A memoir-in-essays that, in its exploration of language, family ties, and Taiwanese history, distills how the handmade holds memory, inheritance, and the work of care-taking. “Tactile memory feels like it is the easiest to lose,” Brenda Lin writes in Unraveling Threads. But in these exquisite essays, she demonstrates just how the tactile bolsters personal, familial,…
Born in Jiangsu Province in 1889, Xiong Yanghe grew up on his family’s estate. His early decades were marked by warfare among various factions within China and devastating encroachments by foreign powers as well. The worldview gave great impetus for his career choice and set him on a course that would affect all around him….
East Asia’s Yuan Empire (1271–1368), led by the nomadic Mongol people and Qubilai Khan (1215–1294), was marked by cross-cultural exchange and significant developments in trade, technology, and infrastructure. The Mongol visual culture, however, has often been ignored or dismissed as insignificant in the operations of the Mongols’ own empire. The Woven Image: The Making of…
In The Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, Chen examines the origins, rise, and reform of the Cantonese-dominated Chinese diaspora in Canada between 1788 and 1898. Combining a diasporic approach with both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Chinese and English documents, including previously untapped archival records of secret societies, community organizations, and family businesses, this book reveals the…
What motivates individuals to stand up against injustices that don’t personally affect them? Becoming Allies explores a vital but often overlooked dimension of social movements: the role of those who support a cause without being directly affected by its injustices. While most scholarship centres the conflict between social movements and the State, this book shifts…
Lahore After Modernism is a pioneering study of architecture and the politics of construction, destruction and conservation in urban Pakistan. In the decades after independence in 1947, architects in Pakistan were enlisted to build a postcolonial future—a new world after empire. But the debris of the past could not be so easily swept aside. The…
High Lands, Pure Earth foregrounds Tibetan experiences of urban transitions in China’s late-reform period. In the 21st century, China’s accelerated urbanization has transformed the Tibetan Plateau. Yet Tibetan urban experiences continue to be profoundly shaped by senses of being in the world that long predate Tibet’s inclusion into the modern Chinese nation-state. Eveline Washul adopts…
In the past decade, Korean entertainment has gained global recognition, with Korean movies and TV shows winning Oscars and Emmys, and K-Pop groups becoming wildly popular. In Manhattan, Koreatown has become a popular destination for both locals and tourists, drawing them in with its bars, restaurants, and day spas. Jinwon Kim argues that Manhattan’s Koreatown…
Thinking of leaving the country? Does the life of a digital nomad beckon to you? Suzanne Kamata has been there, done that, and is still doing it. Living in Japan for most of her adult life, she has a husband, two children, and a string of books to her credit. Her latest, Owls in the…
Can food determine your fate? Could indulging in delicacies bring calamity to your community? Joshua Schlachet’s Nourishing Life reevaluates the history of Japanese food culture by examining how ideas of healthy eating became both a popular phenomenon and a matter of grave concern among trained medical experts and amateur culinary enthusiasts alike. Beginning in the…
Lavishly illustrated, Samurai explores the reality and myths of the samurai from medieval times to today’s popular culture through objects from international collections. Essays by scholars throughout the book discuss the warrior class’s historical origins in the medieval period’s civil wars and stories they told of their own achievements. Although the samurai social class was…
Observing the Unseen explores how literate and marginally literate people in China between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries investigated the invisible, the ubiquitous, and the inexplicable. Whether through medical encyclopedias, daily-use almanacs, or novels and anecdotes, readers pursued knowledge of the natural world with curiosity shaped as much by wonder as by empiricism. Rather than privileging…
This collection of eleven essays explores emotions and affect in Korean culture across a broad temporal span, from the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) to the present. Drawing on a diverse array of sources—including memoirs, diplomatic letters, newspapers, films, video diaries, photographs, and ethnographic interviews—the volume examines how emotions intervene in public discourse and how affect is…
This groundbreaking study examines the poetry of Yang Mu, a pivotal Taiwanese writer who used Chinese literary forms to challenge Sinocentric narratives during Taiwan’s White Terror and democratization. Drawing on postcolonial theory and close reading, it explores his poetic use of ambivalence, mimicry, and minor narrative to resist cultural hegemony and reclaim historical memory.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of US history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril…