Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the country-wide famine escalated. By the time she was eleven years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun was in danger of the same. Finally, her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and...
Amplify! My Fight for Asian America offers a meaningful look at the real stories behind the headlines, providing Asian Americans and allies of all backgrounds a vital resource to broaden their perspective on anti-Asian hate and contribute to positive social transformation. February 24, 2020, started out like any other day for journalist and television anchor Dion Lim of San Francisco’s ABC News. Planning her pitches for the morning’s editorial meeting, she checked her Instagram account and s...
My Homeland on Song Hua Jiang: Dr. Francis Wang's Autobiography
by Francis Wang and
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017"Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer." --The Economist The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revol...
Hawaii's 100th Infantry Battalion Separa te was the first U.S. Army combat unit composed of Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs). Its original members had been inducted into the Army before Japanese planes swept down on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. How the loyalty of these soldiers was questioned by other Americans, then put to the test, and finally proved beyond doubt on the battlefields of Europe is the subject of this book.Sometimes called the Purple Heart Battalion because of its casu...
In the early 1960s, travel-writer Simon Gandolfi drove a VW from England to Goa where he rented a bungalow on the beach at Calangute. And it was on Calangute beach that Gandolfi met and loved Vanessa and explored with her much of the subcontinent. The 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai prompted Gandolfi to re-explore the subcontinent on a small motorcycle. Collecting a Honda 125 from the factory outside Delhi, he rode for six months and 12,000 kilometres. He rediscovers the rented...
A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant's journey to an American future. As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their ne...
AN AREA OF DARKNESS is V.S. Naipaul's semi-autobiographical account - at once painful and hilarious, always concerned - of his first visit to India, the land of his forbears. From the moment of his inauspicious arrival in Prohibition-dry Bombay, bearing whisky and cheap brandy, he began to experience a sense of cultural estrangement from the subcontinent. It became for him a land of myths, an area of darkness closing up behind him as he travelled . . . The experience was not a pleasant one, bu...
Tell My Sister Where I Am and Other Stories
by Hanhtiet Le and Barbara Penner
A world dominated by America and driven by cheap oil, easy credit, and conspicuous consumption is unraveling before our eyes. In this powerful, deeply humanistic book, Grace Lee Boggs, a legendary figure in the struggle for justice in America, shrewdly assesses the current crisis - political, economical, and environmental - and shows how to create the radical social change we need to confront new realities. A vibrant, inspirational force, Boggs has participated in all of the twentieth century's...
Spanning almost a hundred years, this rich and evocative true story recounts the lives of three generations of remarkable Chinese women. Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the UK. Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through.A love of food and a talent for cooking pulled each generation through the most devastating of upheavals. Helen Tse's grandmother, Lily Kwok, was f...
This captivating memoir of a young man's daring escape from his life under Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime will leave readers utterly engrossed until the final page. Forced from his home with his family, teenager Mae Taing struggles to endure years of constant starvation, backbreaking labor, and ruthless cruelty from his captors. Undaunted, he retains hope and unflagging perseverance, eventually immigrating to the United States as a refugee, escaping the horrors of the Cambodian genocide-a...
'A deeply researched, hugely empathic biography.' HELEN O'HARA'Sure to enthral anyone fascinated by audacious, before-their-time women.' KAREN ABBOTT'This superbly detailed book does Wong's story proper justice.' BOB STANLEY'A must read, for anyone who loves pop culture or cares about representation in Hollywood.' PHIL YUSet against the glittering backdrop of Los Angeles in the gin-soaked Jazz Age and the rise of Hollywood, this debut book celebrates Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie...
Running in the Family (Picador Books) (New Canadian Library S.)
by Michael Ondaatje
'During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed...I think all of our lives have been terribly shaped by what went on before us.' Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the cool winters of Ontario, a chaotic dream of tropical heat and barking dogs pushes Michael Ondaatje to travel back home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Along with his siblings and children, Ondaa...
A raccoon bite on the arm doesn’t seem that serious, but it soon becomes a life-or-death medical crisis for Melissa Loomis. After days of treatment for recurring infection, it becomes obvious that her arm must be amputated. Dr. Ajay Seth, the son of immigrant parents from India and a local orthopaedic surgeon in private practice, performs his first-ever amputation procedure. In the months that follow, divine intervention, combined with Melissa’s determination and Dr. Seth’s disciplined commitmen...