, gathered The Serica Initiative and members of our community at Riverside Church for the 6-part series, Stories of Shared Resilience: Week 4 Cultural Preservation and Community Building - language, food, and mutual aid across generations. The afternoon unfolded on the 9th floor of the church's tower — the very room where Mrs. Rockefeller once held ballroom dances and salons — and brought together a documentary screening, an interactive activity, and a moderated panel exploring how storytelling carries memory, solidarity, and history across communities.
The program opened with welcoming remarks from Riverside's Education Ministers, Rev. Dr. Leah Fowler, before the room settled in for a screening of the documentary series History of NYC’s Chinatown Episode 4: Corky Lee's Photographic Revolution. The series was produced by Andrew Chow Guidone and Joy Lau with NYC Media. The segment traced the life and legacy of Corky Lee, the Chinese American photojournalist who spent five decades documenting Asian American communities and famously described his mission as pursuing “photographic justice.”
Lee is perhaps best known for restaging the 1869 Golden Spike photograph at Promontory Summit — the iconic image marking the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad that erased the thousands of Chinese laborers who built it. On the 145th anniversary of that ceremony, Lee gathered descendants of Chinese railroad workers at the same site to recreate the photo and put them back into the picture, literally and historically.
One attendee of this momentous occasion was discussion panelist Ava Chin, CUNY professor & author of the acclaimed memoir Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion, that followed the screening. The panel discussion was moderated by Serica's CEO Executive Director, Andrea Louie, in conversation with Dr. Abosede George and Ava Chin. George is a historian of modern Africa, Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Barnard College and Columbia University, and Director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies; her scholarship centers on girlhood, migration, and urban history.
The conversation opened with each panelist reflecting on storytelling as a through line in their own lives and work — from George's research into the histories of West African girlhood and migration, to Chin's writing on food, foraging, and her own family's multigenerational history on Mott Street. Both spoke to storytelling not as a professional tool, but as a way of staying tethered to where they come from. George pointed to Corky Lee himself as an example of what that can grow into:
"I think what's really powerful about what Corky was able to do was he started really documenting out of the love of the community and curiosity of the community, but it ended up bridging into the mainstream space, mainstream newspapers. So that makes me think — how do we get our stories out and bridge them into the larger conversation?" - Abosede George
From there, the discussion turned to one of the afternoon's central themes: cross-community solidarity and collaboration. In today's polarized political environment, the panelists were asked for concrete ways to encourage collaboration across communities. Chin pointed back to the documentary's history for an answer, noting that organizing in Chinatown didn't start with the Asian American movement of the 1960s and '70s. It actually stretches back to 19th-century opposition to the Chinese Exclusion Act, when Chinese immigrants without the right to vote or naturalize found allies in the children of abolitionists, who recognized exclusionary immigration law as part of the same project of supremacy their parents had fought:
"There was actually a lot of organizing work that was happening in Chinatown even in the 19th century, around these Chinese Exclusion Act laws. But they didn't have the right to vote, they didn't have the right to naturalize. What they did was they actually worked with abolitionists, the children of abolitionists, who understood that these exclusionary immigration laws were a larger project of supremacy. One of the things I drew so much comfort from was seeing the ways in which there was allyship happening before we would call it allyship." - Ava Chin
The panel also returned to Corky Lee's legacy directly, discussing how arts, culture, and storytelling can be used to “enhance” a historical record that has so often been written by whoever held power at the time. Lee's recreation of the Golden Spike photograph became a touchstone for the conversation — a reminder that representation in the historical record isn't guaranteed, and that reclaiming it often takes deliberate, creative work.
The discussion closed on a theme that resonated through the room: the idea of “the body as an archive” — the notion that each of us is the physical manifestation of our ancestors, carrying their sacrifices and their dreams forward. George and Chin were asked what they see as our calling, our mandate, in light of that inheritance: how do we use what we carry to serve the well-being of our communities going forward? Their answers tied the afternoon's threads together, connecting personal history to collective responsibility. Chin left the room with a call to action:
"If you have a story, if there's a family story, a set of secrets that you want to know more about, start asking those questions now, because at a certain point, it will be too late... Those stories are really important to capture as much as you can." - Ava Chin
As the panel wrapped, the Q&A team passed along the audience's written questions to Andrea, who brought several into the final minutes of discussion — a fitting close to an afternoon built around listening as much as telling.
Thank you to Joy Lau for carefully curating this series of programs at Riverside Church for hosting us in such a meaningful space, and above all to Andrea Louie, Abosede George, and Ava Chin for a conversation that reminded us why we tell these stories in the first place.
See more photos and watch the panel below! Stay tuned for insights on our social media channels.
StoryJoy’s series is ongoing! You can attend the next screening of Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC followed by a panel discussion on storytelling and shared connections from Jane Adhi, Nyasha Laing, and Sivan Baron.
