A Daughter of Han; the Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman

A Daughter of Han; the Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman
Author: Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1967
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780804706063

Within the common destiny is the individual destiny. So it is that through the telling of one Chinese peasant woman's life, a vivid vision of Chinese history and culture is illuminated. Over the course of two years, Ida Pruitt--a bicultural social worker, writer, and contributor to Sino-American understanding--visited with Ning Lao T'ai-ta'i, three times a week for breakfast. These meetings, originally intended to elucidate for Pruitt traditional Chinese family customs of which Lao T'ai-t'ai possessed some insight, became the foundation for an enduring friendship. As Lao T'ai-t'ai described the cultural customs of her family, and of the broader community of which they were a part, she invoked episodes from her own personal history to illustrate these customs, until eventually the whole of her life lay open before her new confidante. Pruitt documented this story, casting light not only onto Lao T'ai-t'ai's own biography, but onto the character of life for the common man of China, writ large. The final product is a portrayal of China that is "vividly and humanly revealed."

Seeing Like a Child

Seeing Like a Child
Author: Clara Han
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0823289486

An utterly original and illuminating work that meets at the crossroads of autobiography and ethnography to re-examine violence and memory through the eyes of a child. Seeing Like a Child is a deeply moving narrative that showcases an unexpected voice from an established researcher. Through an unwavering commitment to a child’s perspective, Clara Han explores how the catastrophic event of the Korean War is dispersed into domestic life. Han writes from inside her childhood memories as the daughter of parents who were displaced by war, who fled from the North to the South of Korea, and whose displacement in Korea and subsequent migration to the United States implicated the fraying and suppression of kinship relations and the Korean language. At the same time, Han writes as an anthropologist whose fieldwork has taken her to the devastated worlds of her parents—to Korea and to the Korean language—allowing her, as she explains, to find and found kinship relationships that had been suppressed or broken in war and illness. A fascinating counterpoint to the project of testimony that seeks to transmit a narrative of the event to future generations, Seeing Like a Child sees the inheritance of familial memories of violence as embedded in how the child inhabits her everyday life. Seeing Like a Child offers readers a unique experience—an intimate engagement with the emotional reality of migration and the inheritance of mass displacement and death—inviting us to explore categories such as “catastrophe,” “war,” “violence,” and “kinship” in a brand-new light.

Daughter of Good Fortune

Daughter of Good Fortune
Author: Chen Huiqin
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295806028

Daughter of Good Fortune tells the story of Chen Huiqin and her family through the tumultuous 20th century in China. She witnessed the Japanese occupation during World War II, the Communist Revolution in 1949 and its ensuing Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Reform Era. Chen was born into a subsistence farming family, became a factory worker, and lived through her village’s relocation to make way for economic development. Her family’s story of urbanization is representative of hundreds of millions of rural Chinese.

China's American Daughter

China's American Daughter
Author: Marjorie King
Publisher: Chinese University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9789629960575

"Ida Pruitt, born of American missionaries and raised in a rural Chinese village at the end of the nineteenth century, witnessed almost a century of China's revolutionary upheavals. She was the first Director of Social Service at the Peking Union Medical College, where she established social casework in China. She later served as the executive secretary of the American Committee in Support of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, the only U.S. aid agency to provide support to both Nationalist and Communist regions during the Chinese Civil War. She was also one of the early advocates for U.S. diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China. Her two notable books, A Daughter of Han: the Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman, Ning Lao T'ait'ai and Old Madam Yin: A Memoir of Peking, 19261938, have become classics in Chinese Studies and Women's Studies." -- Publisher's description.

Born Blue

Born Blue
Author: Han Nolan
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2001
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0152019162

Janie was four years old when she nearly drowned due to her mothers neglect. Through an unhappy foster home experience, and years of feeling that she is unwanted, she keeps alive her dream of someday being a famous singer.

Heiress Apparently (Daughters of the Dynasty)

Heiress Apparently (Daughters of the Dynasty)
Author: Diana Ma
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1647000874

The epic first novel in a sweeping series following the romantic lives and intrigues of the fictionalized descendants of a Chinese empress—now in paperback! Behind every great family lies a great secret. There’s one rule in Gemma Huang’s family: Never, under any circumstances, set foot in Beijing. But when Gemma, an aspiring actress, lands her first break—a lead role in an update of M. Butterfly, which just so happens to be filming in the Chinese capital—Gemma heads to LAX without looking back. It’s an amazing opportunity for her burgeoning career, and she’ll get to work with her idol. Of course, there’s also the chance of discovering just exactly why she’s been forbidden from entering the city in the first place. When Gemma arrives in Beijing, she’s instantly mobbed by paparazzi at the airport. She quickly realizes she may as well be the twin of Alyssa Chua, one of the most notorious young socialites in Beijing. Thus kicks off a season of revelations and romance in which Gemma uncovers a legacy her parents have spent their lives protecting her from—one her mother would conceal at any cost.

A Chinese Fantasy: The Dragon King's Daughter [Book 1]

A Chinese Fantasy: The Dragon King's Daughter [Book 1]
Author: Yen Samejima
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2022-09-13
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1685798276

This beautiful retelling of Chinese folktales highlights the relationships between humans and non-humans. Whether fantastical, like the love story of the Dragon King's Daughter, or intense, like the bond between hunter and beast, this stunning collection of five stories delves into traditional Chinese lore and myth.

The White Book

The White Book
Author: Han Kang
Publisher: Hogarth
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525573062

FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian “Stunningly beautiful writing . . . delicate and gorgeous . . . one of the smartest reflections on what it means to remember those we’ve lost.”—NPR While on a writer’s residency, a nameless narrator focuses on the color white to creatively channel her inner pain. Through lyrical, interconnected stories, she grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, attempting to make sense of her older sister’s death using the color white. From trying to imagine her mother’s first time producing breast milk to watching the snow fall and meditating on the impermanence of life, she weaves a poignant, heartfelt story of the omnipresence of grief and the ways we perceive the world around us. In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book offers a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and of our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.

Nights When Nothing Happened

Nights When Nothing Happened
Author: Simon Han
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593086066

Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar “A tender, spiky family saga about love in all its mysterious incarnations.” —Lorrie Moore, author of A Gate at the Stairs and Birds of America “Absolutely luminous . . . Weaves the transience of suburbia between the highs and lows of a family saga . . . Shocks, awes, and delights.” —Bryan Washington, author of Memorial From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn’t this what they sacrificed so much for? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting into motion a string of misunderstandings that not only threaten to set their community against them but force to the surface the secrets that have made them fear one another. How can a man make peace with the terrors of his past? How can a child regain trust in unconditional love? How can a family stop burying its history and forge a way through it, to a more honest intimacy? Nights When Nothing Happened is gripping storytelling immersed in the crosscurrents that have reshaped the American landscape, from a prodigious new literary talent.

Egg Woman's Daughter

Egg Woman's Daughter
Author: Mary Chan Ma-Lai
Publisher: Asia 2000
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001
Genre: Handicapped women
ISBN: 9789627160533

"Mary was two years old when her eyes clouded over. Her grandmother's traditional cure of incense ash and mud rubbed into Mary's eyes failed. She was left blind in one eye and partially sighted in another. As a young Tanka child growing up on a fishing boat, she learned to cope with her blindness, as with poverty, hunger and casual cruelty from her family and peers. Plagued with a barrage of ailments, including a spinal infection that stole the use of her legs as a young adult, she persevered and was an indomitable spirit until the end. Full of life, laughter, compassion and determination, she had a magnetic charm that overcame an opaque gaze and shrivelled body to enchant all who knew her." "With brutal honestly and wry humour, Mary Chan Ma-lai tells the story of herself and her family against the backdrop of a brash and rising Hong Kong. A testament to her victory over her disabilities to become a teacher, writer, world traveller and vital member of society, this is an important book about Hong Kong as it seldom reveals itself by an articulate and inspiring author whose blind eyes saw deeply."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved