Category Archives: .Nonfiction

May 8, 2013 · 9:02 am

Three Years and Eight Months by Icy Smith, illustrated by Jennifer Kindert

Three Years and Eight MonthsParents with young children: please take caution in sharing this book with your youngest readers. Although the narrator is “only a 10-year-old boy,” what he witnesses, endures, and survives during the titular ‘three years and eight months’ of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II is brutal, horrific, and inhumane. As in all wars, women, the elderly, and children always suffer most.

Choi lives with his widowed mother and his Uncle Kim in a “rundown apartment building in crowded Hong Kong.” Dismissed from school early one day, he watches his mother dragged away by Japanese soldiers. On Christmas, 1941, Japan takes official control of the island; for its citizens, occupation means destruction, starvation, imprisonment, and death.

Up in the mountains searching for firewood, Choi meets Taylor, the hapa son of Uncle Kim’s friend; Taylor’s American mother went to visit her California family and has been unable to return to Hong Kong since Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The two boys trade wood for food when they can, which leads them to meet a kind Japanese soldier who teaches them enough Japanese to give them a job at the military station. The boys’ entry there provides access to information, food, and even medical supplies they can pass on to Uncle Kim …

Award-winning author and publisher Icy Smith – whose last book detailed war’s atrocities in Half Spoon of Rice – clearly channels her own family background here. Her opening dedication is a harrowing warning: “This book is dedicated to my father, uncle, and grandmother, who lived the reality of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. My uncle was forced to work for the Japanese military and transported prisoners to death camps. … My father was a slave boy who witnessed the Japanese brutalities … My grandmother was victimized by Japanese soldiers for three long years and became a nun after the end of World War II.” Hopefully, the single, kind ‘enemy’ soldier was also a part of Smith’s ancestral past. Decades later, Smith bears witness, first with personal story, then with “Remembering History” at book’s end with dates, facts, numbers, and period photos.

As much as Smith’s words capture this true story, Jennifer Kindert‘s illustrations vividly enhance the chilling experience. Kindert, a Texas-based Thai adoptee of Swedish parents, has a lush style that fills each page with careful, intimate details which bring readers immediately into each scene: the distant worried look of a young mother with two small children she carries balanced in a basket, the treasures local residents have brought the Japanese troops to trade for a few cups of rice, the upturned face of an imprisoned woman momentarily distracted from her heavy labor, the portrait of Emperor Hirohito on the wall with his head symbolically truncated from view as a group of soldiers initially hear the news of the first atomic bombing. Every picture reveals and intensifies both the horror and the humanity.

Too much of our history is filled with tragedy… perhaps bearing witness, even in childhood, is one way to combat the nightmarish repetition. Hope springs eternal, right?

Readers: Children (with caution), Middle Grade

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, ..Middle Grade Readers, .Nonfiction, Chinese, Chinese American, Japanese

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April 30, 2013 · 9:33 am

Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton

Religion for AtheistsI refer to myself as a ‘recovering Catholic,’ and yet I can’t stay out of churches for long. I enter as a tourist – admiration for architecture seems to be genetically coded into our extended family – but I linger to breathe deeply, clear the mind temporarily, and just be. While I may have discarded most of the religious tenets from youth, I still find precious moments of peace in these so-called holy spaces.

Here in his penultimate title, the ever-irreverent Alain de Botton recognizes that power of religious architecture, and suggests that even better would be to create secular temples with similar goals: “they would all be connected through the ancient aspiration of sacred architecture: to place us for at time in a thoroughly structured three-dimensional space, in order to educate and rebalance our souls.” Build and we will come, for sure!

Beyond holy architecture, in the vein of ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,’ de Botton wants to “reverse the process of religious colonization: … to separate ideas and rituals from the religious institutions which have laid claim to them but don’t truly own them.” While fundamentalists might be ready to issue a fatwa, de Botton’s message is hardly threatening: ignore the dogma and let’s find ways to be better people living better lives.

Divided into revealing one-word chapters – “Kindness,” “Tenderness,” “Perspective,” and so on – de Botton uses his usual charming erudition to reclaim the best of religion: “many of the problems of the modern soul can successfully be addressed by solutions put forward by religions … Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone.” Ready to learn? Choose the page; while Kris Dyer’s excellent narration can’t be faulted, you won’t want to miss the photos and illustrations – many of them are downright illuminating, ahem!

Of de Botton’s mutiplying shelf of philosophically questioning, cleverly revealing treatises, Religion is perhaps not among his strongest – it’s lighter in research and depth than many of his others. His choice to draw on just three religions (“primarily Christianity and to a lesser extent Judaism and Buddhism”) feels a bit as if he’s avoiding that other elephantine monotheistic faith (did I mention fatwa?); his explanation as to why he chose those three among the “world’s twenty-one largest religions” doesn’t quite convince. That said, if you want to tickle and expand your brain, you can never go wrong with de Botton. Trust me; have faith.

Tidbit: Make sure to check out de Botton’s “A Manifesto for Atheists: Ten Virtues for the Modern Age” in full. While you’re waiting for the page to load, here’s an abridged version to get you started …

  1. Resilience. Keeping going even when things are looking dark.
  2. Empathy. The capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person.
  3. Patience. We should grow calmer and more forgiving by getting more realistic about how things actually tend to go.
  4. Sacrifice. We won’t ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if we don’t keep up with the art of sacrifice.
  5. Politeness. Politeness is very linked to tolerance, the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, can’t avoid.
  6. Humour. Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it’s disappointment optimally channelled.
  7. Self-Awareness. To know oneself is to try not to blame others for one’s troubles and moods; to have a sense of what’s going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world.
  8. Forgiveness. It’s recognising that living with others isn’t possible without excusing errors.
  9. Hope. Pessimism isn’t necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.
  10. Confidence. Confidence isn’t arrogance, it’s based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how little we ultimately lose from risking everything.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Nonfiction, British, Nonethnic-specific

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April 16, 2013 · 12:45 pm

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

ZeitounClearly I waited too long to read this book, even though it sat ready on my shelves and on my iPod for years. Before I lament further, you should know that if you choose to go audible, Firdous Bamji doesn’t disappoint; he remains one of the very few narrators whose name will make me pick up a book over that of the title and author.

So why the whinge-ing? I’m one of those readers who doesn’t like family trees in the beginning of books because I don’t want to know that Tom and Sally get married before they’re even born. I don’t like maps with the route clearly marked because then I’ll know that Joe got out of Dodge but didn’t make it to Paradise. What’s the point of reading to the final page if you already know what happens?

All that means that if you read the news, then you might already know what happens after the events contained in Dave Eggers‘ ‘best of’-lists-making, much lauded, true (-enough) Katrina title, Zeitoun. If you are one of the blessed few who know nothing, then please do NOT start a google search! I fervently wish I could have read this without bias …

As a story, Zeitoun is exciting and engaging, with only a few minor faltering moments (a few too many pages of waiting – for Katrina, for news, for answers). A Syrian Muslim by birth, an American citizen by choice, a successful New Orleanian businessman by tenacity, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who is known by his easier-to-pronounce last name, runs a painting contracting company with his American wife Kathy, who became a hijab-wearing convert to Islam before she met Zeitoun. The company’s ubiquitous logo sports a rainbow – the significance of which was originally unknown to Zeitoun – which inadvertently attracted gay clients, although other potential clients stayed away and a few workers even left the company. Once made aware of the symbolism, Zeitoun stayed firm: “Anyone who had a problem with rainbows, he said, would surely have trouble with Islam.”

When Katrina hit, Kathy and the couple’s four kids had already left New Orleans. Zeitoun stayed back to keep an eye on the business, the family’s home, and their many other properties. He boarded his canoe in the disastrous aftermath helping others, saving the lives of both people and pets. And then, without cause or warning, he was arrested in one of his own rental houses. He was held in the Greyhound bus station-turned-makeshift-jail without being charged for three days, then sent to Hunt Correctional Center – a maximum-security prison – for 23 more, where he was not allowed even a single phone call.

Meanwhile, Kathy and the kids were in Phoenix with Kathy’s childhood best friend, desperately searching for any news about Zeitoun, all the while fielding frantic worrying from Zeitoun’s internationally dispersed family. The personal losses Zeitoun suffered after Katrina were exponentially magnified by the theft of his basic civil rights as an American citizen fueled by post-9/11 paranoia at the hands (fists, feet, pepper-spray) of the very people the U.S. Government sent to protect the disaster victims. Lest you think Zeitoun was a lone target, Eggers includes even more “absurd” stories, topped by the arrest of Merlene Maten, a 73-year-old diabetic woman held at Hunt’s sister prison for retrieving a sausage out of her own cooler from her own parked car.

Zeitoun should have been a moving tale about a local hero within a shared witnessing of outrage against the miscarriage of justice in the wake of a natural disaster. If the story could have ended in 2009 when the book was published, it surely would have remained a beacon of hope and inspiration. Alas, history (or should I say, ‘his story’) will prove otherwise.

Ironically, in this morning’s New York Times‘ leading article about yesterday’s horrific tragedy, “Blasts at Boston Marathon Kill 3 and Injure 100,” an unnamed “Saudi man” gets two mentions as having been singled out, in spite of repeated claims that no suspects are yet in custody. Over at the Times‘ Op-Ed page, in “Living Through Terror, in Rawalpindi and Boston,” a medical resident writes, “And then, as we worked our way through the dazed throngs in Back Bay, I realized that not only was I a victim of terror, but I was also a potential suspect. As a 20-something Pakistani male with dark stubble (an ode more to my hectic schedule as a resident in the intensive-care unit than to any aesthetic or ideology), would I not fit the bill?” Any doubts? Read Zeitoun.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Nonfiction, Syrian American

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April 6, 2013 · 9:40 am

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Brain on FireAt 24, Susannah Cahalan, life was just about perfect. She was a budding journalist working for the New York Post, she went home to a tiny but cozy Manhattan studio, and she had just started a promising new relationship. And then the madness set in, starting with bedbugs – that didn’t exist. In a matter of weeks, she went from trying to convince a puzzled exterminator that her Hell’s Kitchen apartment needed be chemically saturated, to inexplicable paranoia, violent outbursts, and withdrawal.

Doctors tell her worried parents she’s exhausted, partying too much, having alcohol withdrawal. After endless examinations, tests, and scans, Cahalan ends up in the epileptic floor of a major hospital – still misdiagnosed. The breakthrough comes when the “brilliant and selfless” Dr. Souhel Najjar – whom Cahalan calls ‘Dr. House‘ – finally figures out that Cahalan is not psychotic, but that her psychotic symptoms are the result of anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis, a disease so rare that only a handful of patients have been correctly diagnosed. Finally, her arduous, uncertain journey to recovery begins.

In spite of her horrific experience, Cahalan knows with absolute certainty she’s one of the lucky ones: “Dedicated to those without a diagnosis,” she introduces her swiftly moving memoir. Anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis is a highly elusive disease that’s been fooling medical teams for decades, masquerading as variations of autism and schizophrenia: “How many people currently are in psychiatric wards and nursing homes denied the relatively simple cure …?” Cahalan questions as she recovers.

As elusive is her disease, so, too, are Cahalan’s memories: “I remember only flashes of actual events, and brief but vivid hallucinations from the months in which this story takes place,” she explains immediately and prominently in the opening “Author’s Note.” Her journalistic skills get a major workout recreating her own life. From interviews, medical records, her father’s journal, video footage, a notebook that her divorced parents used to communicate with each other (!), and more, Cahalan reconstructs her “evasive past.” She’s the first to admit she’s “an unreliable source,” and yet “[w]hat is left … is a journalist’s inquiry into that deepest part of self – personality, memory, identity – in an attempt to pick up and understand the pieces left behind.”

Choosing the audible option for this title – Heather Henderson makes for an excellent narrator, balancing just the right blend of alarm and detachment – adds an extra layer of immediacy … you can feel the paranoia taking over Cahalan’s disappearing rationality. Be warned that the lengthier passages of medical details might occasionally prove mind-numbing, although you might bypass such a reaction by reading on the page. That said, the emotional intimacy trumps any possible eye-glazing; go ahead, go audible.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific

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April 5, 2013 · 10:04 am

Jerusalem: A Family Portrait by Boaz Yakin and Nick Bertozzi, based on a story by Boaz Yakin and Moni Yakin, with art director Chris Sinderson

Jerusalem famly portraitSome years back, during a discussion about what was then the latest tragic news coming out of the Middle East, a friend’s mother softly remarked about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, “The absolute worst arguments happen among families.” She (the widow of conservative rabbi) was referring specifically to the shared Abrahamic ancestry of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. From Cain and Abel onward, too much of history – and not just religious history – has proven the truth in Mommy’s simple statement.

Welcome to Jerusalem, “… a stubborn little slab of reality that nevertheless shimmers like a mirage before the eyes of both the made and the sane, united them into a single brotherhood of dreamers, murderers, and poets.” The ‘family’ of the subtitle is the Halaby clan, originally from Syria, who arrive in the foothills of Jerusalem in 1893. A half century later, the family is bookended by two sons with four sisters in between: the elder, Yakov, is a wealthy community leader; Izak, six years younger, is always on the verge of ruin, mostly at the hands of his own brother. Yakov’s childhood animosity – ”… overcome by jealousy at the attention lavished on his brother, [Yakov] vowed never to allow Izak a moment’s peace” – remains a trenchant reality, even into middle age.

During the violent, tumultuous 1940s leading up to the declaration of an independent state of Israel in 1948, the Halaby brothers and their families live vastly different lives. Yakov manages to maintain stability and comfort – luxury, even – all the while tormenting Izak, even causing his brother’s imprisonment when Izak is unable to keep up with loan payments. While Izak is virtually powerless, his angry, often cruel, wife desperately tries to keep her family together. Their sons’ reactions to their threatened lives vary significantly: one joins hands with his Muslim neighbors to serve the Communist Party, one leaves the family to fight abroad, one becomes entangled with an extremist anti-British underground network, and the youngest grows his reputation as a street hoodlum. The neverending conflict beyond the disparate Halabys is magnified within their relationships with one another … in spite of glimmering moments of haunting hope, tragedy proves inevitable – again and again and again.

“Inspired by stories told to him by his father,” author Boaz Yakin – perhaps better known as a filmmaker (Now You See Me, Prince of Persia, Remember the Titans) – unwinds the Halaby history with unflinching detail, brought to the page by veteran graphic illustrator Nick Bertozzi whose images never stand still. As in too many families in conflict, winners and losers prove indiscernible … the only truth is that people suffer, and always, the children most of all.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Israeli, Jewish, Middle Eastern

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March 29, 2013 · 11:19 am

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & Other Female Villains by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple, illustrated by Rebecca Guay

Bad GirlsIf beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then perhaps bad behavior might be, too. “In this book we are taking a look back through history at all manner of famous female felons,” write mother/daughter author-team Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple (who, between them, have hundreds and hundreds of titles). From as far back as 110 BCE to the 20th century, Bad Girls includes 26 women who have quite the historical rap sheet. But were they all really that bad? “Every crime – no matter how heinous – comes with its own set of circumstances, aggravating and mitigating, which can tip the scales of guilt. And views change.”

Salome, she of the dance of the seven veils who was rewarded with the head of John the Baptist on a platter, might have been just 10 or 11 (!!) and easily manipulated by the adults around her. Bloody Mary was a highly educated, sought-after Princess who was declared suddenly illegitimate, then banished at the whim of her own philandering father King Henry VIII. The slave Tituba, who only did her young charges’ bidding, could only escape hanging if she confessed to being a witch. Madame Alexe Popova helped desperate wives off their cruel husbands – over 300 of those bad boys. Typhoid Mary was never ill herself, but she was a typhoid carrier who wouldn’t let the doctors fix her infection-ridden gallbladder, even for free … if you were healthy, would you submit to the knife?

Decades, centuries, millenia later, how might these women be judged now? “As our world changes, so does our definition of bad,” Yolen and Stemple remind us. “[Y]ou will have to decide for yourself if they were really bad, not so bad, or somewhere in the middle. And perhaps you will see that even the baddest of bad girls may have had a good reason for what she did.”

Admittedly a page-turner – like a mangled train wreck, you can’t look away, except to flip the page – Bad Girls is a unique hybrid of short biographies with a graphic twist: each chapter ends with a graphic novel/manga-style conversation (hurray for Rebecca Guay‘s multi-varied ease in changing styles) between mother and daughter, debating the good, bad, and the often ugly circumstances. Their exchanges are cutesy, off-the-cuff, albeit with a few too many predictable quips – “The Tudors were a nasty bunch. Always sneaking and scheming” gets the expected reply, “Rather like modern politicians.” Yolen seems to be the older, wiser voice while Stemple is quick with her 21st-century judgments of “icky” and apparently more concerned about her wardrobe (her shoe-obsession – misplaced attempt at humor? – seems totally out-of-place). That said, let the bad girls speak for themselves. Read at your own risk … then be sure to decide for yourself.

Tidbit: Younger readers might better enjoy The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Dastardly Dames, a thus-far seven-title collection featuring women who lived by their own rules (the series and Bad Girls have Cleopatra and (Bloody) Mary Tudor in common). Older readers should definitely check out this TEDxVancouver talk, “The Sociology of Gossip,” about what gossip – especially about supposedly badly-behaved women – says about our so-called modern society. It’s an eye-, ear-, and brain-opener!

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Biography, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific

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March 11, 2013 · 9:07 am

War Brothers: The Graphic Novel by Sharon E. McKay and Daniel Lafrance, illustrated by Daniel Lafrance

War BrothersIf you look at the bottom of this post at “Filed under,” you’ll see this title is listed as both “Fiction” and “Nonfiction.” That’s not a mistake – and the explanation is found in the book’s “Postscript”: “This is a book of fiction based on interviews in Gulu, Uganda. Everything that happened in this book has happened, and is happening still.”

In 2002, 14-year-old Kitino Jacob begins writing his story on a lined notepad in his childish hand: “My story is not an easy one to tell, and it is not an easy one to read … There is no shame in closing this book now,” he warns. As if to underline the warning, for those who decide to continue, the panels depicting the most harrowing parts of the story are ominously edged in black.

Joseph Kony, guerilla leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – populated by stolen and brutalized children – is terrorizing then entire country of Uganda. On the eve of traveling to their school, Jacob and his friend Tony are assured of their safety: “Kony cannot get us. Do not be worried. We are safe. I heard Father talking to headmaster Haycoop about hiring extra guards to surround the school. There is no reason to fear Kony and his rebel soldiers.”

But on the first night back at George Jones Seminary for Boys, a motley gang of LRA recruits murder the adults and kidnap the students. “It’s true … they’re just kids!” Jacob immediately realizes, but these are the very ‘kids’ who force Jacob and his friends to kill or be killed. They are starved, abused, and turned into murderers. The “good boys,” he learns, “become especially mean, especially dangerous,” like Tony who once aspired to be a priest but is quickly transformed into a killing machine. Somehow, Jacob manages to hold onto his humanity, convinced that his father will save him and his friends.

Last year saw a fervor of Kony-related activity in the media: from the film, Kony 2012, which went viral, to the filmmaker’s public breakdown, to the outcry of what happened to almost $20 million in donated funds to the film’s producing company Invisible Children. “While Kony has lost much of his power, he continues to carry on his crimes across the border in the Congo and DRC,” Jacob explains in a final closing letter dated 2012 at book’s end. That Kony remains free is terrifying, but his LRA – as diminished as it is – represents only a fraction of the estimated 250,000 child soldiers in the world. What these children must endure after surviving war in order to even attempt to return to their former world will be an even greater battle.

While capturing the horrific tragedy of the life of child soldiers, co-creators Sharon E. McKay and Daniel Lafrance also manage to offer inspiration: war decimates, and yet everlasting bonds can also be forged. “[T]his is also a story of hope, courage, friendship, and family,” Jacob reminds. He echoes his friend Hannah, “… that if the world knows that child soldiers suffer unimaginable cruelty and pain, then help will come. I hope this is right.”

With testimony as formidable as War Brothers, we can’t say we didn’t know. And now that we know, we must help, offer hope, and make change. That’s a mantra for us all.

Readers: Middle Grade (with caution), Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Nonfiction, African, Canadian

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March 5, 2013 · 10:10 am

The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from Around the World by Linda Lau Anusasananan, art by Alan Lau, foreword by Martin Yan

Hakka CookbookHow come no one is out there cooking their way through all the recipes of an Asian cookbook and blogging about it, then making a movie with … say, Jackie Chan fighting the good fight with woks and chopsticks?

Really, if I had any talent in the kitchen (the only thing I can do well is eat!), this is the culinary challenge I’d pick. Learning about Hakka cuisine (previously knowing absolutely nothing) and doing so by going around the world, sounds like the perfect premise for a most appetizing peripatetic eats fest. Any media mavens out there getting hungry?

Longtime favorite chef Martin Yan fills his “Foreword” with his own memories of Hakka cooking (which date back to his childhood in Guangzhou), throws in that a formidable 80 million people around the world claim Hakka ancestors (a Chinese subgroup, the Hakka are believed to have originated in what is now central China), exclaims “‘It’s about time!’” for a Hakka cookbook, and ends with the heartfelt query: “Honoring our culture through delicious food: is there a better way?”

Author Linda Lau Anusasananan does just that, taking us on a culinary journey channeled by memories of her beloved Hakka grandmother, Popo, who reminded her and her brother Alan (who contributes his dreamy art throughout the book), “‘You should be proud to be Hakka.’” After spending over 35 years writing predominantly about Western food for renowned Sunset magazine, Anusasananan’s “knowledge of Chinese food was superficial,” she confesses. ”With this book, I’ve discovered my family history and how it merges into the Hakka diaspora,” she explains. “I’m recapturing the flavor and spirit of my Hakka culture through [my grandmother's] life and her food.”

Anusasananan begins her journey in “Popo’s Kitchen on Gold Mountain,” in California, where Au Shee arrived in 1921 via Angel Island as a new bride. When Anusasananan was born in 1947, as Au Shee’s first grandchild, Anusasananan’s birth transformed Au Shee into Popo. Decades after Popo’s death – as “reminders of my Hakka identity grew scarce” – Anusasananan returns to the family’s ancestral home in China, where the “taste of true Hakka food” gives her “a baseline for comparison.” She continues her culinary adventures – learning from home cooks and famous chefs – through Beijing, Luodai, and Hong Kong, and onto stops in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Mauritius. She crosses the Pacific to Peru, Hawai’i, and Tahiti, and back to North America to Toronto and New York, before coming back home to Gold Mountain. “Finally, I have fulfilled Popo’s wishes. Yes, Popo, I’m proud to be Hakka.”

Distinctive cooking, little-known history, heartfelt family memoir, and quite the global movable feast. Might I just add: mmm mmm good!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Chinese, Chinese American

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February 28, 2013 · 9:22 am

A Chinese Life by Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié, translated by Edward Gauvin

Chinese LifeNo other word than epic describes this almost 700-page tome. It’s epic in content: six decades of one ordinary man’s extraordinary life, told through detailed, rich depictions in swirling black-and-white pen and ink that never seem to still. It’s epic in context: 60 years of tumultuous history in a country still in the throes of unrecognizable change. It’s epic in heft: just carrying it around should add a few sinews of muscle (although once you start, you just might read it through in a single sitting).

In 2005 Beijing, a foreign publisher and writer present a Chinese artist with a plan. His response? “My life as a comic book? Nonsense! I’m just one Chinese person among millions of others! Who’d be interested in the story of someone as ordinary as me?” he questions. But the pair are insistent: “… that’s exactly where the appeal is. Through the life of an individual like yourself, foreign readers could come to understand China.” In a clever twist of the final panel of that short preface, the child who was Li Kunwu – known by his childhood nickname, Xiao Li, as in “Young Li” – looks up at a faceless voice calling out to him, “Someone wants to see you! Odd fellow. Says he wants to send you to the 21st century.” And so the journey begins …

In “Book I: The Time of the Father,” Xiao Li’s parents meet, marry, and bring two children into an uncertain world. The People’s Republic of China has just been birthed and the young country is struggling itself into existence under the leadership of Chairman Mao. Xiao Li is born in 1955, miraculously survives the Great Famine of 1958 which lasts three years, followed  in 1966 by the brutal sufferings during “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” Shockingly, Xiao Li’s devotion and loyalty to the Communist Party never wavers.

Mao’s death in 1976 – which ends Book I and begins “Book II: The Time of the Party” – brings forth sweeping changes of leadership .. and opens the country to a new ‘socialism’ depicted in the aptly named “Book III: The Time of the Money.” China is ready for reinvention, testing foreign ideas, welcoming foreign contact and exchange, and developing the seemingly unlimited potential of foreign investment.

As the contemporary Li looks back over the decades, he recognizes well that his China is “not the land of ‘Made in China,’ skyscrapers, the Olympic Games and the World Expo.” But of course, “we’re proud of what we’ve made, even if it’s not perfect yet. Especially since it doesn’t come from the profits of armed conquest, however legitimate. Or from the exploiting of rich subsoil or from inherited capital skillfully managed to bear fruit.

“You will find nothing but sweat here. From our brows and our children, to whom we bequeath lives that will also be made of hard work and sacrifice for we still have a long way to go down the road that will lead us from poverty, the road to development.”

Sharing Li’s journey proves unforgettably epic – that word once more! – because by the final page, you’ll feel like you, too, have borne witness to some of the greatest transformations of the 20th century … with the promise of more yet to come.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, .Translation, Chinese

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February 25, 2013 · 9:46 am

Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop

Every Grain of RiceHow’s this for a fabulous first line? “The Chinese know, perhaps better than anyone else, how to eat.” Think about any little small town in the U.S. alone … no matter where you are, the one type of food you can be guaranteed to find sooner than later, is … Chinese. Really. On these here home shores (and everywhere in between), you’ll find more Chinese restaurants than McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s combined [check out this quick Yahoo! video on the all-American history of Chinese food]. That said, American Chinese food is not exactly authentic … so if you’re looking for some real cuisine, this gorgeous cookbook promises basic, fresh, healthy, delicious, and best of all … simple.

Meet Fuchsia Dunlop, who holds the distinction of being “the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in central China.” She speaks fluent Mandarin (which always elevates any outsider’s status), and has spent two decades researching, crafting, creating Chinese culinary delights – she’s got two award-winning cookbooks and a memoir as proof.

Her latest is another feast, done simple: “I’m not talking here about [Chinese] exquisite haute cuisine, or their ancient tradition of gastronomy. I’m talking about the ability of ordinary Chinese home cooks to transform humble and largely vegetarian ingredients into wonderful delicacies, and to eat in a way that not only delights the senses, but also makes sense in terms of health, economy and the environment.” She reminds us (more than a few times, because we need it, ahem), “With all the fuss over the Mediterranean diet, people in the West tend to forget that the Chinese have a system of eating that is equally healthy, balanced, sustainable and pleasing. Perhaps it’s the dominance of Chinese restaurant food – with its emphasis on meat, seafood and deep-frying as a cooking method – that has made us overlook the fact that typical Chinese home cooking is centered on grains and vegetables.”

Instead of picking up the phone for that next delivery or take-out, Dunlop gives you the better, healthier, tastier option of staying in. She shows you how to stock your kitchen with easy essentials (including “magic ingredients”!) – sauces, spices, and equipment. She offers a basic primer on cutting (“the first basic skill of the Chinese kitchen”) and other how-to techniques. She helps you plan your table, from beginning to (healthy) dessert, even providing sample menus for two, four, and six. Then there are the recipes … with truly picture-perfect photography for almost every dish. Just leafing through a few pages will get you salivating. Please, do pass the bib!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2013 (United States)

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