Education About Asia: Online Archives

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Book Review

Tsunami Girl

by Rebecca Byrd

Tsunami Girl By Julian Sedgwick, Illustrations by Chie Kutsuwada Didcot, England: Guppy Books, 2021 100 pages, ISBN: 978-1913101466, Paperback Winner 2021 Freeman Book Awards Young Adult/High School Literature Reviewed by Rebecca Byrd   [caption id="attachment_19271" align="alignleft" width="197"] Manga artist, Chie Kutsuwada.Source: Winsor Newton webpage athttps://tinyurl.com/2p8h46t8.[/caption] The remarkable novel Tsunami Girl is the story of fifteen-year-old Yuki, wh...

Book Review

While I Was Away

by Molly DeDona (Reviewer)

While I Was Away By Waka T. Brown New York, Quill Tree Books, 2021 336 pages, ISBN: 978-0063017122, Paperback 2021 Freeman Book Award Honorable Mention for Young Adult/Middle School Literature Reviewed by Molly DeDona     [caption id="attachment_19250" align="alignright" width="201"] Waka T. Brown. Photo by Miles W. Brown.[/caption] While I Was Away’s prose is almost identical to a young adult novel, but is instead a memoir based on the author’s own life ex...

Book Review

Chinese Literature: An Introduction

by Fred Lindstrom (Reviewer)

Ihor Pidhainy’s Chinese Literature: An Introduction, a slim volume of 110 pages, offers a clear and concise overview of Chinese literature from 1250 BCE to the end of the twentieth century. It is an ideal source for anyone who hopes to explore the literary traditions of China.

Teaching Resources Essay

Teaching How Do You Live? in Middle School Classrooms

by Nancy Neff (Reviewer)

In 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino wrote a charming coming of age story in his young adult novel How Do You Live? The reader learns much about life in Tokyo and its neighborhoods in pre-World War II Japan. However, it is so much more than a simple tale of a teenage boy, his friends, and their adventures; this work encompasses science, philosophy, history, geography, physics, economics, and more. It is a moving, engrossing narrative that is at times deceptively straightforward but also complicated and ...

Book Review

Finding Junie Kim

by Charles Newell (Reviewer)

Finding Junie Kim By Ellen Oh New York: Harper Collins, 2021 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0062987990, Paperback Winner 2021 Freeman Book Award for Young Adult/Middle School Literature Reviewed by Charles Newell       [caption id="attachment_19078" align="alignright" width="163"] Ellen Oh.[/caption] How do you engage middle-grade students on issues of racism, political division, and immigration while also discussing the oft-overlooked Korean War and the importance o...

Book Review

Dragonfly Dreams

by Anne Prescott

Dragonfly Dreams chronicles the life of the Liu family in Tianjin, China, in the early 1940s, a time and place in history often overlooked by Americans. Appropriate for middle school grades and above, the captivating story is a vehicle for learning about China, and it can also be used to teach about the challenges and joys experienced by young people during times of conflict.

Book Review

Crossing the Farak River

by Erin E. Williams

Since the 2016–17 “clearance operations” that pushed the plight of the Rohingya into the international spotlight, ethnic violence in Myanmar has evolved into new phases and expanded into new dimensions. For social studies and history teachers of higher grades, these most recent phases and new dimensions are an opportunity for cultivating greater awareness of an urgent global issue and what moral responsibility falls to the rest of us to pay attention and possibly take action.

Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama Historical Background and Chapter 1: “The Princess and the Horse Race”

by Diane Wolff

In the thirteenth century, Europe knew nothing of the rise of a new imperial power in Asia. The Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Europe knew nothing about the Muslim political and commercial activities in Asia. The news of the Mongol conquests in Russia and the invasion of Hungary and Poland caused a reaction in Europe. They needed to know the intentions of the new invaders. By contrast, Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) and General Subudei considered intelligence a priority. Before ...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

South Asian Literature

by EAA Editorial Office

Although Asian indigenous cultural variations appear endless, that said, China and India have historically, the most widespread influence throughout Asia, (and elsewhere), when compared with other Asian civilizations. Hopefully, the articles, essays, and resources in both sections of this column assist educators and students in their efforts to learn about and from South Asian literature. 

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Teaching Asia through Literature: China, Japan, Korea

by EAA Editorial Office

Teaching Asia through Literature: China, Japan, Korea [caption id="attachment_18783" align="alignleft" width="200"] Book cover for My Borther's Keeper by Julie Lee[/caption] Contemporary education at almost every level, through its seeming obsession with "Objectives," "Learning Outcomes," and intensely political ideologies, seems to be minimizing the pleasure, varying emotions, and truth that literature conveys about the human condition. EAA readers and subscribers familiar with Asia wil...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Asia and the World: East Asia-related Literature

by EAA Editorial Office

Proponents of the “bookless curriculum” pedagogy, ideologues from across the political spectrum, and desperate American teachers confronting alarming percentages of students with low reading levels, are perhaps some of the reasons for the diminishment of literature in education. Hopefully, the following selections will inspire those readers who love literature to assign even more literary works on East Asia and the World in their courses. A number of Digest readers have read some of the...

Book Review Essay

Brother’s Keeper

by Julie Lee

BY JULIE LEE NEW YORK: HOLIDAY HOUSE, 2020 320 PAGES, ISBN: 978-0823444946, HARDCOVER Reviewed by Mary Connor Prior to reading Julie Lee's Brother's Keeper, I had read many of the most respected accounts of the Korean War. However, the author of Brother’s Keeper is a gifted new writer. Inspired by her mother’s wartime recollections of the war, the author focuses on one family, but the reader also becomes aware of the overall civilian experience in wartime and the particular...

Book Review Essay

Batu, Khan of the Golden Horde: The Mongol Khans Conquer Russia (The Silk Road Series)

by Christy Davis

BY DIANE WOLFF GENGHIS PRODUCTIONS, 2020  182 PAGES, ISBN: 978-0578780894, PAPERBACK Reviewed by Christy Davis History, as we know, is written by the victors. But what happens when the victors write nothing down? In the case of the Mongols, history was written by the vanquished, despite exceptional Mongol brutality, and carries with it all the prejudice and bitterness of defeated empires and kingdoms. Over time, and with the absence of any documents to the contrary, the...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Contextualizing Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko

by Todd Munson

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, nominee for the 2017 National Book Award for fiction, is a sweeping historical saga of one family’s experience living as “forever foreigners” in twentieth-century Japan. Despite its heft (496 pages in the hardcover edition), the novel is written in an accessible and engaging style appropriate for both undergraduates and high school students. Moreover, Pachinko is set in a particularly rich era of modern East Asian history, encompassing colonial Korea, World War II...

Feature Article

Outside the Box Teaching East Asian History with Multimedia Approaches, Technological Artifacts, and Performative Activities

by Jenny Huangfu Day, Joseph W. Ho, Paul G. Pickowicz, Ya Zuo

Filmmaking as a Way to Learn East Asian History By Paul G. Pickowicz In the 1980s, I became extremely interested in the use of visual sources in the study of modern Chinese history. Very little was known about the history of feature filmmaking in China. After spending a year at the Film Archive of China in 1982–1983, I became convinced that Chinese-made films provide unique insights into the social, cultural, and political history of China—information about popular culture that can not be ...

Book Review Essay, Feature Article

The Sorrow of the Things They Carried: The American War in Việt Nam and Stories Told by Combat Soldiers from Both Sides

by Yasuko Sato

Bao Ninh’s (b. 1952) The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam (1990) and Tim O’Brien’s (b. 1946) The Things They Carried (1990) are Việt Nam classics that depict traumatic memories of war veterans. These two novels bring the reader into communion with the enormous weight of sorrow that resulted from fighting in a devastating war. The Things They Carried, a semi-autobiographical novel that reads like a collection of short stories, is one of the finest and most widely read books about t...

Book Review Essay, Feature Article

Planting the seeds of Wild Mustard: Reading Vietnamese Short Stories in the Study of Asian History and Religion

by William B. Noseworthy

Wild Mustard: New Voices from Vietnam is a collection of contemporary short stories, translated into English and edited by Charles Waugh, Nguyen Lien, and Van Gia (Curbstone Books/Northwestern, 2017). I have used the book in two college courses on the history of Asian religions. This essay primarily focuses on using “Sleeping in the Lotus Flowers,” a story included in the book, in the classroom. There is also contextual content on Vietnamese culture and religion that should be helpful for in...

Online Supplement

Resources and Chapter Guide for “Contextualizing Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko”

by Todd Munson

In this bestselling novel, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan, exiled from a home they never knew. Profoundly moving and gracefully told, Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them. Betrayed by her wealthy lover, Sunja finds unexpected salvation when a young tubercular min...

Feature Article

An EAA Interview with the 2019 Franklin R. Buchanan Prizewinner Michael A. Fuller for An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty

by Lucien Ellington

This is our twenty-third consecutive interview with the recipient of the AAS Franklin R. Buchanan Prize. This year’s winner is Michael A. Fuller, who is the author of An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty. The textbook for learning classical Chinese poetry moves beyond the traditional anthology of poems translated into English and instead brings readers―including those with no knowledge of Chinese―as close as possible to the texture o...

New to EAA?

Before viewing the full archives, view Editor’s Choice Articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA and introduction for new readers.