Convocation: Lisa See

Raised in Los Angeles, author Lisa See spent much of her time in Chinatown. Her first book, "On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family," was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1995. The book traces the journey of her great-grandfather, Fong See, who overcame obstacles at every step to become the 100-year-old godfather of Los Angeles's Chinatown and the patriarch of a sprawling family. She has most recently written "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," a novel about "nu shu," the secret writing developed and used by women in a small country in China for over a thousand years. In addition to her writing, she has served as guest curator for an exhibit on the Chinese American experience for the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, which then traveled to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She then helped develop and curate the Family Discovery Gallery at the Autry Museum, an interactive space for children and their families that focuses on Lisa's bi-racial, bi-cultural family as seen through the eyes of her father as a seven-year-old boy living in 1930's Los Angeles.