Now that both of
my kids have enrolled in college, I often wonder: What if I hadn't raised them
as most of the conventional suburban Chinese parents did? What if I had
indulged in drinking, partying, writing poetry, and eloping with crazy artists?
Would I have ruined them?
The idea of the road
not taken drew me to Sink. Look at the
dysfunctional household Joey grew up in: "all his family's problems...crack
+ angry man." But thanks to geek culture's interconnected worlds and ability to diminish the economic disparities between different social
groups, Joey grew up with self-awareness, confidence, and discernment.
This
book proves that society has an incredible resilience to overcome the deficiency
posed by individual irresponsible parents.
"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture. Stranded within an ever-shifting family's desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An…
Let's meet the
Lee family: James Lee, a second-generation Chinese American and a brilliant
historian, couldn't secure the coveted teaching position at Harvard because he
"wasn't the right fit." Instead, he ended up teaching at a public
college in a small town.
Marilyn Lee, an ambitious student aiming for medical
school, abandoned her dream and married a Chinese man because she yearned for
something different, only to find herself bored with the life of a housewife.
These two dissatisfied parents exert contrasting influences on their children,
pushing them to pursue their own lost dreams regardless of their children's
aptitude and competence.
Celeste Ng
vividly portrays how these unfulfilled parents isolate their children from the
community and hinder their development before they fully engage with society.
The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts
"A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense." -O, the Oprah Magazine
"Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family." -Entertainment Weekly
"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia's body…
I came across No-No Boy while the
echoes of the Chinese spy balloon incident were still fresh in my mind. Set in
1946, the novel tells the story of a young Japanese American who is released
from a two-year federal prison term for his refusal to swear allegiance to the
United States and join the army.
As he reintegrates into post-war society, he
discovers divisions within the Japanese community regarding which country to
pledge allegiance to. The novel delves deeply into the concept of American
identity. It reveals how American society values individualism and demands
virtuous and engaged citizenship from its citizens, particularly during times
of war.
This book is a hidden gem, and it deserves a second look as America's
diversity continues to grow and conflicts between different nations'
ideologies persist.
"No-No Boy has the honor of being among the first of what has become an entire literary canon of Asian American literature," writes novelist Ruth Ozeki in her new foreword. First published in 1957, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel's importance and popularized it as one of literature's most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience.
No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version…
A 2019 winner of the Wishing Shelf Book Awards and a 2020 winner of the Independent Press Awards, Inconvenient Memories is a story of love and frustration in the time of the Tiananmen Protests of 1989. In 1989, Anna Wang was a lucky few who worked for a Japanese company, Canon. When Tiananmen Protests broke out, her Japanese boss, concerned with the future of Canon's first-ever assembly plant in China, sent her to Tiananmen Square to take photos for him to analyze for evidence of turning tides. The unfolding of the historical events coincided with her failed love and estranged family relationship. Her coming of age was shrouded by nubilous controversy and relentless violence, which had a lasting impact on her life choice in the following years. As Perry Link, an expert on Chinese history and a champion of democracy in China, comments, “The events of the June Fourth massacre in Beijing in 1989 were so extreme that descriptions of it tend to be emotional. Anna Wang’s story helps us to understand what an ordinary Chinese citizen’s life felt beneath all the sturm und drang of the times. The color of her descriptions brings to life a period of Chinese history that large forces seem to have pressed colorless.”
