VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Pathfinder was one of some 70 publishers and other exhibitors at the Association for Asian Studies conference here March 12-15. More than 3,900 professors, graduate students, librarians and others attended — the organization’s biggest conference in its 85-year history.
There were more than 600 panel discussions held over the four days. Topics included “China and Global Capitalism: Interventions and Engagements from the 1950s to the 1980s” and “Transnational Mobility and Global Entanglements in 20th Century East Asia.”
A keynote address, “A Feminist Redefining of Democracy in Post-Developmental South Korea” by Hyun Mee Kim from Yonsei University in Seoul kicked off the conference. It described the crisis of the capitalist economy in South Korea and its impact on working people. She said that South Korean unemployment for young people in their 20s is growing; the birth rate of 0.8% of women is the lowest in the world; and a suicide rate of 29.1 per 100,000 people, one of the world’s highest.
“I am studying history in the university, but I am also interested in ongoing issues,” Xinghan Ma, a Chinese student at Keio University in Japan, told Pathfinder volunteers when he stopped at the booth. “I am looking at how Maoism became global in the 1960s, presented as a solution to social problems around the world.” He bought one of the three copies of Maoism vs. Bolshevism sold. Many other participants were eager to look at books that address the big political questions in the world today from an international working-class perspective.
Participants from China, Japan, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Denmark, Indonesia and the Netherlands, as well as those from the U.S. and Canada, were among those who stopped by the Pathfinder booth.
Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution was the top seller, with nine sold in English and five in Chinese. Participants also bought seven copies of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa, Pathfinder’s newest title, by Víctor Dreke, a leader of Cuba’s combatants who aided the revolutionaries in Guinea-Bissau.
“We need books like these that aren’t readily available in today’s world,” Emily González, a professor at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts, said after buying the book. Born and raised in Jamaica, González visited Cuba and admires the Cuban Revolution. “Cuba used to be a playground for the rich and famous, but the people never benefited — of course there was a revolution!” she said.
There was widespread interest in the Cuban Revolution. Thirty-eight of the 81 books sold were on that topic, including five copies of Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution and three of Che Guevara Talks to Young People.
Other best sellers included Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women; Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity; Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle; The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class; The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation; and Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege and Learning under Capitalism by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes.
Ling Zhang from SUNY Purchase College in Westchester County, New York, and some other participants remembered Pathfinder from last year’s conference. She bought another three Pathfinder titles this year, all on the Cuban Revolution. “I am interested in international struggles, and your books help my research,” Zhang said. “See you next year.”
The 2027 Association for Asian Studies conference will be held in Boston March 18-21.