New Book Announcement: “The Joy and Terror Are Both in the Swallowing” by Christine Shan Shan Hou
Christine Shan Shan Hou’s The Joy and Terror Are Both in the Swallowing offers a new mythology for our “smooth and violent era”.
New Book Announcement: “Writing Poetry, Surviving War: The Works of Refugee Scholar-Official Chen Yuyi (1090-1139)” by Yugen Wang
The book is a study of the works of the Northern Song Chinese poet Chen Yuyi (1090–1139) as he fled the invading Jurchen soldiers in the political throes of a dynastic transition. Author Yugen Wang demonstrates how Chen’s poems epitomize the new style of writing in the Song that is markedly different from that of…
New Book Announcement: “Love and Other Moods” by Crystal Z Lee
Love and Other Moods is a coming-of-age story set in contemporary China, about falling in love, learning to adult, finding strength, and discovering one’s place in the world. Naomi Kita-Fan uproots her life from New York to China when her fiancé’s company transfers him to Shanghai. After a disastrous turn of events, Naomi finds herself…
New Book Announcement: “Oriental Silk” by Xiaowen Zhu
Can corporate history be art? This question can only be asked if one is not familiar with the fascinating long-term project by the Chinese artist Xiaowen Zhu. Anyone who has experienced Oriental Silk will answer this question with a clear “yes.”
New Book Announcement: “Rethinking the Modern Chinese Canon: Refractions across the Transpacific” by Clara Iwasaki
The texts that are examined in this study move in and out of different languages or are multilingual in their origins. Texts and authors do not move randomly; rather, they follow routes shaped by the history of contact between different nations of the transpacific.
New Book Announcement: “Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea” by Ksenia Chizhova
The lineage novel flourished in Korea from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. These vast works unfold genealogically, tracing the lives of several generations. New storylines, often written by different authors, follow the lives of the descendants of the original protagonists, offering encyclopedic accounts of domestic life cycles and relationships. Elite women transcribed…
New Book Announcement: “In Remembrance of the Saints: The Rise and Fall of an Inner Asian Sufi Dynasty” by Muḥammad Ṣadiq Kashghari, translated by David Brophy
In the first half of the 18th century, rival dynasties of Naqshbandi Sufi shaykhs vied for influence in the Tarim Basin, part of present-day Xinjiang. In the 1750s, the collapse of the Junghar Mongol state gave one branch of this family an opportunity to assert their independence in the oasis cities of Kashgar and Yarkand….
New Book Announcement: “Green Mountain”, poetry by Yang Jian, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Green Mountain compiles a representative selection of lyrical poems by contemporary Chinese poet and painter Yang Jian, also a Buddhist, in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s elegant translation.
New Book Announcement: “Setsuko’s Secret: Heart Mountain and the Legacy of the Japanese American Incarceration” by Shirley Ann Higuchi
As children, Shirley Ann Higuchi and her brothers knew Heart Mountain only as the place their parents met, imagining it as a great Stardust Ballroom in rural Wyoming. As they grew older, they would come to recognize the name as a source of great sadness and shame for their older family members, part of the…
New Book Announcement: “Karma”, poetry by Yin Lichuan, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Karma is Chinese contemporary poet Yin Lichuan’s collection of poems (bilingual edition) in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s translation, accompanied by Sze-Lorrain’s introduction.
“There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job” by Tsumura Kikuko
The unnamed narrator in Tsumura Kikuko’s There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job quits a job she loves after developing “burnout syndrome”. Her first career (the reader won’t find out what it was until the novel’s final pages) has sucked up “every scrap of energy” she had. She asks a recruiter to find her…
New Book Announcement: “My Heart Sutra: A World in 260 Characters” by Frederik L Schodt
The Heart Sutra, beloved by millions in East Asia for over 1,400 years, is used as solace, protection, and a gateway to another mode of thinking. Schodt realized that it could also be his entry into a world of faith.
“Nights When Nothing Happened” by Simon Han
Jack Cheng’s family has nightmares. His father screams in his sleep and his five year-old sister, Annabel, sleepwalks after her parents leave her side at night. His mother works late hours at her semiconductor plant and never planned to have a family in the US. For an eleven year-old, Jack feels it’s up to him…
New Book Announcement: “Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media Culture” by Shengqing Wu
Chinese poetry has a long history of interaction with the visual arts. Classical aesthetic thought held that painting, calligraphy, and poetry were cross-fertilizing and mutually enriching. What happened when the Chinese poetic tradition encountered photography, a transformative technology and presumably realistic medium that reshaped seeing and representing the world?
New Book Announcement: “Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucius Temple from Imperial China to Today” by Chin-shing Huang
Temples dedicated to Confucius are found throughout China and across East Asia, dating back over two thousand years. These sacred and magnificent sanctuaries hold deep cultural and political significance.
