Talk about disappointing. Two years ago, when Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature for Frog, Westerners and Chinese were shocked and elated. The Chinese were ecstatic that a Chinese writer won the honor at all (he’s the only Chinese writer who lives in China to have ever won the prize) and Westerners were Read More
Category: Book Reviews
An Open Letter to Victoria Thompson, Author of the Gaslight Mystery Series
Dear Ms. Thompson, Every day, women are told that they can only ever be truly happy if they give birth to a child. It is everywhere – from our own mothers, to politicians, to religious leaders, to books, movies, and TV shows. No matter what else a woman has in her life, no matter how Read More
Book Discussion – Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
Mara Hvistendhal’s book Unnatural Selection – Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men was quite eye opening for me. Several months ago, American-based websites and blogs that write about feminist and AAPI issues were livid over lawmakers trying to pass legislation against sex-selective abortions in America. Most decried the laws as Read More
Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck – Book Review
Why, yes, this is my fourth review of a book about Cixi. I’m a little obsessed. (You can read my take on Anchee Min’s books here and here and Jung Chang’s here.) When I saw that Pearl S. Buck had a novel about Cixi, I just had to read her version of this fascinating woman. While Read More
Book Review: Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang
Earlier this month, I was pretty harsh on Anchee Min’s The Last Empress. And rightly so. Her boring, flat characterization of one of China’s most controversial leaders was hugely disappointing. Jung Chang succeeds where Min failed. Even though Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China is a non-fiction account, the story of Cixi’s Read More
Mothers and Daughters in Tan's "The Valley of Amazement"
EVER since “The Joy Luck Club” burst onto the literary scene in 1989, Amy Tan’s name has been synonymous with Asian literature. Even though many other authors such as Anchee Min and Lisa See have also found massive audiences, success in the Asian literature market wouldn’t have been possible without Tan. Tan is possibly the Read More
Book Review: The Last Empress by Anchee Min
I like Anchee Min; I’ve read and reviewed several of her books and I own most of them, which I will read in the future. However, The Last Empress is possibly her worst book and I would not recommend it. I’m not sure what happened here. I really enjoyed Empress Orchid, and The Last Empress is Read More
Book Review: Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama is a novel about women who worked in a silk factory in rural southern China from the 1920s to the beginnings of the Japanese invasion in the mid-1930s. I picked up this book because I am very interested in the way silk was processed in China in pre-industrial Read More
Book Review: Tales About China and the Chinese by Peter Parley
The history of the Peter Parley books might be more interesting than the books themselves. Peter Parley was the pseudonym of American author Samuel Griswold Goodrich and was one of the most famous children’s writers in the 1800s. He was so popular that a wave of books was published under his name during his life. Read More
In Honor of Mother's Day – How I Learned to Love My Daughter's Mother
I did something different with my book review this week. I decided to write about Xinran’s Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love, but instead of a typical review, I talked about how this book touched me personally. You can read my article “How I Learned to Love My Daughter’s Mother” Read More