Jennie Pu’s leadership rise takes my breath away. I met her when she was just 21. In 1996, as executive director of the Wing Luke Museum, I hired her as membership coordinator. She was one of Professor Connie So’s student minions in American Ethnic Studies. She looked like she was barely 13 and was exceptionally bright and energetic. Despite the paltry amount we offered her, she stayed until 1999. Those were lean years. The Museum was a cramped 7,200-square-foot auto garage on Seventh Avenue.
In the intervening years, Jennie found greater job security and broader opportunities on the East Coast, first in New York, then in New Jersey, working as senior library associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan and Dean of College Libraries at Hudson County Community College.
In 2021, she landed a job as director of the Hoboken Library in 2021. From there, her career—and reputation—soared. She stirred things up at the beloved, but somnambulistic 130-year-old institution. She spearheaded an ambitious $7 million historic restoration of the main facility, which included installation of an HVAC system and a free “MakerSpace”—fostering learning and creativity through arts and crafts—on the third floor. She abolished library fines. She led a citywide readathon of banned books. She set up vibrant partnerships with over 50 community organizations and established pop-up libraries in schools. She boosted Vanishing Hoboken, an oral history program. She advocated for statewide Freedom to Read legislation.
In May 2024, she was featured on the cover of Library Journal as one of the library profession’s “Movers and Shakers.” On June 16, 2024, she was honored by the New Jersey Library Association as Librarian of the Year.
And on June 30, Pu was awarded the prestigious Ernest A. DiMattia Award for Innovation and Service to Community and Profession at the annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA), held this year in San Diego. During the ceremony, Pu was recognized for leadership in “anticipating emerging trends in services, products and technologies that enhance the library’s position in its community.”
After the ALA award ceremony, I sat down with Jennie at Lotus Thai Cuisine in the Asian food desert of downtown San Diego. She ordered sticky rice and her favorite: Thai Larb. I had my no-miss choice: tofu, veggies and rice. We caught up on the past few decades during which time she has matured into a busy 50-year-old Jersey City parent (“I’m waiting for AARP to reach out to me now”) and library rock star. She and husband Wil Cao have two kids, Molly,13, and Kyle, 11, both at public schools.
Here’s part of our conversation:
Ron Chew: Share a story about a favorite moment at the Wing Luke.
Jennie Pu: I have many fond memories, and most of them involve food! But my favorite one is Ron and a few of us staffers standing around a large garbage bin, eating watermelon and spitting the seeds and discarding the rinds right into the bin. It’s quintessential Ron to me.
RC: Describe your transition from museums to libraries?
JP: From museums I went into tech, mostly for financial reasons. As much as I loved tech, I wanted to go back into service and explored a few other fields before going back to graduate school for library science. I’ve worked in academic, research, school and now public libraries. I like to say my career trajectory is more like the classic board game Chutes and Ladders than a straight path.
RC: Share a personal lesson from your successful fundraising campaign for the Hoboken Public Library.
JP: It’s fascinating to me how my early work experiences in development at the Wing Luke informs the fundraising work I’m doing now—even a couple of decades later! At Hoboken Public Library, we’ve had a Friends group and a Foundation arm for many years, but fundraising is still very much in its infancy, so I’m creating a structure to build capacity.
RC: Any censorship challenges at Hoboken Public Library?
JP: In June 2023, we held a citywide banned book readathon that drew a social media maelstrom and misinformation campaign spun by the same groups who are banning books across the country. We prevailed and the event was a huge success. After that, we decided to make a more public statement for the freedom to read and the First Amendment and became the first book sanctuary in the state. To date, 29 other libraries and four municipalities in New Jersey are also book sanctuary libraries.
RC: Biggest challenge during the pandemic?
JP: Reopening the library while parenting kids in remote school was my biggest challenge. There was no playbook for reopening protocols. All of us were doing the best we could with the most current information we had.
RC: List three favorite API books you’ve read and why you liked them.
JP: Seventeen Syllables was one of the assigned books I read in an Asian American course I took in my undergraduate program. I loved the complexity and nuance in Hisaye Yamamoto’s stories and the view from a teenager living in a Japanese American internment camp. The Crazy Rich Asians trilogy was so fun and sharp and even surprising. As a science fiction fan, the Three Body Problem trilogy blew my mind away and opened my eyes to model Chinese sci-fi.
RC: Wing Lukers remember your singing. Describe your karaoke/singing career? Two favorite songs?
JP: Haha! I’m really rusty. But my favorite songs to sing at karaoke are classic, older Chinese ballads. Faye Wong’s “Qi Zi” (棋子) and her cover of “Dan Yuan Ren Chang Jiu” (但愿人长久) are my go-to’s. The latter is so beautiful, an 11th century Chinese poem put to song.
RC: The future?
JP: I’m the first Asian American library director in Hoboken. Nationally, there are very few of us. I can count them on two hands. We need more. Libraries are about public service, about helping people. That is fulfilling. I want to continue that path. I’m part of a 78-library consortium, small compared to Seattle. But our book sanctuary movement has been spreading, driven largely by other directors who know me. There’s more rewarding work ahead.
