In 2017, musician, author and activist Simon Tam could finally celebrate. He’d won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that helped marginalized people have more power over their own identities. Years earlier, Tam and friends had formed an all-Asian American dance-rock band called the The Slants. When he tried to register a trademark on the band name after learning of another band touring under the same name, he was denied because the government said the name of the band was disparaging. “The government believed that they were protecting Asian Americans from ourselves,” Tam writes in the book. “They were imposing their own ideas of justice and order on us, without actually consulting what we wanted. ... That’s the ultimate privilege: being able to live in a world where you can determine what racism looks like for other people.” After a messy and grueling back-and-forth appeals process, the Supreme Court agreed with Tam. His new book Slanted: How an Asian American Troublemaker Took on the Supreme Court details not just the court process itself, but also Tam’s journey to self-expression. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus, 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Suite 14 AMANDA HAGGARD
Author Event with Simon Tam
