Education About Asia: Online Archives

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Book Review

Tsunami Girl

by Rebecca Byrd

The remarkable novel Tsunami Girl is the story of fifteen-year-old Yuki, who lives in the United Kingdom and had just arrived in Japan for a visit with her grandfather in the fictional town of Osoma when the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, 2011. The narrative is an account of Yuki’s survival and emotional recovery from the trauma of that day. The part-story, part-manga weaves together elements of Japanese folklore, including shape-shifters and ghosts, with the story...

Teaching Resources Essay

Lessons From Teaching East Asia: Korea and Korean American History

by Mary Connor

Teaching East Asia: Korea and Korean American History is a welcome resource for teachers wishing to include more breadth to their curriculum on East Asia by including Korea. Offering lessons and background material for all subjects, the resource is available not only in print, but also as a downloadable e-book at no charge by accessing the National Korean Studies Seminar website: www.koreanseminar.org. The following lessons on “Korea and Confucianism” and the “Four Famous Koreans” fro...

Book Review

While I Was Away

by Molly DeDona (Reviewer)

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 experience. Waka Brown tells the story of five months in summer 1984 where she lived in Japan, torn from all that is familiar in her rural Kansas home. Waka, whose parents emigrated from Japan to America before she was born, has only visited Japan a handful of times with her family before this fateful trip. The earnestness of Brown’s younger voice resonates well throu...

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)

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 of family connections? In her novel Finding Junie Kim, Ellen Oh attempts to do all these things. Oh has written other novels for middle-grade readers; she is best-known for two book series: The Dragon King Chronicles and The Spirit Hunters. These books fall into the horror or fantasy genre with young, multicultural protagonists ba...

Our Story: A History of the World, An EAA Interview with coauthors Michio Yamasaki, Edward O’Mahony, and Angelica McDonough

by Lucien Ellington

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Editor’s Introduction: Erroneous predictions of the textbook’s demise have occurred for decades, but textbooks remain a major pedagogical tool, even though they are often ineffectual. This excerpt from a 2004 world history textbook study is still, for the most part, accurate today: World history textbooks have abandoned narrative for a broken format of competing instructio...

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.

Resources

Teaching the Tōkaidō Road: The Visual Arts, Geography, and History

by Angie Stokes

Journey Along the Tōkaidō: Exploring Japan’s National Road1 is an online curriculum developed by the Ohio State University’s East Asian Studies Center with support from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. This comprehensive collection of resources includes a series of sixteen lesson plans designed by K-12 teachers providing a wide range of opportunities for educators to bring the adventures of the Tōkaidō to life in their classrooms using primary source materials. This cu...

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 ...

Editor's Message

Editor’s Message

by Lucien Ellington

Editor's Message I hope readers where fall weather is present are taking time to get outside. Our fall special section “Teaching Asia in Middle Schools” has been an especially gratifying project. High school and undergraduate instructors (two essays are specifically intended for post-middle school educators), and international readers should all find parts of the issue interesting and useful, but US educational demographics were the major incentive for the creation of the issue. Nationally,...

Facts About Asia

Facts About Asia: The Elephant in the Classroom: The US Literacy Crisis and Asian Studies

by James A. Tucker, Lucien Ellington

Editor’s Note: Professor James Tucker, the McKee Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, coauthored this column. Professor Tucker is a national leader in research in teaching and outreach for the study of dyslexia and related exceptional-learning conditions. He has held various positions in a long and illustrious career, including Director of the Bureau of Special Education, Pennsylvania Department of Education and has extensive national and international consulting ...

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.

The AAS Secretariat is closed on Monday, May 29 in observance of the Memorial Day holiday