MISSION

EMW Community Space, fondly known as EMW Bookstore, is a community-oriented space and resource for peoples from marginalized identities to pursue our creative visions. Through creative and cultural work in arts & technology, EMW’s mission is to affirm, celebrate, and work in solidarity with marginalized communities to facilitate creativity and education, safety and wellbeing, and capacity-building toward a more liberatory world. We stress the importance of rooting our values of sharing, trust, respect, and mutual support in all EMW Bookstore activities, because we believe that our programs are at the core of our mission and our vision to expand the concept of family to our immediate community and greater society.  EMW Bookstore is a tax-exempt not-for-profit organization.

HISTORY

In 1998, the wife and husband team of Professors Wen Kong and Jin Au Kong opened the Chinese-language bookstore East Meets West. Envisioned as a space to empower the Chinese immigrant community through scholarship, East Meets West also shared the acronym of Professor JA Kong's research, electromagnetic wave theory, the study of energy that propagates throughout the universe.

In 2004, their son David Sun Kong, renowned poet Giles Li, architecture student Theresa Hwang, and numerous other community organizers, revitalized the bookstore for the local Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community. East Meets West served as a hub of art and activism and the home of Boston Progress Arts Collective, which organized what is now the longest running APIA open mic on the east coast, East Meets Words. In 2011, David sought to expand the building's impact to include technology and other art forms, while staying true to the space's social justice roots. He recruited co-founders Monique Nguyen, Jack DeBoe, Abel Rey Cano, and along with core partner organizations, established EMW: Art | Technology | Community.

Location

934 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

Gallery Hours

Wed 6-8pm

CONTACT US

info@emwbookstore.com