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In 1933, Shih-I Hsiung (1902-1991), a student from China, met with Allardyce Nicoll, a Shakespearean scholar at the University of London, to discuss his Ph.D. study in English drama. After learning about Hsiung's interest and background, Nicoll suggested that he should consider studying Chinese drama for his dissertation or writing a play of a Chinese subject instead. Hsiung took the advice to heart and set out to write Lady Precious Stream, a play based on a classical Beijing opera. In six week...

In this book, Bernard Chiang records the history of his family and their contributions to Singapore's community in the country's early years. The book traces his family history, which spans across the countries of Singapore, China and Thailand, and across more than half a century. Following different branches of the Chiang family tree, it delves into his paternal family's ancestral roots and their ancestral home in the ancient port township of Zhanglin in Chenghai district of Shantou Prefecture,...

When she was a little girl, Jasvinder Sanghera's father told her about the village he came from, Kang Sabhu in rural Punjab. One day, he promised to take her there so she could meet her half-sister, Bachanu, who had stayed behind. But at the age of sixteen - as she so vividly related in her bestseller Shame - Jasvinder ran away from home to escape a forced marriage. Her parents disowned her. 'Shame travels...' her father told her. Although her mother took all her other daughters to meet the exte...

For readers of Crying in H Mart and Wintering, an unforgettable memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the indelible power of love. Three months after Kyo Maclear’s father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biolo...

Jan Wong has returned to Beijing. Her quest: to find someone she encountered briefly in 1973, and whose life she was certain she had ruined forever. In the early 1970s Jan Wong became one of only two Westerners permitted to study at Beijing University. One day a young stranger, Yin Luoyi, asked for help in getting to America. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist, immediately reported her to the authorities, and Yin disappeared. Wong chronicled that brief meeting in her bestselling book Red China Bl...

An extraordinary history of resistance and the fight for Indian independence from Ramachandra Guha. Rebels Against the Raj tells the little-known story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence. Of the seven, four were British, two American, and one Irish. Four men, three women. Before and afte...

Personal accounts help us understand notions of self, interpersonal relations, and historical events. Chinese Autobiographical Writing contains full translations of works by fifty individuals that illuminate the history and conventions of writing about oneself in the Chinese tradition. From poetry, letters, and diaries to statements in legal proceedings, these engaging and readable works draw us into the past and provide vivid details of life as it was lived from the pre-imperial period to the n...

Maxine Hong Kingston''s essays do not attempt to capture Hawai''i but instead provide the reader with a ge nerous sampling of her impressions over a twenty year period whilst living there. '

‘An important contribution … Delving lucidly into the most significant ideological battles of the era, this book deftly outlines the thinking and dialogue that laid the foundations of the Republic – and which remain deeply relevant and contentious today’Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire A history of Nehru that dives deep into the debates of his era to understand his ideology – and that of his contemporaries and opponents, asking what India would look like had ano...

Red and blue appear in stark contrast with one another on the map of America. But the even more profound divide is the alienation in our hearts." This work is a striking analysis of the struggles faced by American society, written from the perspective of a Chinese professor of history who spent 60 years of his life in the US. As both an insider and outsider to this country, Cho-yun Hsu is able to perceive what many other Americans may take for granted, and it is this viewpoint - together with h...