Brother’s Keeper
BY JULIE LEE
NEW YORK: HOLIDAY HOUSE, 2020
320 PAGES, ISBN: 978-0823444946, HARDCOVER
Reviewed by Mary Connor
...
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Batu, Khan of the Golden Horde: The Mongol Khans Conquer Russia (The Silk Road Series)
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 c...
The Indian Rebellion, 1857–1859: A Short History with Documents
The rebellion in northern and central India, beginning in 1857, has been the object of countless published works, several of them published even before July 8, 1859, when the Government of India officially declared India to be at peace. It has also taken a place of privilege in many histories of modern India, as the moment when Parliament replaced early colonial rule under the British East India Company with “Crown” rule, overseen directly by the British metropolitan government. So...
The Many Manifestations of Shintō: Key Issues in Asian Studies
As a child, I would gaze at the sky through pine needles in the deep woods of East Tennessee, often overcome with a vague but intense feeling about nature around and inside me. As I grew up, I was attracted to expressions of one’s connection to nature in Japanese poetry and cultural histories. I eventually came across Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep Interior in graduate school at the University of Oregon. Bashō traveled around the largest Japanese island, Honshū, molding his impres¬sions...
Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad
The meeting of two huge locomotives on May 10, 1869, of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railways at Promontory Point in Utah is one of the most notable events in American history. For the first time, the United States was connected by rail from coast to coast and the journey from New York to San Francico, which before would have taken many grueling months, could now be comfortably completed in less than a week. Fortunately, for all those involved in the construction of the transcontinental...
Taiwan Nation-State or Province? (Seventh Edition)
For reasons both good and bad, 2020 has perhaps been a banner year for Taiwan in terms of increased global identification and international acknowledgment of its contributions and plight against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In January 2020, President Tsai Ingwen, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was reelected to a second term, winning an unprecedented eight million-plus votes over her challenger, Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Han Kuo-yu. Between Tsai’s elector...
A Brief History of Korea: Isolation, War, Despotism, and Revival: The Fascinating Story of a Resilient but Divided People
Michael Seth of James Madison University has a great deal of experience writing textbooks. His A Concise History of Korea: From the Neolithic to the Nineteenth Century was first published in 2006. It was revised and broken into two volumes: A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present (2009) and A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present (2010). Those volumes, published by Rowman & Littlefield, are still in print. In addition, Seth recently published ...
A Christian in the Land of the Gods: Journey of Faith In Japan
Joanna Reed Shelton’s recent book, A Christian in the Land of the Gods, is a beautifully written biography of her great-grandfather, the Reverend Thomas Theron Alexander (1850–1902), and her great-grandmother, Emma Edwina Alexander (1855–1937), who served as Presbyterian missionaries and teachers in Japan from 1877 to 1902. The value of this work is enhanced by the author’s in-depth analysis of the great difficulties foreign missionaries and teachers had in introducing Christianity into ...
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
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...
The Weight of Our Sky
The Weight of Our Sky
By Hanna Alkaf
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019
288 pages, ISBN 978-1534426085, Hardcover
Reviewed by Zoë McLaughlin
The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf centers on Melati, a Malaysian schoolgirl who is a fan of the Beatles and loves going to the cinema with her best friend. But one thing sets Melati apart: she believes she has a djinn inside of her, a creature out of Islamic mythology who regularly shows her scenes of death and pain, compelling her to count and t...
Book Review Essay, Feature Article
Franklin R. Buchanan Prize Book Review Essay
An Introduction to Chinese Poetry:
From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty
Harvard East Asian Monographs (Book 408)
Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018
496 pages, ISBN: 978-0674983885, Paperback
Michael Fuller’s An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty is a complete joy to read. Winner of the Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials, Fuller’s volume has achieved recognition as a pedagogical wo...
Book Review Essay, Feature Article
Planting the seeds of Wild Mustard: Reading Vietnamese Short Stories in the Study of Asian History and Religion
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...
Key Issues in Asian Studies: “Indonesia: History, Heritage, Culture”
With her contribution to the Key Issues in Asian Studies series—INDONESIA: History, Heritage, Culture— Kathleen M. Adams has maintained and even enhanced its well-established reputation for quality. Writing a brief yet comprehensive book is challenging because specialists must restrain themselves from delving too far into their area of expertise. Instead of presenting an in-depth look at the specific, they must focus on engaging intelligent but uninformed readers so they can grasp the basics...
Peeling The Onion Stories: “China in Family Photographs: A People’s History of Revolution and Everyday Life”
Asked to write a review of China in Family Photographs, I quickly got caught up in the task. Using stories from a series begun in 1996, Ed Krebs and Professor Hanchao Lu translate the tales based on the pictures that accompany the text. They also wrote an introduction to each piece, setting it in context. My reaction was positive, even enthusiastic. I’d call the approach of our two authors ”onion stories.” They are layered. One way is to take the subject of the story and peel back that per...
To Live (Revisited)
Editor’s Note: In the winter 2003 issue of EAA (vol. 8, no. 3), To Live was extensively featured with reviews of the novel and film adaptation as well as an interview with the novel’s author, Yu Hua. The significant success of the novel and film warrants reintroducing To Live to new readers.
To Live (Revisited)
By Yu Hua
New York: Anchor Books, 2003
(Originally published in 1993)
256 pages, ISBN: 978-1400031863, Paperback
Reviewed by Charles Newell
Since its publication, Yu Hua...
The Fourth String: A Memoir of Sensei and Me
A young native English speaker goes to Japan to earn money to pay her debts. This is not an unusual
beginning for the “foreigner discovers Japan” memoir. But shortly after Janet Pocorobba settles into her new life, it takes a surprising turn when a friend points out an ad in an English-language publication: “Free lesson in shamisen and singing! Take something home with you from your stay in Japan!” (60). In September 1996, Pocorobba responds to that ad and meets Sensei, as she calls the...
Contemporary Chinese Short-Short Stories: A Parallel Text. Reviewed by Hui Faye Xiao
Translated and edited by Aili Mu with Mike Smith
New York: Columbia University Press, 2017
528 pages, ISBN: 978-0231181532, Paperback
Short-short story (xiao xiaoshuo or weixing xiaoshuo in Chinese, normally within the range of 800–1,000 words) has been a well-received literary genre among Chinese readers for decades. It revitalizes and interweaves several important threads in Chinese literary and cultural legacies: the classical genres of Tang chuanqi (romance), Song huaben (oral fiction),...
Pachinko
By Min Jin Lee
New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017
512 pages, ISBN: 978-1455563920, Paperback
Reviewed by Charles Newell
Pachinko, a game of chance not skill, is a rather curious Japanese amusement. It can best be described as a combination of pinball and a slot machine. Players purchase small silver balls that they drop or launch into the vertical pachinko machine. The balls bounce off pins and bumpers, and players hope the balls land in cups or slots that will win them prizes or m...
Understanding China through Comics, Volume 2 Division to Unification in Imperial China: The Three Kingdoms to the Tang Dynasty (220–907)
By Jing Liu
Albany: Stone Bridge Press, 2016
168 Pages, ISBN: 978-1611720303, Paperback
Reviewed by Karl R. Neumann
The classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms opens with the famous line, “Anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide.” This aphorism aptly summarizes the historical thread that winds its way through the second volume of Jing Liu’s series Understanding China through Comics. In just under 150 pages, Liu deftly navigates the ebb and...
A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World. Reviewed by Kristin Stapleton
To plunge readers into the thick of life at some historical period, memoirs and other personal accounts can’t be beat. A book such as The Diary of Anne Frank presents history in a fully embodied way, combining details of material conditions with an avenue into the consciousness of the writer or subject. The intimacy and immediacy of diaries and memoirs give them a power that can be used to stimulate interest in a very unfamiliar past. In this way, Scott Tong’s family history is well-suited t...
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