Download or read book The Lives of Chang Eng written by Joseph Andrew Orser and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam's Twins in Nineteenth-Century America
Download or read book Inseparable written by Yunte Huang and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography, Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaited portrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), twins conjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fused liver, who were “discovered” in Siam by a British merchant in 1824. Bringing an Asian American perspective to this almost implausible story, Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Boston in 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvy showmen who gained their freedom and traveled the backroads of rural America to bring “entertainment” to the Jacksonian mobs. Their rise from subhuman, freak-show celebrities to rich southern gentry; their marriage to two white sisters, resulting in twenty-one children; and their owning of slaves, is here not just another sensational biography but a Hawthorne-like excavation of America’s historical penchant for finding feast in the abnormal, for tyrannizing the “other”—a tradition that, as Huang reveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself.
Download or read book Chang and Eng Reconnected written by Cynthia Wu and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering Chang and Eng's body in America from the nineteenth century to the present
Download or read book Wild Swans written by Jung Chang and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Download or read book One of Us written by Alice Domurat Dreger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-31 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Us views conjoined twinning and other “abnormalities” from the point of view of people living with such anatomies, and considers these issues within the larger historical context of anatomical politics. This deeply thought-provoking and compassionate work exposes the extent of the social frame upon which we construct the “normal.”
Download or read book Bound Feet Western Dress written by Pang-Mei Chang and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A harrowing dual memoir that braids the story of a Chinese-American woman’s search for identity with the dramatic tale of her great-aunt, who was born at the turn of the century in tradition-bound China and went on to become Vice President of China’s first women’s bank. "In China, a woman is nothing." Thus begins the saga of a woman born at the turn of the century to a well-to-do, highly respected Chinese family, a woman who continually defied the expectations of her family and the traditions of her culture. Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years. In the alternating voices of two generations, this literary debut brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.
Download or read book The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton written by Dean Jensen and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives and loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton follows the poignant life story of twin sisters who were literally joined at the hip, set against the tumultuous backdrop of America during the first half of the 20th century. Daisy and Violet and an unforgettable cast of show-business characters come alive on the pages of this carefully researched and sensitively written biography. Reviews "Jensen's book is a testament to the fickleness of the entertainment world." -Tampa Bay Tribune "It is an affecting story, gently and honestly told without frills, without sensation. In Jensen's hands, the twins are always human, individuals, never freaks joined at the hips as the world saw them after their birth in 1908. . . Here, their story is pure." -Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Download or read book All the Time in the World written by E.L. Doctorow and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a master of modern American letters comes an enthralling collection of brilliant short fiction about people who, as E. L. Doctorow notes in his Preface, are somehow “distinct from their surroundings—people in some sort of contest with the prevailing world.” Containing six unforgettable stories that have never appeared in book form, and a selection of previous classics, All the Time in the World is resonant with the mystery, tension, and moral investigation that distinguish the fiction of E. L. Doctorow.
Download or read book Inheritance A Novel written by Lan Samantha Chang and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005-08-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning seven decades and set in China and America against a backdrop of political chaos and social upheaval, this arresting debut novel tells a timeless story of familial devotion undermined by deceit and passion and rebuilt by memory. In 1931, abandoned after their mother's suicide, the young Junan and her sister, Yinan, make a pact never to leave each other. The two girls are inseparable—until Junan enters into an arranged marriage and finds herself falling in love with her soldier husband. When the Japanese invade China, Junan and her husband are separated. Unable to follow him to the wartime capital, Junan makes the fateful decision to send her sister after him. Inheritance traces the echo of betrayal through generations and explores the elusive nature of trust.
Download or read book The Rape of Nanking written by Iris Chang and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal—and forgotten—massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II, "piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror". (Adam Hochschild, Salon) In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.
Download or read book Written on Water written by Eileen Chang and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now back in print, these witty, insightful ssays on fashion, cinema, wartime, and everyday life demonstrate why Eileen Chang was and is a major icon of twentieth-century Chinese literature. Eileen Chang is one of the most celebrated and influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her own life as a writer and woman, set amid the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. In a style at once meditative and vibrant, Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also reflects on Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, and the popularity of the Peking Opera. Chang engages the reader with her sly and sophisticated humor, conversational voice, and intense fascination with the subtleties of everyday life. In her examination of Shanghainese food, culture, and fashions, she not only reveals but also upends prevalent attitudes toward women, presenting a portrait of a daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a revolution looms.
Download or read book Love in a Fallen City written by Eileen Chang and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterful short works about passion, family, and human relationships by one of the greatest writers of 20th century China. A New York Review Books Original “[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” –The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere." –Ang Lee Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.
Download or read book Seeds of Change written by Jen Cullerton Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a young girl in Kenya, Wangari was taught to respect nature. She grew up loving the land, plants, and animals that surrounded her--from the giant mugumo trees her people, the Kikuyu, revered to the tiny tadpoles that swam in the river. Although most Kenyan girls were not educated, Wangari, curious and hardworking, was allowed to go to school. There, her mind sprouted like a seed. She excelled at science and went on to study in the United States. After returning home, Wangari blazed a trail across Kenya, using her knowledge and compassion to promote the rights of her countrywomen and to help save the land, one tree at a time.
Download or read book Journey to the West 2018 Edition PDF written by Wu Cheng'en and published by Asiapac Books Pte Ltd. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling Journey to the West comic book by artist Chang Boon Kiat is now back in a brand new fully coloured edition. Journey to the West is one of the greatest classics in Chinese literature. It tells the epic tale of the monk Xuanzang who journeys to the West in search of the Buddhist sutras with his disciples, Sun Wukong, Sandy and Pigsy. Along the way, Xuanzang's life was threatened by the diabolical White Bone Spirit, the menacing Red Child and his fearsome parents and, a host of evil spirits who sought to devour Xuanzang's flesh to attain immortality. Bear witness to the formidable Sun Wukong's (Monkey God) prowess as he takes them on, using his Fiery Eyes, Golden Cudgel, Somersault Cloud, and quick wits! Be prepared for a galloping read that will leave you breathless!
Download or read book Finding Iris Chang written by Paula Kamen and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2007-12-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iris Chang's mysterious suicide in 2004, at age thirty-six, didn't seem to make any sense. She had more to live for than anyone, including fame, fortune, beauty, a husband, and child. Some even wondered if the controversial author of the Rape of Nanking had been murdered. Long-time friend Paula Kamen was among those left wondering what had gone so wrong. Seeking to reconcile the suicide with the image of Chang's “perfect” life, Kamen searched her own memory and scoured Chang's letters, diaries, and archival material to fill in the gaps of Chang's personal transformation-from awkward teen to homecoming princess in college, from “ex-shy person” to world-class speaker and international human rights pioneer-and later decline into mental illness and paranoia. A literary investigation of an important writer's journey, Finding Iris is a tribute to a lost heroine, a portrait of the real and vulnerable woman who inspired so many around the world.
Download or read book The Girls written by Lori Lansens and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Lori Lansens’ astonishing second novel, readers come to know and love two of the most remarkable characters in Canadian fiction. Rose and Ruby are twenty-nine-year-old conjoined twins. Born during a tornado to a shocked teenaged mother in the hospital at Leaford, Ontario, they are raised by the nurse who helped usher them into the world. Aunt Lovey and her husband, Uncle Stash, are middle-aged and with no children of their own. They relocate from the town to the drafty old farmhouse in the country that has been in Lovey’s family for generations. Joined to Ruby at the head, Rose’s face is pulled to one side, but she has full use of her limbs. Ruby has a beautiful face, but her body is tiny and she is unable to walk. She rests her legs on her sister’s hip, rather like a small child or a doll. In spite of their situation, the girls lead surprisingly separate lives. Rose is bookish and a baseball fan. Ruby is fond of trash TV and has a passion for local history. Rose has always wanted to be a writer, and as the novel opens, she begins to pen her autobiography. Here is how she begins: I have never looked into my sister’s eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I’ve never used an airplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that. I’ve never driven a car. Or slept through the night. Never a private talk. Or solo walk. I’ve never climbed a tree. Or faded into a crowd. So many things I’ve never done, but oh, how I’ve been loved. And, if such things were to be, I’d live a thousand lives as me, to be loved so exponentially. Ruby, with her marvellous characteristic logic, points out that Rose’s autobiography will have to be Ruby’s as well — and how can she trust Rose to represent her story accurately? Soon, Ruby decides to chime in with chapters of her own. The novel begins with Rose, but eventually moves to Ruby’s point of view and then switches back and forth. Because the girls face in slightly different directions, neither can see what the other is writing, and they don’t tell each other either. The reader is treated to sometimes overlapping stories told in two wonderfully distinct styles. Rose is given to introspection and secrecy. Ruby’s style is "tell-all" — frank and decidedly sweet. We learn of their early years as the town "freaks" and of Lovey’s and Stash’s determination to give them as normal an upbringing as possible. But when we meet them, both Lovey and Stash are dead, the girls have moved back into town, and they’ve received some ominous news. They are on the verge of becoming the oldest surviving craniopagus (joined at the head) twins in history, but the question of whether they’ll live to celebrate their thirtieth birthday is suddenly impossible to answer. In Rose and Ruby, Lori Lansens has created two precious characters, each distinct and loveable in their very different ways, and has given them a world in Leaford that rings absolutely true. The girls are unforgettable. The Girls is nothing short of a tour de force.
Download or read book The Lives of Chang and Eng written by Joseph Andrew Orser and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Connected at the chest by a band of flesh, Chang and Eng Bunker toured the United States and the world from the 1820s to the 1870s, placing themselves and their extraordinary bodies on exhibit as "freaks of nature" and "Oriental curiosities." More famously known as the Siamese twins, they eventually settled in rural North Carolina, married two white sisters, became slave owners, and fathered twenty-one children between them. Though the brothers constantly professed their normality, they occupied a strange space in nineteenth-century America. They spoke English, attended church, became American citizens, and backed the Confederacy during the Civil War. Yet in life and death, the brothers were seen by most Americans as "monstrosities," an affront they were unable to escape. Joseph Andrew Orser chronicles the twins' history, their sometimes raucous journey through antebellum America, their domestic lives in North Carolina, and what their fame revealed about the changing racial and cultural landscape of the United States. More than a biography of the twins, the result is a study of nineteenth-century American culture and society through the prism of Chang and Eng that reveals how Americans projected onto the twins their own hopes and fears.
