What Are We Reading for October, by Dongyi Wang

 

《漫长的余生,一个北魏宫女和她的时代》

罗新 著

北京日报出版社 

The Long Remaining Life of A Northern Wei Courtesan and Her Times

By Luo Xin

Beijing Daily Publishing House

 

The anchor of the history department at Peking University, Luo Xin is a scholar on Ancient Chinese Northern and Southern dynasties. His most recent book traces the life of an ordinary maid in the imperial palace of the Northern Wei Dynasty. What is so extraordinary about Wang Zhonger? A woman in the center of power struggles, nursing two emperors in the time span in 56 years… Luo employs primary sources such as epitaphs to bring Wang Zhonger back to life. Readers will join this time-traveling journey with Professor Luo, through the eyes of Wang Zhonger, we begin to see the agony and ecstasy of mortal souls, how this part of history impacted their life, and how they shaped their own destinies.  

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《飞往温哥华》 

蒋在 著 

中信出版社 

Flying to Vancouver 

By Jiang Zai

CITIC Press


As the center of an enclave for contemporary Chinese immigrants, Vancouver embeds tears and laughter, the lost and found. Award-winning writer/poet Jiang Zai is the voice of Chinese Gen Z and their nostalgic wounds. Jiang unfolds the untold stories of collective pain in the breathtaking short story collections. From a middle-class family falling apart to the quandary in between pursuing a future and preserving family, Jiang perfectly captures the agency and helplessness of each person. As a writer with global visions, her writing is acute yet tender, relentlessly penetrating through countless people who shared the living experience elsewhere than their motherland. 

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《我坐在火山的最边缘》

包慧怡 著 

河南大学出版社 

I Sit on the Edge of the Volcano

Huiyi Bao 

Henan University Press

 

Bao Huiyi is a translator, writer, and scholar of medieval literature. I Sit on the Edge of the Volcano is Bao’s debut poetry collection. From 2005 to 2015, Bao moved from being a college girl to finishing her Ph.D. studies at Dublin University in Ireland, while her creativity flourished. Bao’s poetry is a grandiose mural of sensation, transcending the boundaries of time and space. Bao delicately encapsulates the beauty of femininity. Yearning and desperation fused into one, entanglement and blessings are woven throughout her writing, colorful yet detailed. Praised by pioneers in contemporary Chinese poetry Wang Ao and Zang Di, Bao Huiyi’s poems is a banquet of reading and imagination. 

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纽约客

白先勇 著 

广西师范大学出版社 

The New Yorker 

Pai Hsien-yung

Guangxi Normal University Press

 

Son of a warlord, queer, and an absolute legend in modern Chinese literature, Pai Hsien-yung lives a life full of chaos and wonders. He attended the Iowa Writer Workshop in the 1960s and moved across the US. The New Yorker, derived from one of the most canonical magazines in the world The New Yorker, is a love letter and elegy of early Chinese immigrants in New York City. He tells the stories of a young woman stumbling in her early adulthood, the HIV/AIDS epidemic among the Chinese queer community, and more. Blending his acute observation of the early formation of Chinese immigrants' identity alongside his upbringing in Confucian convention and ancient Chinese literature, it's breathtaking, heart-wrenching, and dexterous.  

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Chemistry

a Novel by Weike Wang 

Knopf Publishing Group

Praised by The New York Times, Washington Post, and more, Weike Wang’s debut novel Chemistry follows the young chemist's life after she realized her disappointment in Chemistry----a field of discipline which she has been passionate about for her whole life. Under pressure from her parents, peers, and even her boyfriend, who absolutely adores her, the unnamed narrator faces the time-old question that everybody struggles with----what does she really want? This is no average coming-of-age story. Chemistry pieces the broken yet insightful mind of the narrator and guides readers through her perseverance and untold desire, in relation to her and the world, that fails her and surprises her, over and over again.

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Interior Chinatown

a Novel by Charles Yu

Pantheon Books

What is the interior of Chinatown? Who gets to explain it? What’s more than the Golden Palace restaurant and endless Kung Fu movies playing on old television screens, on repeat? Willis Wu’s life is even worse than boring, he is constantly self-abased and lost, but he does aspire to become a Kung Fu star----like every other average generic Chinese man. Award-winning writer Charles Yu takes you on an immersive journey in the “interior Chinatown”, where Wu finds himself standing at the intersection of the past and present, where his heritage meets what he’s longing for. Masterfully constructed with playfulness, Yu’s heart-shattering writing debunks the Asian American trope in modern America and brings people into a world of the silenced ones. 






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